WHOA.  So I have been an artsy fartsy hermit for the past few days, and let me tell you, it.  was.  awesome.  Sometimes I wonder how I ended up in such a social career, when I can be perfectly content to spend days at a time locked up inside my apartment painting and making art and listening to trip-hop, turning the ringer on my phone off and not speaking a word to a single soul.  I mean, seriously, sometimes a girl just needs a break from intentional, albeit jovial, conversation.  :)

So my first DIY wall art projects are complete.  Like I said it took a few days, some patience, and maybe a little bit of red wine.  Or a bottle, I can’t remember.

The inspiration for even attempting such a thing was inspired by this post  (I am now a regular blog-stalker here, but not in a creepy way at all, promise).  After deciding I was going to create some awesome chevron canvases to fill up the wall and create some serious visual interest in our dining room area, I started scouring Google for more DIY wall art projects.  Our bedroom was taking shape quite nicely since I did some de-cluttering and organized what was left (after making a few trips to the GoodWill drop-off), but the wall above our bed was seriously naked.  I figured some graphic canvases would look cool there too, and when I saw this idea involving a trellis stencil, I was in immediate true love and the rest, as they say, is history.  Done.

I bought five 22″x28″ canvases at once, three for the dining area and two for above the bed.  Though the chevron canvases were my first intended project, I forgot to get painter’s tape while running errands, so the stencil art was the first one completed (um, I should probably mention that I started this project around 11:30pm or so, and ended up going to bed around 2am.  NBD.).

After stenciling the whole canvas in pencil, I painted along the inside of each design with a pretty turquoise acrylic paint that would coordinate with the pops of turquoise already in our room.

One (almost) down, one to go. I meant to make a note of how long it had taken me to get to this point, but I completely forgot. It wasn't terribly long. Maybe an hour? (P.S. I totally got paint on the carpet. Maybe I should've put some newspaper down or something... but I was too excited to get started to be bothered with technicalities.)

The finished product! I'm in love.

I ended up going over the paint lines a second time to cover any pencil marks that showed through the first coat. I love the way they look 24/7!

I am in true love with the way the trellis canvases turned out, and pretty much thought that nothing could top them.  In fact, upon starting the chevron canvases, I immediately hated my life, particularly after an hour into it, when I was only this far:

FML. Are you serious? This was supposed to be easy...

Now, that being said, I eventually got into a rhythm and figured out some tricks along the way, so by the third canvas (which I completed two days later), I was infinitely quicker at getting them completed.  I was initially kind of bummed that the paint bled underneath the edges of my painter’s tape and the final results were not as crisp and perfect as the ones Jess made.  I’ve accepted it as art, though, and I kind of admire the imperfect quality and the character the canvases have.  (Plus, from far away, you can’t really tell that the lines are fuzzy… besides everyone knows when you go to a museum, you’re not supposed to stand 10 inches away from the art you’re viewing anyway.  That’s right, I just compared my apartment to a museum.  Winning.)

I used a pretty bronze paint (um, I couldn't copy the original and use gold, that would be too Single White Female.).

From another angle... hm, I'm thinking I need some rug action. (That's what she said.) Oh, and yes, I keep mannequin heads on display in our home. I kind of like the creep-factor. :) Also, yes that is a dog food dish that I probably should have moved before taking the picture. And I just noticed also that the pillows on the couch are completely smashed from where the dogs like to lay. Dammit. I need to step it up with the picture-taking skillz.

Aaaaand, the romantic evening shot. Don't you love them?

I have decided that I love them.  In fact, Tim agreed they look awesome… which was really all the approval I needed.

Side note: the little wine bar in the corner was something I purchased from, of all places, Bed Bath & Beyond.  It’s not the greatest quality, but it is solid, and it is EXACTLY what I have been looking for to put in that area.  I had been eyeballing something in the Pottery Barn catalog but, let’s face it, I couldn’t bring myself to spend $450 on a little wine bar just to fill out the space.  At $179 (plus 10% off for it being the display piece, AND a 20% off coupon, hellooooo! – so roughly $130), this little bar was a killer steal that I felt totally awesome about purchasing.  Now we just need to fill it up with wine… which will be next to impossible considering how much we enjoy drinking it versus displaying it…

More less exciting photos of organization coming soon.  Stay tuned!