Geometric Wall Painting

I was really pleased with how my painting on the wall of my built in wardrobe turned out. My boyfriend and I really love it but agree that it's a shame it goes mostly unseen. Since the summer, we've been going back to the idea of doing a similar painting in the main part of the room.

I decided on two parts of the room that were looking a little blank and put together some designs that used the same shapes and colours from my original painting. I took photos of the areas and used Photoshop to play around with the design directly on the photos.

I drew the designs on to the wall in pencil and then got painting. I only had to buy one new pot of paint as I still had the other colours leftover, and thanks to my last blog post I knew exactly which shade to get.

The corner painting was done over the Christmas holidays, a few hours at a time, but the painting next to the door I was able to do in one day. I thought that was a good opportunity to set up my tripod and show you guys my process.

Geometric Wall Art

Hi guys, I'm back! If you follow me on Instagram you'll know that I moved house a couple of weeks ago, which is the reason for my blogging absence. My boyfriend and I bought our first house together and have been busy unpacking and decorating.

We've started with our bedroom where I've been able to put my first creative touch. The room has a built in wardrobe/closet space and I thought it would be fun to do a painted feature wall inside. Since this is my first experience of painting on such a big scale (ok, not true) I thought this would be relatively low risk as if it turned out really bad it wouldn't matter as the wall is going to be covered with clothes most of the time anyway.

I started by designing the wall in Photoshop. I'd searched Pinterest for geometric wall inspiration and used this image as a starting point.

With my design up on my laptop I started drawing it on to the wall. We'd already painted it grey when we did the rest of the room. Drawing the design involved a fair bit of measuring which I didn't mind, especially when I found a website which did equilateral triangle calculations for me.

Then it was time to paint. I'd say it took me about two long days altogether, and lots of podcasts. I decided to do the whole thing freehand and not use tape as I haven't had much success with it in the past. Mostly because I'm not willing to pay out for the good stuff #cheapo. So instead I used a small brush and a steady hand for the outlines of the shapes.

These are the different paints I used. The Dulux 'Chic Shadow' is the colour of the rest of the bedroom and the base colour of my design. The small tester pot in 'Slate' was left behind by the house's previous owner and turned out to be the perfect dark grey, although there wasn't quite enough of it so I had to alter my design slightly. I mixed the silk black paint (another one we inherited from the previous owner) with the white emulsion to make another shade of grey. Then for a pop of colour I used a tube of gold acrylic paint.

I'm so happy with how this wall turned out. I think I got the size of the pattern and the colours just right.

It's almost a shame to cover it up with our clothes, but we need the storage space! And we'll get glimpses of it when we're getting our clothes out. Maybe now I'll try something on a more prominent wall.

Pin it!

Bunk Beds Be Gone

I've mentioned a few times that I've been changing around some things in my bedroom recently. The biggest thing was that I decided 2014 would be the year I get rid of my bunk beds. Here's the deal; many, many years ago my two sisters and I used to share this bedroom. We had the bunk beds and another bed. My sisters both moved out to their own rooms and I was left with the bunk beds, and the biggest room. Win.

The top bunk is really useful for storage, which is why I've kept it so long.

I forgot to take a photo before I started changing things (bad blogger!) but you can see from these old blog photos how my top bunk had become a place to dump all of my things.

This is how my room looks now.

A few of my friends have commented on how much 'stuff' I have, and that's true, so I needed to think about ways to store it with the top bunk gone. I've made full use of the space under my bed and even bought a few more storage boxes to keep shoes and hats in which slide underneath.

I also got rid of at least 5 big bags of things to charity shops and jumbles, so I am working on how much 'stuff' I have.

A big part of the switch around was these shelves my Dad built for me. The main things I wanted to store on them were my photo albums and my plastic boxes containing craft stock. The shelves are quite deep as they were built with those things in mind.

I moved my ottoman underneath the shelves to free up some floor space elsewhere, and added hooks underneath the shelves to make use of the empty space between the ottoman and the shelves. Now I can hang up jackets and cardigans that I use regularly and all my thin scarves which I forget about if they aren't on display.

And it's where my monkeys in wigs hang out.

Another thing I did to de-clutter my floor space was to hang my hand painted guitar on the wall. I have another guitar which I prefer to play so this one acts more like decoration. I chose to make my own guitar wall hanger because the ones I found online were either too expensive or stuck too far out of the wall. I found a video on Youtube which showed how to make your own out of a tool hanger and a block of wood. The tool hangers only come in bright red which did annoy me, but once the guitar is on it it's not that obvious.

The only piece of furniture I bought for this swap around was this computer table from Asda for £14. I wanted something wide enough to fit my basket of magazine in and all the tables sold as beside tables were too narrow, so I started looking in other departments. The table has a slide out shelf, meant for a computer keyboard, but I've put a wire basket on it containing my thick socks. The second basket contains my coloured tights and is on a shelf that my Dad and I added. The baskets were a great find from the Scrap Store.

And the underneath of the table is just the right size to store my fold up lap table which I use when I work on my computer in bed. 

This is the first time I've had a proper bedside table. At uni I just had two plastic storage boxes stacked on top of each other with a box of tissues and a clock on. Student life!

The last thing I did was hang this poster of Missy Higgins above my bed which I bought years ago from Ebay. It's usually on my notice board on the opposite wall, which you may have seen here, but seeing the gap between my guitar and school photos I thought the poster would fit in nicely. I found a frame in the loft, put it up and then hung my flower lights around it.

For a look at other parts of my bedroom click here or here, or to see the whole thing in miniature click here. 

House progress: front bedroom

I hadn't planned what was going to go in this room of my miniature house as it wasn't going to be a plot point for the narrative of the piece.

I thought about just filling it with little cardboard boxes and calling it the spare room but my friend encouraged me to at least put a bed in it.

Which I did, and then I added some shelves and drawers.

And then I needed things to fill the shelves of course so I made some tiny books and dvds, a laptop, and iPod and even a magic 8 ball.

A few posters on the wall and suddenly this room was a teenage boys bedroom.

So I guess that's him, with the purple socks, hiding under the duvet.

But what's he hiding from?

The answer to that is in the other bedroom.

Which you'll see soon enough.