DIY Chevron Painting!

First of all, I want to give a huge shout out to Cassie over at Hi Sugarplum!  who

featured my buffet on her blog yesterday!  I was inspired by her...she painted her

armoire in the famous Martha Stewart Plummage paint color and that

is what helped me to decide on painting my buffet the same color.

I'm completely honored that she shared my project with her readers!

She is so much fun with so many wonderful and creative ideas!   

Thanks, Cassie!!!

Now, on to my newest DIY project!

For weeks I have been stumped on how to fill the huge wall above my buffet in the 

living room.  I had the idea to create my own painting.

I'm obsessed with chevrons at the moment so I googled some ideas

to make my own chevron painting.  There are tons out there.  

I was going to do a really simple one where you just tape off the 

zig zags and paint over it with one color.  

But then, I saw this beauty:

(sorry, I don't know who the artist is.)

Love love love it!  It's chevron, but not in-your-face chevron, ya know?  It's different.

Plus I thought that I could tweak the colors a bit to fit well into my space.

Sooooooooo, I decided to give it a go!

I bought the canvas at Michael's for $12.49 (with a 50% off coupon) and I already

had all of the paint.  I figured, what have I got to lose?    

I'll admit.  The hardest part of the project was drawing out the zig zag pattern.   I ended up 

finding this pattern at Sunset.com.  Their pattern was too small for what I needed so 

I just cut out one "chevron" and traced it onto a piece of paper extending 

the sides to make it larger.  Then, I cut out my larger

chevron and traced it down the middle of the canvas.

I traced one big zig zag down the middle of the canvas.

Then, with a yard stick, I drew out the lines extending to the edge of the canvas

creating the entire pattern.  

Then, the fun part!  Adding color!  I apologize for not getting more pics, but I was home by myself

and only had a limited amount of kid-free time so I had to just go with it!

I just used a small angled paintbrush to do the edges.  It would take forever

to tape off each stripe and wait for it to dry before moving on to the next color.  

I'm impatient like that!

(just ignore those highchairs in the background.  They are in limbo and were
shoved in the dining room...hopefully to
be sold on Craigslist soon!!!)

The above picture was my first coat with three stripes left to go.  Each stripe needed two 

coats of paint.  I was going to just leave them as is, but I loved the texture and contrast 

of colors in my inspiration photo so I went back in and added coordinating

and contrasting colors to each one.  I am NOT a professional and have no training 

in color theory or anything....I just went with it!! 

And, here is the finished project!!!

I chose colors that complimented the room with the teals and greens.

I decided on the "rust" color to play off the cognac color of the sectional couch.  

Then the yellow and the blues were added just for fun!  I didn't want the painting to 

match the room exactly.  

Okay, be honest....what do you think????