Paint Chip Art DIY Tutorial

The amazing pintrest.com has recently inspired me to become crafty.  If you haven’t checked out Pintrest.com make sure you sign up and start pinning.  Its basically a site that allows you to bookmark all of the amazing images and ideas you find online and organize them into inspiration boards.

So to start off my craftiness I decided to make a birthday gift for a 7 year old girl…she would be forgiving of my first project.  I saw all these amazing projects online using paint chips as art….I was amazed.  I started thinking…I can do that..so I did and here is what you need.

• Paint Chips from Home Depot, Lowes etc – stolen aka $0

• Canvas – I used an 8 x 10 canvas and I got a two pack for like $4 on sale so it was $2 for the one project

• Wooden Letter – $1.99 Hobby Lobby

• Paint – I used acrylic paint I already had

• Mod Podge – amazing stuff I used it as adhesive and top coat $6.49 for the bottle

• Foam Brush – I had one on hand but these are like $0.35 at Hobby Lobby

• Ribbon – I was going to hang the canvas with ribbon but in the end I didn’t need it (Optional)

First figure out with kind of design you are going for.  My paint chips were slightly rectangular so I decided to go easy and do a geometric grid.  I cut off the names of the paint colors on the chips and made sure all of my chips were roughly the same size. I also painted my letter at this point and gave it one coat of Mod Podge to give it some glossiness.

Next brush on the Mod podge onto your cavas and begin laying your paint chips and press down as you go.  Other sites used spray adhesive for this part and I think that is a great idea….the wetness of the Mod Podge made some of my paint chips want to curl so I think the dryness of the spray would work better for laying the chips down.  Continue this step until your canvas is covered in a design you like.

Once your design is complete and your canvas is covered brush a layer of Mod Podge over the entire thing, don’t worry it will dry clear.  Come back in an hour or so and do another coat until you are happy with the look and texture of the piece, I did 3 coats.  During this process I had to have some help holding down some edges as they wanted to curl so I used Binder clips to keep my paint chips flush with the side of the canvas and it worked pretty well.

When my Mod Podge was all dry (about 24 hours later) I glued my letter E on with a little crazy glue and TADA done! Originally I was going to use some ribbon to use as a hanger but I thought it looked too busy.

All in all this was a pretty easy and inexpensive project.  I spend around $11 for this one project but that is including the huge bottle of Mod Podge that is going to last through lots of other projects.  Another great thing is that I was able to give a really unique gift that was handmade and Emma really loved it.

What do you guys think? Do you think this is something that you could try?

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-Drama mama out

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