diamonds and stripes on a wall

step one: a diamond or argyle pattern

Wall adventure on the weekend! I began by measuring out marks every 10″ at base of chair rail, and at the top of the floor board moulding. From there I taped Xs to create the large half diamonds.  When those were complete and tape removed, I cut a small square out of a piece of acetate to create a stencil for the small diamonds in between. I do plan to replicate the bottom pattern throughout the room, but will leave the stripes on this wall only.

For the color, I used a base of the initial wall color, and added burnt umber liquid acrylic, as well as some India ink to achieve the darker hue. (I’ve saved this in a jar to do the remaining walls.)

step two: stripes added above chair rail

For the top, I measured out marks at the ceiling- every two and a half inches. Now, none of the walls are plumb in this apartment, so ideally I ought to have measured out the marks at the top of the chair rail as well. But I didn’t. I taped by eye, resulting in a slight slant as the stripes work their way to the right, but it’s pretty minor.

For this color, I followed the same plan; using the wall color as a base, and mixing in burnt umber. Burnt umber is a great way to deepen a hue without really altering the color much. It’s largely neutral, but still an earth tone so it doesn’t muddy or flatten colors the way black or grey would. I only used India ink (black) in the darker color because it was already quite dark, and would have taken more burnt umber than I had left to achieve the same effect.

(Note: these are not the greatest photos, as the lighting wasn’t right and I did not use a tripod. Hopefully will get some better quality images up at some point)