Paint Chips Ahoy!

Remember when I made the paint chip coasters? Well, I was originally inspired by this idea for a paint chip calendar. Seeing as the first project turned out well, I decided to get crafty once more.

While the original idea just involves gluing a bunch of paint chips to paper for each month, I don't have the time, patience, or guts to take a year's worth of paint chips from my local home improvement store. So I decided to modify a bit and make a reusable version. Here's how it all went down.

Assemble the palette.

First I had to procure enough coordinating paint chips. This involved me skulking around Home Depot surreptitiously slipping paint chips in my pocket. I'm not sure if they would be mad at me taking 35 paint chips, but I decided not to care (or advertise the fact). I decided to go with a cool blue and purple palette that would hopefully look good with my kitchen.
 

Cut to size.

Next up, I had to trim the paint chips into squares and then arrange the chips into a pleasing pattern. I didn't want the same colors ever touching, and I kind of did a light-to-dark color thing, but other than that, this was all eye-balling to see what looked right.

Arrange the grid.

Finished design.

Once I had it in a pattern I liked, it was time to glue it down. I used a 14x18 frame and just flipped over the faux family picture insert it came with to give myself a white background. I drew a line around the edge of where the chips would go, just to give myself something to follow. If I was super crafty and a perfectionist, I guess I would have drawn the entire grid, but I decided to just eyeball the spacing, and it seemed to work out. ( I also left more room at the top so I could write in the name of the month, just so you know.)

Glue those babies down.

I started gluing from the bottom, and added each row above, again, just eye-balling the placement of each square. A glue stick worked fine, and since the whole thing is going under glass, I wasn't too worried about getting the corners down perfectly. Then the whole thing went into the frame. I used a vis-a-vis marker to fill in the dates (although once school starts I'll find a black or blue marker in my stash - it would look better than the green). And there you have it!

Calendar? Or modern art? You decide!

Bring it on, July!