Serendipitous Discovery: Geometric Cross Wall Art

Hey, friends!

You may or may not know, but our family lives in Slovenia to help the local Pentecostal churches - specifically in Ptuj at the moment.

The pastor of the church asked my husband and I to help them make the kids' Sunday school room more kid-friendly, and we were thrilled to do so!

As any self-respecting person living in 2020, I began my search on Pinterest. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I did know that I wanted something that was somehow modern and timeless at the same time. I found this great idea and saved it, but unfortunately by the time we went to paint it this past weekend the link was dead.

So, I decided to put my own tutorial out there, in case someone found themselves in the same boat.

Tools:

- Paint brushes in different sizes (we didn't end up needing any big ones, as our triangle shapes were small.)

- 11 different colors of wall paint (you don't have to copy our colors exactly of course, just try to keep all of your colors in harmony with one another. We ended up with lots of jewel tones, and I love it!) You won't need a lot of each color, so you can buy the smallest paint bucket size they offer.

- Painter's tape - a small size. Ours was about an inch in width.

- Measuring tape.

- A level.

- Drop cloth.

Steps:

1. If you want an accent wall, start with that. We didn't paint the accent wall in this room, so I won't be giving steps on that. :)

2. The first thing you are going to want to do, is put down your drop cloth. I'm pretty klutzy, so this is especially important for me, ha!

3. Next, you will measure out the cross. You can make it any size you want to fit your wall, but these are the measurements we used:

We measured outside of tape to outside of tape. You will need to use the level to make sure your lines are straight up and down, or horizontally. (This was especially hard, because the wall itself wasn't straight everywhere.) We started with the line on the very bottom. We knew we wanted the outlet to be part of the white cross so we wouldn't have to paint it. We chose a length we liked, and stuck painter's tape on the wall for that length. Next we measured up 130 cm, made a little mark on the wall with a pencil, then slid the level up the wall as we taped. We did the same on the other side, but were able to have a more accurate "point" made with the pencil, as we could measure side-to-side as well as top-to-bottom. We continued this until the whole cross was measured and taped out. Honestly, this was one of the hardest parts, as we started with no frame of reference. It took about an hour just for the cross.

4. Now for the fun part! Taking the painter's tape, we taped strips of it all over the wall to create mostly triangles, but all sorts of geometric shapes, in different sizes. We wanted connecting shapesn all around the cross, with it tapering off on the right. So, at first they're only separated by the tape, then there are some bigger stand-alone triangles, and finally some small ones.

5. After it's all done, make sure you go over all of it one last time, pressing your fingers or fingernail over it to really "seal" it, otherwise the paint will bleed.

6. And now the painting. (Shake paint VERY well before use.) We decided to go one color at a time once, then going over a second time to fill in any gaps. It was hard to gauge how many of each color to paint, and we definitely could have painted more the first time around, but this worked well, too. Our one rule was that a same color could not be touching itself. Also, we tried to visually space them out as well as we could.

Tips:

- Make sure your brush isn't "drippy", as you can easily drip paint on the color below where you are working. We speak from experience.

- The darker colors will need an extra coat or two.

- It is VERY easy to paint past the painter's tape because it is thinner than people usually work with, so paint with care.

- Make sure you paint all the way into the corners so they will look nice and crisp.

7. Apparently the best time to remove painter's tape is once the paint is dry to the touch so that it won't adhere to the tape. We didn't know this, and even if we had, we started removing tape as soon as we were done painting, but some of our darker paint colors came off with the tape. AAAAHHH!

So, here are some tips:

- Be careful in pulling up the tape When you come to an "intersection" of tape, remove each one individually.

- It's okay if you need to go back over some of the shapes to fix them. Just tape that part again, paint, and remove the tape once it is dry to the touch.

8. Once all the tape is removed, stand back and admire the result of your hard work!