You know how you keep meaning to paint the wall or put up a frame or buy some gorgeous batik? Well, forget about it. I’m begging you. Instead, you should just hop on over to your local hardware store and drop the insane amount of $6 to $8 on a few yards of vinyl, self-adhesive ConTact paper in different colors. Where exactly am I going with this? Read on.
You may have noticed that swanky home-furnishings and interior-design stores are peddling pre-cut vinyl wall-art designs at insane prices, as if they take the skill of César Pelli to create. And yes, the designs are cool. But you can exercise your crafty talent by making almost the exact same things for a tenth of the price.
What You Need:
Paper and pen
A black marker
Scissors
Several yards of ConTact paper
A free wall
First, get your paper and pen and draw a rough sketch of what you’d like your finished design to look like. Here’s mine:
Then grab your ConTact paper and draw your design freehand on the wrong side of the paper (the side with writing on it). My design is somewhat symmetrical, but if yours isn’t, make sure to draw it reversed to how you’d like it to appear on your wall. (Example: If you’re making an apple with a big stem that points to the left, make the stem point to the right when you draw it on the ConTact paper.)
Hopefully you don’t have these kinds of distractions in your life:
When you finish drawing your design, cut it out.
After that, it’s time to apply the paper to the wall. Do NOT unpeel the entire backing and try to stick on the whole thing at once—you’ll end up with an unmanageable mess. Instead, start at the bottom (or top, your choice) and peel SLOWLY, sticking on the design as you go.
There.
Note: If your design isn’t as wide as you want (because ConTact paper is only a couple of feet wide), you can cut off extra strips and apply them to what you’ve already stuck to extend your design.
Finally, the fun part: decoration. Add whatever baubles and adornments and finishing touches you’d like to your design.
Whew! And that’s it! Beautiful, forgiving home décor for just a few hundred pennies. Leave it on as long as you’d like, or peel it off and stick it somewhere else every day—it’s up to you. These lovely strips of paper are much less sticky than tape, so they won’t muck up your wall. If you mess up, just peel it off and do it over again. It doesn’t get much better than that!
This post was contributed by Carly Schuna, who occasionally writes about Halloween costumes over at StarCostumes.com
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