Townhome Tuesday: DIY Paint Chip Calendar

If you’re a Pinterest user I’m sure you’ve seen calendars that crafty people have made from paint chips. For this installment of Townhome Tuesday I wanted to go ahead and share my version of the paint chip calendar and show you that even if everything isn’t perfectly cut and centered, the end result can still be cute and useful.

The rainbow colors turned out nicer than I thought.

1.       I started with a cheesy floating glass frame that said “Home is where the heart is” or something like that with a ribbon glued on it. I bought it from Kohl’s for less than $10 because no one else wanted such a lame-o sign, but I saw the hidden beauty behind it. I could tell the frame and glass were nice, and I assumed that I’d easily be able to take the thing apart and make a paint chip calendar out of it.

2.       Almost two years pass and the frame remains tucked away in a closet.

3.       A few weeks ago, I finally got the urge to complete the project. My first stop was Lowe’s where I went through every available paint sample color and chose seven main colors (for the days of the week) and within each color I chose five color shades (for the rows of weeks). My original plan was to stay with one color for the whole calendar, but I wasn't able to find 35 shades of one color to make that work, so I went with a rainbow theme instead.  I grabbed the big paint chips instead of the strips that have 5 colors on them so that I’d have plenty of “material” to work with once I got home. I also grabbed 3-4 samples of plain white for the month and weekday fields.

4.       Once I got home, I started un-assembling the cheap-o frame. This actually was more difficult that anticipated, so I got the husband involved. I also put him to work pulling off the tacky ribbon and wiping the glass with goo-gone.

5.       I measured the glass and then used a paper cutter to cut each square to the correct size – I practiced with one row of plain paper to verify my math before cutting all of the paint chips. Note: If you don’t have a paper cutter, don’t do this project. It will be so frustrating with scissors and would probably turn out looking too messy anyway. Just try to borrow one from a friend or co-worker (there’s at least one crazy scrapbook lady at every work place).

6.       Once the squares were cut, I placed them on one of the panes of glass and secured them with a little tape on the back. After a lot of positioning and re-positioning (Zach helped here too) I was ready to put the frame back together.

Here's the view of the back - not so pretty.

7.       Here’s the end result. Sometimes it bothers me that the squares aren’t perfectly straight, but mostly I love it and I admire it all of the time.

Hopefully this inspires you to sift through your pins and finally try one of those DIY projects you tagged a year ago; not all of them will end up on those Pinterest fail blogs...