seeing spots

We don't have a lot of art in our house.

Correction.

We have a lot of the crayon/marker/glue and dried pasta variety. However, we don't have a lot of grown-up art. Tons of pictures, a few prints and one etching (fancy I know) but not much art to speak of.

So I find it funny that I have a whole board on Pinterest dedicated to that very thing. Lots of paintings - abstract, landscapes etc. A whole bunch of things I absolutely love but would never in a million years be able to create not to mention the fact that they aren't very budget friendly.

But what good is Pinterest if it doesn't inspire you to get off your arse once in a while and try something new. Can I get an amen?

So with a perfect blank slate just waiting to be 'arted' (I don't think that is a word but I am here by declaring it a verb. I'll alert Webster's.) I decided to give it a shot.

I've always loved this painting by Damien Hirst (Opium). So with the ignorance confidence of a novice I uttered those famous 5 words, "how hard could it be?"

Luis Bustamante via Pinterest

I went to Michael's with my coupons and a list of colors I wanted to use. First big break, the canvas was on sale. I went with a 16x20 so as not to overwhelm myself with a big vast white board screaming 'ok, so make me beautiful ms. know-it-all.'

Picking out the paint colors was a huge time suck. Apparently I don't craft enough as I had no idea how many shades of every color in the rainbow there was in the world of craft paint. Luckily at $.60 a bottle, I stayed within my meager budget. Two packs of small round stencil sponge brushes to create my circles and I was armed and read to create.

Maybe it was the fumes from all of the craft paint but I was psyched. I couldn't wait for nap time so I could get to work.

In order to keep those perfect lines I figured a grid pattern would do the trick. With the very thin painters tape left over from my tray, I first made all of my horizontal lines using a piece of tape as my spacer. Then, I repeated the same process vertically.

Although it made a lovely gingham pattern, the squares were just a bit too small for my spongy circle things. Big bummer.

Attempt number two. I used my wide painters tape for my spacer...and that was a total bust. That tape was too wide and I only got a few rows in.

Third time is a charm. I put two pieces of the thin painters tape together, overlapping them slightly and used that for my spacer. Just right. Do I sound like goldilocks?

With some old cardboard I made myself a little painters palet and got to work. At first I thought about trying to follow the colors in the original painting dot for dot. But that would have driven me bonkers. So I went random.

Starting with one color, I would fill in 3 random squares. (I don't know why I picked 3). Then, move to the next color. I went thru the whole rainbow, doing 3 squares of each color before starting over again with the first color. Repeating this over and over until I got to the last few empty squares. At that point it became a bit of a chess game but turned out pretty well.

Some of the circles got a little wonky and aren't exactly uniform, but I kind of like that actually. Because really, what in my house isn't a little wonky and not exactly uniform?

The whole project only took about an hour (would have been shorter if I didn't have to tape and retape) and was under $20. A great deal I would say.

Have you attempted to recreate a piece you've seen on Pinterest?