DIY: Mermaid Wall Art (update)

Hi, everyone! I really enjoyed making my Mermaid Wall Art and have been thrilled with the finished piece, so I was beyond excited when a friend of mine asking me to make one for his new apartment. In the process of making the piece for him, I figured out a great way to make the artwork even easier to create than it already was. Of course, we all want to save some time and money... Keep reading to find out how I did exactly that with this project!



My friend, Dan, loves how my metallic champagne-colored piece looks in my bedroom, but he wanted his piece a bit more masculine (understandably so). We both decided that a matte, charcoal gray color would be perfect for the piece I'd make for his apartment. I couldn't wait to start the piece, and Dan couldn't wait for me to finish it!


For the wall art that's hanging in my bedroom, I cut tons of circles out of white poster board, taped them onto the plywood backing, and spray painted the entire piece a champagne color. Before starting on Dan's piece, my mom cleverly suggested that I just find colored poster board; that way I wouldn't have to worry about spray painting at all. What a brilliant (yet kind of obvious, now that I think about it) way to make this process even more efficient!


I immediately drove out to a nearby craft store and headed for the craft paper aisle. This time, instead of looking for the thick, white poster board that is reminiscent of a grade school presentation, I was looking for heavy drawing paper in a wide variety of colors, specifically in charcoal gray for Dan's piece. I ended up finding Canson Colorline heavyweight craft paper and bought 9 19"x25" sheets of it in "graphite." (PS- look at all of the gorgeous colors this drawing paper is available in. I am DYING to make a multicolored mermaid art piece with some random glitterly silver "scales" thrown in!)


In a nutshell, here are the benefits of using colored drawing paper instead of spray painting white poster board for mermaid wall art:

• BETTER PRICE. The colored Canson drawing paper is a bit more expensive than the white poster board (I paid $1.19 for each sheet of the drawing paper and $0.99 for each sheet of the poster board), but it is definitely worth it to not having to purchase the spray paint.

• EASE OF CUTTING. The Canson drawing paper is a bit thinner than the white poster board, which made cutting out all of those circles soooo easy. Instead of getting a bicep workout from cutting through the thick, white poster board, my Fiskars Circle Cutter cut through the gray Canson drawing paper like butter.

• LESS TIME. The piece that I made for my bedroom took about 10 hours total to complete. The piece I made for Dan with the colored paper only took about 3 hours because I didn't have to spray paint it and wait for the paint to dry (plus cutting the circles out of the thinner drawing paper was so much easier and faster than cutting them from poster board).

• EVEN COLOR. Using spray paint, there is always a chance that the paint coverage won't be completely even and consistent. Using colored drawing paper, you're guaranteed to have totally even color.

As you can see, Dan's matte gray mermaid (or, merman in this case haha) wall art looks awesome! (The front of the Canson drawing paper is a slightly different shade than the back; I took advantage of this difference and randomly flipped some of the circles over to give the piece nice texture and variation.)


That's it! So instead of having to look for white poster board and your favorite color spray paint, now you can just look for the perfect color of drawing paper! It's a simple way to make an easy do-it-yourself project even simpler, and simpler is better, right? =)


- Jillian