As a rented myself, I am sympathetic toward those that desperately seek to add color to their walls, but are not allowed to use paint or wallpaper. There just so happens to be a loophole there as no one says anything about wallpapering with paint chips.
Playing off the interesting architectural details on her dining room wall, Sally decided to put a carrying case worth of paint chips to use. When her plans to paint fell through due to budgetary constraints, this was an excellent unexpected alternative.
To see more pictures, visit sallyTV.
Image credit: sallyTV, found via Design Milk.
MORE PAINT CHIP PROJECTS:
• Pixelated Artwork Made from Paint Chips
• The 500 Paint Chip Sample Wall
• Lampshade Made From Paint Color Chips: Blop Lamp
• More Paint Chip Projects


Shaw's Original Fir...
love it!
I have a box of paint chips in my garage that I have been thinking of using for a future art-installation. Darnit - she got to it first!
Love it, and love the neon high tops.
oh, wow!!!
we see a lot of these but this is very well done. it's very pretty and i love the framing.
I have no idea why I love this, but I do... May I please giggle? tee hee....
I always wonder about the morality of using paint chips as art themselves when the user has no intention of actually buying paint. Thoughts? (I'm not judging you, Sally...it's beautiful!)
Beautiful. I wish she had painted it herself. This is one way to help drive up the cost of paints- those chips aren't really free.
Do paint stores want people to help themselves to paintchips when they have no intention of buying paint? Probably not. Do they recognize that people do and that it's a cost of doing business? Probably so. And if you want to do this but are worried about the morality of it you can buy an entire book of paint chips, in fact nothing in the post says that Sally didn't do just that.
Hello everyone and thank you so much for the kind words! To answer a few of your concerns about the morality of helping yourself to a store's paintchips, that isn't the case for my project. To quote my own words from another post (not the finished project one that AT linked to): "About three years ago I was given a complete set of a certain paint company's paint chips. Not a fan book (I was given that, too), but samples that came in a carry case and were larger than a paint chip. They're great, but some of them have been discontinued and blah blah blah the case is really heavy I just use the fan book most of the time. So I had this giant case of paint chips in my tiny apartment, just taking up space and not being used. I decided to put them to good use!"
In short, these chips were all given to me by a certain paint chip manufacturer because I use their paint so frequently.
ooh what a great idea to add color!
I'm in the middle of redoing my backsplash (again, http://tinyurl.com/2ev4zwh )
using mirror coasters from the dollar store, paint chips and glass tiles.
I used the paint chips to get the varied color gradient I wanted going across the wall and glued them to the back of the glass tiles.
It's a work in progress, but here are some pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36263456@N08/4949161677/
close up:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36263456@N08/4949753424/
I did feel guilty taking all the paint chips from the store, but, well, I got over it.
teeze lovely idea for your back splash... which dollar store are you getting these coasters from...anywhere in brooklyn? *crosses fingers*
Sally -- beautiful! And thanks for alerting everyone to your chip source -- I also think THAT MANY chips taken fro stores where you don't plan to purchase anything is at the very least really rude!
teeze -- gorgeous backsplash! (Not that many color chips involved, but certainly used in a clever and unique way!)
nani77 -- I'm pretty sure I saw those coasters at the Dollar Tree chain. (Don't know if they are in your neighborhood, but there are at least five stores within 20 miles of me in NH.)
I've seen them at dollar tree or family dollar but they are larger than the ones I used.
Nani- I got mine at Amazing Savings which is a ny/nj based chain store. There likely is at least one in Brooklyn, likely in Jewish neighborhood, and at the one near my home in nj there are always tons of these mirrors in stock- all sizes, really cheap.
Thanks for the compliments!!
Beautiful chip wall and frame. I live in Paris, where the option of siffening paintchips from a store is unavailable since the home stores here don't have paint chips, does anyone know how and where I could order a paint chip book? cheers!
I should also note that I used double-sided tape for this project. And if you are planning on doing something similar, make sure you keep an extra roll on hand because occasionally a paint chip will fall off. Cheers! - Sally
keziah... does BHV not have paint chips? I thought i saw them there when i was visiting, maybe i am mistaken.
Also, I've seen this done with an image (usually a super zoomed in shot from a famous painting, such as the left eye from Botticelli's Venus. so it looks like pixel pointalism.
That's beautiful :)