Last week, I was pinning on Pinterest when I stumbled upon this gem (see the left image below). That pixel art watercolor inspired me to attempt my own pixel art over this past rainy Los Angeles weekend.

I started by finding an image that had a color scheme that I really like and that matches a lot of the colors in my house. I took that into photoshop, where I created an 8 pixel by 10 pixel version. I set each pixel to be and 1″X1″ square, making the artwork an 8″X10″ piece (a good size for a standard frame). I printed it out, and that’s how I got the image at the top right of this post.

Next, I had to collect the supplies. I wanted this to be a VERY cheap craft project and thankfully paint chips are FREE! I brought my pixel print out to Lowes and Home Depot and collected a variety of paint chips to match so I had plenty of color options. Instead of cutting out squares, I decided to jazz it up by buying Martha Stewarts 1″ circle cutter for $10 (plus I used a 15% off coupon at Michael’s to get this). This tool is so awesome. It cuts perfect circles like a hole punch.

I was able to do this whole project assembly in under an hour while also watching netflix. It was super easy I promise you. After cutting a bunch of 1″ circles I played with my original color template to make sure I was following my pattern. Thankfully since it’s my own creation, I was able to adjust the colors as I went with it. After playing around it became…

This! You can see I didn’t match it exactly, but it was great to have the color print out as a guide to help with the gradients.

Then I slid my color guide with circles to the side, laid out my t-square ruler along some nicer paper, and one by one doubled sided taped each circle onto the nice paper. I was not very fussy about measuring exactly where each dot should go, and just eye-balled it. I kept the ruler along one side, just to make sure I wasn’t crooked.

Finally, I got a cheap frame from Aaron Brothers (gotta love their buy-one-get-one-for-a-penny sale!). Doesn’t the final piece look really great? It adds a lot to my artwork collection and it was so cheap/easy to produce. This frame sale also means I now have another frame to fill. My mind is in creative overdrive!