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!
Very cool!
I’ve been well inspired by pixelated images and any form always leaves my wondering what it is… like graffiti in many cases… but I do like yours all 50 shades of grey (sorry first thought)! lol!
Thanks! It was a really fun+fast+cheap project.
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