all things home thursdays: chevron anyone?

Are you as in love with chevron as I am?  (No, not the gasoline ... I had this conversation with my husband last night ... chevron as in the zig zag pattern.)  Yes, I love chevron.  I have been seeing chevron everywhere in home decor lately.  Rugs, pillows, ottomans.  You name it, it's probably been chevron-ed (yes, I just made up that word).  


Well I decided to chevron something in my house.  I bought a blank canvas for our bedroom many months ago.  Scratch that, actually it was well over a year ago.  I had a vision of painting lavender-colored flowers on it to take up a chunk of dark wall space we had (because we all know just how crazy expensive large pieces of artwork are!).  Well, the flowers were painted and it turned out nothing like I wanted.  It really did look homemade (and on a sidenote: I love doing crafty things for my home, but only if it doesn't look super crafty.  I mean, I want it to have a homemade touch, but like it was homemade by a professional ... if you get where I'm going.)  Well, this art piece of mine definitely looked homemade in the bad sense.  My sweet husband never said how much he probably hated it, but after a few weeks I had just had to do something about it.  I tried decoupaging white tissue paper over it to add some texture, thinking it would help.  It didn't.  So then I just painted that whole canvas over with white paint.  With the texture left under the white paint, it actually looked pretty cool (in that post-modern sense).  But after time, that white canvas was just too plain.  So I made a stencil based off of the pattern on our shower curtain and painted it in grey on the canvas.  I liked it.  And it stayed that way for the longest time of any of my homemade artwork attempts.  But still, I just wasn't satisfied with it.  And then ... ta-dah! ... the chevron idea popped in my head.  I was so excited at the thought, I couldn't wait to get started.  Take a peek!

It turned out better than I expected!  All I did was take 2" blue painters tape and a 45 degree triangle (I had it sitting around from an architecture class in college, but you can use a compass and a pencil too).  Set the first up (zig) and down (zag) pieces where you want them, and the rest flows from there.  Paint, remove the tape, and wallah!  Chevron!  At first it was a lot of color ... I was almost thinking of painting over one of purples with some white paint, but after one day, I realized I really do love it!  

I paired it with two white-matted silver frames I had around the house (ok, I had each of them in our bathrooms, but I'll just have to find something else to replace them now haha).  I also had a beautiful purple and silver-printed paper sitting at home from a previous project that I used to put inside and mounted them on each side of my new artwork. (I also think the silver frames and white mats help tone-down the really concentrated purple canvas.)

 

Then I accessorized the dresser with a silver vase from Ross with a white fake flower (yes, I have to dust it off ... but I sure beats having to buy fresh flowers each week!), a small silver frame with an adorable photo of my husband and myself, a purple glass dish from IKEA and a lucite lamp and white shade from Target.  

I can't tell you how much this new artwork has changed the look of the room.  Love it!  The only thing I want to still change is get lucite crystal knobs for my otherwise plain IKEA dresser.  Another day ...