DIY

I mentioned my awesome sticker cutter and that it also cuts vinyl. The walls in my bedroom need something and I'd been looking at wall vinyl. This might sound weird, but I have this fear of hanging a picture above my bed and having it fall on me in the night. The odds are against that ever happening, but I can't get past that.

I really like the mid century modern look and my bedroom curtains even have that kind of pattern subtly interlaced throughout the fabric, so I was thinking of doing those shapes on my wall.

And then I went online and priced out the ready to put up wall vinyl.

Gah! They are charging so much money for so few pieces and I was like seriously? Now that I know what vinyl costs and I know how easy it is to do, the markup seems ridiculous. Remember I have successfully cut my 2019 word of the year out of vinyl and installed it on my wall.

And not only was it easy, it didn't take that much time. If I'd had the file already created, it would have taken minutes to do this.

Because of this and because I'd have to buy more than one kit with the small number of shapes included, I decided I could do this myself.

Mission one was buy wall vinyl. There is an online vinyl seller who has a scrap box of all usable pieces. I was able to get a 15 pound box for pennies per sheet. Accomplished!

I'm still working on Mission two. Buy mid century modern clip art.

I did find some of the shapes I wanted, but there is one that is eluding me. The rounded square with the middle taken out (only one side is thinner than the other). This is the shape that would actually match the pattern in my curtains. I did find it in a background image that I could purchase, but that would mean messing around in graphics programs to isolate it.

I also tried creating the shape myself in the software that came with my cutting machine, but I'm not an artist and it showed.

The search will go on, but maybe I'll start on Mission three while I search. I'll need to figure out how many shapes I need and where I want them to go on my walls. This might require a lot of work, but this problem would exist whether I cut my own vinyl or not. And when I saw those prices online, this definitely became a DIY project.