Gorgeous Modern Paint Chip Art with The Crafty Scientist! {guest post}

Today, I'm super excited to welcome Mel from The Crafty Scientist! Mel's blog is creative, charming and fun - you must go check it out (click button below)! For example, she has a group of "Less Than One Hour" posts - projects you can complete in under an hour - my type of crafting! I think you're gonna absolutely LOVE Mel's modern paint chip art - it's unique, chic and gorgeous!

Hi fabulous readers of Scene of the Grime! I'm Mel the Crafty Scientist - shockingly enough, my blog is called The Crafty Scientist! I'm so excited to be able to post here today and share one of my favorite projects with you all... my paint chip art! I absolutely LOVE paint chips and collect them and hoard them (I even have a Pinterest board dedicated just to paint chip projects) because I just love color and pops of bright color and new color combinations... you get the idea! So I came up with this project as a way to display them and then I posted about it on my blog and Laurie was wonderful enough to ask me to share the project with you!

This project was inspired by some of what I saw around the blogosphere, particularly this one. I'm a huge fan of this project - it's easy and you can make them in a million colors, they cost almost nothing and take very little time... pretty much my favorite type of crafting!

So here's how you can make your own...

Supplies

• Carstock
• Paper punch
• Gluestick
• Mod Podge (+ brush)
• Lots of paint chips!
• Dollar store frame
• Scissors

Instructions
For these projects, I used 1-inch and 2-inch circle punches, but you can use whatever size you'd like. First I cut the cardstock to the size I wanted to fit my frames. Then, I grabbed my paint chips in the desired color(s) - I've now made these in lots of different colors just because it's been really fun - mindless enough to do while watching TV, but still doesn't take too long.

Then just start punching out your circles. I avoided the labels and text on the paint chips, but that's just me... then I started to glue them onto my cardstock. You can see how I made the yellow to blue project in the second picture.

I overlapped them with each other a bit and made sure to cover the entire piece of cardstock (so that circles were hanging off the edge of the paper). (And yes, I did mess up something on the back of this paper... recycle, right?)

Just keep gluing the circles down in whatever way you want, until the cardstock is covered....

Then, you'll want to grab your mod podge... I used the glossy stuff because I just like it more than the matte finish, but that's just me. You just spread a thin layer across your entire paint chip & cardstock creation... unfortunately, I messed up in taking pictures and this is next picture is two steps ahead, but you just coat with mod podge. I applied multiple coats, but again, that's probably just because I'm neurotic and I doubt it makes a difference.

Looks kinda icky, but then it dries...

And after it dries, you'll want to flip over the cardstock and cut off the scalloped edges (the little paint chips that hang off the cardstock) so that you can fit your artwork into the frame! And then you have some beautiful artwork that cost almost nothing (a buck for the frame - you probably have the rest on hand)!

These were the first two I made...

Since then, I just wanted to play with paint chips and mod podge (my favorite crafting supplies) and so I've made quite a few of these... for various rooms and possibly (okay, definitely) as gifts!

They're all in various states of progress - I took all the pics at one time so some are un-Mod Podged and most are uncut so they still have the scalloped edges...

"Pretty in Pink"

"Lemon Yellow"

"Moody Blues"

"Mean Reds"

I actually really love this green one because I found the textured paint chips at Lowe's... for some reason, most of the textured paint chips were green, so I made another green one. I highly recommend throwing some of these textured ones in there, if you can get them to go through your punch without breaking it (which is not always easy)!

"Green with Envy"

All together now...

All in all, less than one hour for each (unless you go crazy with a giant one and use 1-inch circles) and practically free! 

Thanks so much to Laurie for letting me share this with you guys today! If you want to see some other projects I've worked on, please come visit me at The Crafty Scientist! 

Thanks for guesting for SOTG today, Mel! I know we are all enjoying your bold and lovely creations!

CY, Laurie