Decorating doesn’t have to be expensive. I’ve never been a fan of “big box store” home decor and prefer to DIY or make my own. This not only saves money, but it makes it very easy to customize! You can build furniture that fits your space perfectly, or make DIY wall art that matches your home’s color scheme. A few examples are the DIY entertainment center we custom built for our living room, the nightstand for our bedroom that was both simple and cheap, as well as the wall art for our dining room I made using wood shims! My newest cheap art technique is paint scraped wall art. You can make DIY wall art quickly and easily for your home.

Canvas

Acrylic Paint

Plastic Ruler

Paint Brush

Use either a blank canvas or a painted one. You may have some of the canvas showing through, so it’s best to paint first if you don’t want to see the canvas. You can even re-purpose an existing canvas by painting over the design.

Start by making small pools of paint along one side of the canvas. You want to get a good amount of paint poured out and you can leave a bit of space between each color if you want. Only go down a few inches so you can work in sections on the canvas.

Next, take your ruler and and push it flush to the canvas and start dragging it through the paint.

Move the ruler straight across, or move it up and down across the canvas, just keep it moving from one side to the other.

Gently pull the ruler up (you’ll have a lot of paint on the ruler) and carefully set it in a different section of the canvas. Drag in another direction to cover the canvas.

Wipe the excess paint off the ruler and add in more color pools as needed.

I found it best to use a cleaning wipe between each pass so the colors don’t blend together too much. A little blending is ok, but too much and it’ll turn everything brown! Use a paint brush to fill it if needed.

You can create completely custom DIY wall art in a variety of shapes and sizes with this paint scraped wall art. Using canvas is the easiest, but you could also do this on a big piece of plywood if you’re looking for some large scale art work! Trim out your canvas or wood for a more completed/polished look.