Shades of Pink

Earlier this week I shared part one of my adventures in painting the kid's bedrooms in the new house. Before Will's blue wall was dry, I was already prepping the space in Audrey's room. I have probably asked her a thousand times what color she wanted her new room to be and every single time she has had the exact same answer. "PINK, PINK, PINK!" When I was putting together her nursery I refused to decorate with pink. Not that I don't like the color I just wanted to go a different, less traditional route so I chose greens and purples. Well, five years later my very opinionated little girl knows exactly what she wants and who am I to stand in her way? I  didn't want to paint the entire room pink so, again, I decided an accent wall was the way to go.

 

The original plan was to do vertical stripes in two different shades of pink. We chose Charisma and Gala Pink from Sherwin Williams (color-matched at Lowes). I had it all planned out and then I came across this picture on Pinterest.

 

image via www.apartmenttherapy.com

I fell deeply in love with the ombre effect. Something about it made it feel a little more sophisticated than vertical stripes. Like it was a look that could grow with Audrey, rather than becoming too juvenile within a couple of  years (not that I would be opposed to changing things up if she really wanted to down the road). The problem with my late night Pinterest epiphany was that I had already bought the paint in only two shades of pink. Well, keep reading and I'll tell ya what I did and it didn't involve going back to Lowes...

I taped the baseboards and the white walls and ceiling all the way around the wall I was planning to paint. At this point, I called in a reinforcement to help me out. I am not a math person and although measuring some stripes and taping them off could probably be handled by a few of my Kindergartners; I was terrified of screwing it up. So, I decided it was the perfect job for Aaron. He is a high school math teacher after all. I decided to just do three different shades of pink. So, he measured the entire wall and divided it by three. He used that measurement to measure from the ceiling down and he drew a line with a pencil. Then, he taped under the pencil mark. I painted this stripe with the Charisma shade, which was the lightest one that I purchased.

 

After that was done, Aaron used the same measurement to measure from the bottom of the wall up. Again, he drew a line and this time taped above his pencil mark. I painted this stripe with the Gala Pink shade. This is what it looked like at that point. Aaron decided that I should stop there. And...I decided it looked like a flag and that I needed to stick to my plan.

 

 

 We couldn't tape off the middle stripe until the other two dried since the tape needed to go directly on the newly painted stripes. This gave me plenty of time to do a little mixing. If you remember, I only bought two shades of pink. All I had to do was add some white paint to the darker Gala Pink color. I used a plastic cup to keep track of how much I was using of each shade in case I needed to make more in the future. I was satisfied with my new shade after mixing 2.5 cups of pink paint with 1 cup of white. Here's a shot of the colors all lined up as I was making sure the new shade would tie in well. I used a baby formula container to do my mixing. I knew those things could be useful for something one day!

 

I also slapped a little on the wall even though I couldn't paint the whole thing, yet.

 



 

I was then on a break for the next several hours while my stripes dried. Later that night, I was able to tape off the middle stripe and finish the wall. It didn't take long before I was snapping pictures of a completed pink ombre accent wall.

 

 

Audrey was sooooo excited when she saw her new wall. She is loving it and can't wait to move into her new, super-girly bedroom. She's been such a trooper having to share her room with her little brother so I am so happy to be giving back her own space (even though I think she's going to miss having Will sleeping right across from her).