You will recall my dilemma of how to finish off the mantel in my living room: see my story of last week here.
Having painted the walls and the entire fireplace in “Greenpoint Silk” (Benjamin Moore), I wanted to do something more with the mantel. The question was: a darker version of the walls, or maybe a red to tie in with other colors in my living room?
So, I started to mix my paint: 
Because I am familiar with acrylics and gouache paints from designing textiles, paper, rugs and other home furnishings products (that is, doing the actual surface design), I am very comfortable first trying out my paints in very small quantities i.e. this little red bowl.
So I took some of the Greenpoint Silk paint and played with some of the other colors I had on hand….. to get just the right tone of, and variation of, the wall color.
Next step was to mix a larger quantity: (I knew I only needed maybe 2 cups to finish the job)
Well…..I ended up with a yellow/beige/cream (x2) over on the right. Not good.
So then I took one of the tester bottles I had bought for a totally different project, called “Lapland” and tried that! Why not?
Wow, it was perfect! A nice grayed green: just what I was looking for!
Here is the final result. It’s hard to see, but I painted the flat “panel” , and then the small “rim” around the top of the mantel. The rest remains the wall color.
Am I happy with the result? Yes!
As an aside, I just wanted to show you what I think is a new, effective way of presenting color chips. These are from Behr Paints. I’ve never used their paint, but I like the way they group a family of color (these are not the complete line in each collection), but I also like the curved edges. They somehow seem more “user friendly” than hard edge blocks of color. You never know what you’ll find when you start looking at the details!
DON’T FORGET: Today is the LAST day to enter the wonderful GinaB Designs Giveaway!! You can enter until midnight tonight, April 6 and the winner will be announced tomorrow morning!
