a potato, some paint, and a fun wall

So, in order to make our windowless office an appealing place to work, I decided to give it a little makeover. The walls and sloped ceiling are white, so this was a blank canvas for me.  I had been contemplating putting wallpaper or something of the sort on the wall behind the desk. However, wallpaper is pricey and I'd never hung it before so I decided to  paint a fun pattern on the wall instead. I found this image  (via Vintage Revivals) of a stamped triangle pattern and decided to go for it. I have also read about people making stamps out of potatoes. Since Hayden was napping and I happened to have a couple of sweet potatoes on hand, I decided to give it a whirl. Here's my tips for stamping with a potato.

I like the imperfect blotchy look that the stamp created. If you want a perfectly formed shape with great coverage, I would not recommend using a potato as a stamp. Also, I did end up making a second stamp because my potato started to disintegrate and little pieces were breaking off in the paint. I used a sweet potato for one stamp and a regular potato for the other. I would recommend using a regular potato, as it seemed to hold up a little better to multiple dips in the paint. 

I decided to do two different colors of gray for my wall. All my "up" triangles are a dark gray (Peppercorn by Sherwin Williams) and all my "down" triangles are a light grey called Gentle Grey (from Ace Hardware). 

I like that the light grey is almost transparent in some spots and really visible in other areas. It definitely makes you take a second look at the pattern.  Here's the wall, all finished with the desk back in place. The TV is not my favorite but it's one of the few things that Nick requested for our house. Who I am to deny a request, when he really lets me have free rein decorating the house?!

I'll be sharing more shots of the office and  some of the other projects that I did to get it ready for this WAHM!