Metallic and Marbled Accent Wall

Geometric and Swirls Foyer Update

As my boys are getting older, I feel like I have a little more time to accomplish some things around the house that have bothered me forever. Like our foyer. It has a sort of strange angled wall and the previous owners painted it (poorly) a shade of light pastel green. Nothing else in the house was this color, so it was sort of odd. I moved the painting I had there into the living room and for about 6 months it was just bare. Light green, angled, and bare. Sure I could have purchased or made art for the wall, but I really wanted it to make a statement when you walked in....like a "WOW that is neat" kind of thing.

So the planning began and somehow I stumbled upon glitter gold contact paper. I was sold, except the sizes were really not the right size for the little angle wall. I wanted big bold stripes, but really that would have involved a whole level of straight cutting commitment that I was pretty sure I wasn't going to have in the the realistic timeframe I had to accomplish this. A continued search led me to glitter washi tape! Would it work? Obviously, not as big as the contact paper, but no cutting was involved and the price was much more managable. Does washi tape stick to walls? I guess we will see! The idea was turning into something....

But what to put with the gold glitter washi tape? I was in the middle of an obsession with marbled paper and I thought for about one whole minute about how I could marble a piece of paper for this wall. There were problems with this idea though:

  • Where would I find a large enough piece of paper?
  • I have absolutely no idea how to marble paper.

So, back to the internet. Well as it turns out, I didn't have to go too far in my search. Paper Source has a variety of beautiful large sized papers and one happens to be a marble of gold, silver, black, gray, and white. PERFECT to tie in my foyer with the rest of the downstairs! I have often looked at these papers and wondered what I could do with them. Now I finally had a reason to use them!

So away I went with my plan. I painted the weird green angled wall to match our dining room (Sherwin Williams Color Mink: SW 6004) which is a beautiful deep gray. Surrounded by crisp white walls in both locations, it isn't too dark. I let the paint dry for two weeks before trying to put the washi tape on it. I went to my local Paper Source store and purchased the gold, silver, gray, white marbled paper for $8 and picked up two rolls of Luxe Glitter Washi Tape for $5 each. I also tested a piece of washi tape on the wall for a week to see if it would just fall off.

There really was no plan to putting on the washi tape. I was just going for a geometric/stained glass sort of feel. I would say a little more planning would have tucked more of the ends under the longer pieces, but because of the texture on the washi tape, you can't tell they are on top in some places unless you really inspect it. Although you can tear washi tape, I did cut it for clean edges. Do this for the whole wall. Then I took an old Ikea Ribba frame I had in black and cut the marbled paper to fit.

Some of the untucked washi tape ends do pop up from time to time, but I just stick them back down. Overall, I am quite pleased with how it sticks (it could have just fell off after a week, but we are on month 5 and it is still going strong).

So that is what we ended up with for not too much time, not a ton of effort, and not very much money. I do love how it looks, it makes me smile each time I walk past it. And it does make a statement when you walk into the house, which is what I wanted!