Ever since I installed the drip wall for the Localise Youth Room at Sophia House, I’ve wanted to incorporate a drip feature into our apartment. And as is typical around here, a year+ went by.
For husband’s birthday in January of this year, I got him a guitar hook thingy to display his Stratocaster. There it perched on our living room wall between the hall door and the kitchen all lovely for a couple of months, but I had wanted to add a little something else to the wall to make it pop. And that’s when I had my lightbulb moment.
The guitar is in fact centred, but because it hangs about 5 inches away from the wall, it looks off-centre in some pictures. And it’s driving me a little bit insane. Especially in the first picture. The drip feature is centred! Please believe me!
What you’ll need …
– paint, either wall paint or guache DO NOT USE GUACHE PAINT. See my revised post here about why you should use appropriate wall paint.
– water [I added about a tablespoon of water to every 100ml of paint, then shook it up]
– drop cloth to protect your floor, just in case
– a bottle with a resealable nozzle lid
The most important item you’ll need [other than paint] is a bottle with a resealable nozzle lid, like the one above. You could use an empty washing-up liquid bottle, sports drink, water bottle or kids drink, as I did here. The reason the nozzle is so important is because it allows you to get right up to the wall to squish out the paint without spilling paint everywhere, and it also gives you control over the speed in which the paint is applied. It doesn’t seem like rocket science, but this technique took a lot of brain storming back when I made the multi-coloured wall.
I used black guache paint for our wall. I originally was thinking of using one of my favourite red berry hues, but then I was all like, “hold up. You can’t do that. You can’t have red paint dripping down the wall. It’s going to look like the walls are bleeding. No one will ever want to visit your apartment or trust you with sharp objects ever again.” So I decided to skip my signature colour for this project.
And here’s how to do it – first you’re going to need to decide where you want your drips to start. I wanted the drips to start appearing half way down the wall / behind the body of the hanging guitar. Holding the bottle carefully, start glooping the paint in spots on the wall. This is very much less is more until you get a feel for how runny the paint is. Remember – you can always add more paint; it’s not so easy to take it back.
TIP: do some practice drips higher on your wall first, like you’ll see I did below. It’ll get covered in paint, so you won’t see it.
When you’re happy with the amount of drips you have, your wall will more than likely look like the below; a bit ghetto. This is okay. Take a paint brush, and using the excess gloops of paint on the wall, start painting in a panel above the drips to collect it to the ceiling. I ended up adding a few more drips along the sides closer to the ceiling to make it look more random.
Your drips are going to look rank until they dry. You just have to accept this. But trust me, they’ll dry perfectly. It took around 18-20 hours for the paint to completely dry.
I was quite happy with how it turned out, but I wanted to see husbands reaction [who, for the record, had no notion of my drippy plan]. He came home from work, walked around the living room a bit telling me about his day and all of a sudden he WOAH-ed when he saw it and sang its praise. He’s mentioned a good few times about how much he likes it since, so mission accomplished I’d say.
Oh, and for anyone curious about removing it, I don’t see it being any more difficult than painting over a chalkboard wall; sand it in places then 3 coats of paint should do the trick.
But more importantly, if you can see past the fact that I did our drip wall in black, I can easily see a drip feature being done in a buttercup yellow or dainty pink for a kids room, or a strong navy blue for a quirky impact in a bathroom. And may I suggest adding ‘redrum’ to your doors if you’re going to go down the red route.
Happy dripping!
