How to Design Your Own Wallpaper

It’s the 5th week of the One Room Challenge! That means I have THREE weeks left to wrap this room up! Imagine my panic- lol! Except I’m not laughing, I’m working my butt off. Want to see how the kitchen is shaping up? I also thought I’d show how to design your own wallpaper.

Catch up on all the Kitchen One Room Challenge Posts!

Floor Plan / Interior Window / Mood Boards / Stairs Plan / Demo & Flood / Drywall / 

This week’s progress

This week started on a high note- the drywall went up on the fireplace wall. Now all the drywall is up for the room!

Then my husband started the slow process of mudding and sanding it smooth. We still have a few days of smoothing out the drywall before I can start to wallpaper a few walls.

On the stairs, since we took down the wall separating them from the kitchen, they needed some sanding and touch up. 

While I was working on them, I took the opportunity to repaint the blue and green sections. The way they flowed always bugged me, so I repainted them. Note, all the stairs paint colors are listed on this post.

stair railing

On Sunday we dedicated the day to install the new stair railing, newel post, and balusters. How difficult could it be?! Well, turns out its super tricky! An advanced project for sure. We started at 10:30 and by 4:30 had barely gotten the newel post in.

We worked until 6:30 and only got the railing up. Sigh, I really wanted to wrap the project up in a day, but the balusters still need to go up. When we’re all done, I’ll have a blog post dedicated to how we installed the stair railing.

The good news is that by putting up even the small portion of the stair railing, it eliminated the post that was anchored to the stairs for the old railing. By removing that, it meant that we could prepare for flooring.

I am anxious to get the floors in so the cabinets can be installed and the quartz can be templated. The quartz is one of the last things we’re waiting on someone else for, so I want to get the quartz fabricator as much time as possible to measure and install the stone. 

To prep for the tile floors, the transitions to the bathroom and laundry room were flattened. We also had to reroute a vent to work with the new fireplace. Then, cement board went down.

I’m really proud of all we got done this week! We still have three full weeks of working as hard as possible, but I still think we can finish on time. Fingers crossed!

how to design your own wallpaper

For awhile now I’ve been wanting to design my own wallpaper with the pastel rainbow colors I use all over my home. I thought it’d be fun to use it for the backing on open shelves in my kitchen!

But how to design my own wallpaper? And then I remembered- Spoonflower sells custom wallpaper. Could I design it through them?!

I went to their website and saw that anyone can upload their custom design! The image needs to be uploaded as a TIF,JPG, PNG, or GIF and the file is less than 40MB. Spoonflower also sells tea towels and fabric so the design can be used for those too.

creating a custom design for a wallpaper

To create my own design, I used PicMonkey (where I pay a small fee to do all my blogging graphics). I started a blank file and uploaded all of the paint swatch images from my stairs. Then I used the color picker tool to create rectangles that are the exact same colors as the paint I’ve covered my house with.

To get the paint colors, I went to Home Depot’s website and looked up each of my paint colors. I took a screen shot of each color and then uploaded them all into the file.

Here’s my first version- rectangles of pastel rainbow colors. I liked it, but thought it might be a bit much. Plus I messed with having little white lines between each rectangle. Even though this wasn’t the perfect trial run, can’t you see how you can quickly create a custom graphic that exactly matches your house?!

One of the cool things about using Spoonflower is that they have some really advanced software. You can upload the image and SEE how it looks on different products. I was so excited to see how cute the pattern looked on the wallpaper!

the final wallpaper design

I finally landed on this design- thinner rectangles of the rainbow pastel colors and white stripes. To get the spacing correct (something I struggled with during this process), I created a rectangle that was pink then I created a white rectangle. 

I then copied and pasted those two rectangles and laid them next to each (PicMonkey shows when two objects perfectly hit so this was easy).

To get the correct color, I used the color picker and changed the color of the second color rectangle by choosing the right color of paint swatch that I had uploaded. I kept repeating for each of the stripes. When I was done, I deleted the paint swatches so I just had the stripes.

I thought the white kept it from being too overwhelming with too much color. Just some fun pops of happy! So I uploaded it to see how it looked-

How cool is it to see it to scale?! I love it so I ordered a sample to verify it looked good in person.

Once the sample arrived, I approved it, ordered a few rolls of wallpaper and napkins and now my wallpaper design is available for sale!

the wallpaper installed

I put up the peel and stick wallpaper in my hall yesterday and LOVE it!!! The wallpaper is nice and thick- it works great on textured walls (I’ve tried it). The repeat is super easy to line up. And it’s easy to remove. 

There’s been countless people who have used the same colors I used to paint their own spaces. I love that this is a VERY easy way that anyone can add pastel rainbows to their house.

The pastel rainbow design also comes in bedding, pillows, and table setting items. I ordered a tea towel for my stove and some napkins! It’s going to be so cute!

If you’ve ever wanted to have custom wallpaper or bedding, it’s so easy to do so! You can even have it up for sale and make a small commission when someone else purchases it! I think it’s such a fun idea and the options are really endless with it. 

What would your dream design be?

Side note, if you’re interested in doing a repeating floral design, this blog post is a great resource!

items arriving and being ordered

This week one exciting item arrived to the house- the arm chairs for the dining table! I’m going for a preppy vibe and these white bamboo dining chairs are perfect! They are from the eBay store Jordy Marketing Place.

A few people messaged me on Instagram saying how these chairs remind them of The Golden Girls’ kitchen. I take that as a huge compliment ;).

I ordered a bunch of items that’ll help finish up the kitchen! One of the things I’m most excited about is this set of 8 gold bamboo flatware. It comes in a box with some serving pieces. These are gorgeous and I’m so excited about this find! They’re from the eBay store Allisonc78.

A few weeks ago, we widened the doorway from the living room going into the kitchen. This is the view you see right when you walk into the front door. I want it to feel really special, so I ordered a set of large corbels to go on either side of the doorway. These custom touches are a great way to add character to a room! I found these in the eBay store Cheaha Antiques.

The last item I found that I’m excited to share with you is another addition too my pink Macau ginger jar collection! I’ll have a set of three for my dining table (you can see the first one that arrived here). I love that these will all be unique, pink, but since they’re from the same place, they will go really nicely together. 

what’s next?

For next week, I’d like to install the cabinets and have the counter tops templated. It’s my goal to finish the drywall so we can install the windows and wallpaper. I think next week will be when lots more of the pretty items can start to be layered in. It’s getting exciting!

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE FEATURED DESIGNERS

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. Thank you to eBay and Spoonflower for gifting the items listed in the post.

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