Art attack meets shelfie time

Making your own art boards or display boxes for the wall means you can co-ordinate the Resene colours you choose with whatever else you have going on in the room.

Collecting art can be an expensive and time-consuming exercise but if those blank walls are staring at you and you need something right now to literally fill the gaps, there are all sorts of fun and effective ways to tackle the problem.

A beach themed moodboard

Make your own art boards

Mood board: Background painted in Resene Concrete, floorboards in Resene Shade, bowl in Resene Shade, beaded deco object in Resene Bask, book and vase in Resene Gold Coast and tealight holder in Resene Nocturnal. Accessories: Linen cushions from Adairs, small rectangle cushion from Kmart, raffia wall décor from Freedom. Paint colours: Wall – Resene Rice Cake, Floor – Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy, Bench seat – Resene Gold Coast, Art boards with pegs – Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy, Resene Colorwood Shore Thing, Resene Colorwood Rising Tide, Resene Colorwood Bask, Resene Colorwood Shade, Large plywood art boards – Colorwood Breathe Easy and Resene Colorwood Bask, Tall wooden vase with palm leaves – Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy, Plant pot – Resene Paddock, Textured DIY Art – Resene Spanish White.

Making your own art boards or display boxes for the wall means you can co-ordinate the Resene colours you choose with whatever else you have going on in the room. There are so many Resene colours available that you’ll always find something to co-ordinate with your furniture and cushions, or to create the look you’re after.

The other advantage of these easy DIY projects is that you can use affordable Resene testpots for the job – Resene testpots are available for most paint colour collections.

With these shelves, there’s another layer of co-ordinating colour, where some of the objects on the shelves, such as vases, are also painted in Resene colours.

You can make a quirky arrangement of shelves or art boards like we have, set out in a loose gallery-style format, or if your style is a little more ordered, you can line them up along the wall in one or more rows or run them vertically instead.

A DIY art board project

Create art display boxes

Paint colours: Wall – Resene Rice Cake, Floor – Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy, Wooden stool – Resene Colorwood Bask, Crates – Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy, Resene Colorwood Shore Thing, Resene Colorwood Rising Tide, Resene Colorwood Bask, Resene Colorwood Shade, Beaded deco object – Resene Colorwood Bask, Wooden vase with greenery – Resene Colorwood Rising Tide, Vase with palm leaf – Resene Gold Coast, Vase with dried palm leaf – Resene Thor Pink, Vase on top of crate – Resene Wafer, Small books – Resene Thor, Resene Conch, Resene Green Meets Blue and Resene Juniper. Accessories: Sofa from Freedom, rug from Mocka, linen cushions from Adairs, tealight holder from Indie Home Collective, island cushion cover from Leopard Hall, faux palm in pot from Kmart.

Once you’ve made your art or shelves, lay them out of the floor to determine the spacing and arrangement you like before drilling holes in the wall and hanging them.

You can paint the art boards and display boxes but what gives these particular examples added character is the fact that they are finished in a range of wood stains from the Resene Colorwood We Speak Beach range. This range of stains comes in six relaxing coastal hues borrowed from the beach and will take you from sea to shore with colours including soft blue Resene Rising Tide and sandy colours Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy and Resene Colorwood Becalm. Explore the range at www.resene.com/colorwood.

In this room, they are set against a wall in Resene Rice Cake, a clean creamy white, and the beachy theme is continued with a sisal mat, a pale slipcovered sofa and a jumble of cushions in sand and sea tones.

In the hallway, a bench seat is painted in Resene Gold Coast and the plant pot is in Resene Paddock.

Crate storage boxes

We’ve used crates for the display boxes as an easy and accessible solution but if those don’t suit your style or you need a different size or dimension, you can make your own from plywood or search online for readymade timber boxes.

We’ve finished ours in a range of stains, from light to dark: Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy which gives a blonded look; Resene Colorwood Bask with golden sand tones; Resene Colorwood Shore Thing with its washed green colour; Resene Colorwood Rising Tide, a dusky blue and Resene Colorwood Shade, a faded seaweed black.

Art boards

This idea is an update on a popular clipboard hack where you paint the clipboards in a variety of Resene paint colours and hang them on the wall to display favourite art, photographs, print-outs or magazine clippings.

Make any size of backing board you like from pieces of plywood, then stain them in the same colour as above, from light to dark: Resene Colorwood Breathe Easy which gives a blonded look; Resene Colorwood Bask with golden sand tones; Resene Colorwood Shore Thing with its washed green colour; Resene Colorwood Rising Tide, a dusky blue and Resene Colorwood Shade, a faded seaweed black.

Glue a couple of pegs near the top of the board, then display your chosen pieces of art.