diy polka dotted wall

I have loved polka dots as long as I can remember.  When we first bought our house and where trying to figure out what to do with the master bedroom, I knew I wanted to have a polka dotted wall.  

left, right top, right bottom

I started combing the internet to find a place to buy polka dotted decals.  Then I read this tutorial. It suggested using colored contact paper instead, so you could trace and cut out dots in the exact size you wanted.  Lo and behold, buying a roll of contact paper is so much cheaper than buying pre-cut dots.  I found a roll of gold contact paper on amazon (here) and got to work. 

As shown in the inspiration pictures above, I liked confetti or glitter-like polka dot patterns instead of something very organized.  In order to make things look more "confetti-ish", I decided to make different sized dots and used two items to trace the dots.  The larger dots ended up being about 4 inches across.  I used the top from a small kitchen canister to trace the smaller dots, which were 2 inches across.

This step took the longest amount of time. Trevor and I would put on a movie in the evening, and I would spend the next couple of hours just tracing and cutting out circles. I traced just a handful of the larger circles and around 100 smaller circles by the end of the project.

The next step was figuring out a pattern to stick up the dots.  I knew I wanted the dots to look more like confetti falling than a specific length apart.  I decided to start from one corner of the bedroom where the dots would be more concentrated and then sprinkle out from there.  Before I began, I put up sticky notes to mark where I wanted the dots to go.  That way, I could take a step back and rearrange the sticky notes before I put the dots up if things looked too far apart or close together. 

Once I liked the sticky note placement, the dots went up quickly and without any problems.  Our wall has a little bit of texture, but that didn't interfere with the contact paper's stickiness at all. The hardest part of this step was getting the paper's backing to separate from the sticky side.  After putting up the dots after a while, I stopped putting up sticky notes, since I had gotten use to the placement of the dots and was able to eyeball it.  Once I buckled down and was focused, it only took me a day or so to finish this project.

Here's what the wall looked like when it was half done.  I'd take a picture of what the wall looks like right now, but our bed is covered in clean laundry that still needs to be taken care of... so that picture will come later.  

All in all, this was an easy project.  The most time consuming part was tracing and cutting the circles.  Over a hundred circles later, I still have half a roll of the contact paper left, so it's a relatively inexpensive project.  I put up the first circles a few months ago, and they haven't fallen off or lost any of their stickiness.  The only problem I had was when I didn't like the placement of a dot and went to peel it off to reposition it.  Once or twice when I did this, the contact paper held on to the wall and some paint peeled off.  I love the way our wall looks and Trevor says it doesn't look too girly.

Linked up on: sixsistersstuff, mysnippetsofinspiration, craft-o-maniac, flamingotoes, niftythriftythings, vmg206, 

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