DIY Martha Stewart Paint Deck!

I know we were all super excited when we found out that Martha Stewart's paint line was coming to Home Depot!

I had been checking on it’s impending arrival once a week at Home Depot and was super excited the day that I went in and saw the paint samples and cans all lined up!

I immediately emailed my friend Jules, (we were hoping some of her paint colors would work in her living room re-vamp I’m helping her with) Jules then told her friend Nicole and by the end of the day I’m pretty sure we were all home with stacks of paint swatches.

 

You see while Martha is the greatest and super crafty her people didn’t think of making a fan deck for her paint line. So you are left with 6 inch stack of loose swatches.

 

Not only that, but you also get looks from everyone as you stand at HD and grab one of each.

 

So what’s a girl to do? This girl tells her super sweet, good looking, smart, amazing, renaissance man of a husband her problem and voila we have a solution.

 

You just need a couple of supplies.

 

From your local home improvement store you need to get :

- 2 sheets of Acrylic sheet ($1.58 each) I had them cut it to size at the store. You need 4 ( 3” x 6”) pieces.

 

-Moving a couple of rows over you need to find Receiver Hitch/Wire Lock Pins. They were $3.40 each and you will need 2.

 

Back at home you need the following supplies:

- A drill gun with a metal drill bit

- 3 clamps

- small pieces of wood. We had some laying around, but if you don’t then you need to pick up a piece of 1/4” thick plywood at the store.

-Because the paint deck is so large you need to break it up into 5 separate stacks.

 

STEP 1: Take small piece of wood and drill where you would like your hole. Place in front of stack.

STEP 2:  Take a second piece of wood and place it on the back of the stack. No hole needed on this side.

 

STEP 3: Make sure wood pieces are angled properly on the swatches and attach clamps around hole.

STEP 4: Attach to vice. This step isn’t necessary, but we had one and Jon didn’t want to drill into the table by accident so we used it.

STEP 5: Drill away.

Go slow and then keep on going till you make a hole on the remaining piece of wood in the back.

STEP 6: Remove clamps and voila you have a stack of nicely hole punched swatches.

The wood pieces are used as cushioning for the impact that the drill makes going through the paper. If you don’t use them this will happen:

STEP 7: Since our acrylic sheets were cut at the store all we need to do now is make a hole in them. Use the same piece of wood with the guide for your opening, attach clamps, place in vice and drill.

 

STEP 8: Remove protective coating off acrylic sheet, open up packages of wire lock pins and add swatches. You are DONE!

 

Because they are so many swatches you need to split the set in two.  I have an acrylic cover and backing for each set and the wire lock pins are perfection. It’s super easy to open then up and take out what I need or just leave it closed. They fan out like any other fan deck and I printed out a MS image to use as my cover, but if you are Photoshop savvy get creative and make up a cover.

All of my supplies came in for around $12 bucks and took about 45 minutes to do it! It would have gone faster, but we were doing it between TV commercials!

 

I hope you enjoy this DIY project and if you make your own version you must share pictures!

 

* Martha if you are reading this have your people call my people and I can go on your show and do my little project for all! :) Ah a girl can dream, right?

 

Images 1- 2 via Google, Image 3 via Pink loves Brown, Images 4 –16 via moi!