It finally happened! You bought the shelves you’ve been eyeing. We often stall on decor decisions because we can’t find the right colour or the right piece, but with milk paint and the ability to blend custom colours from powder, it’s easier than ever to get the exact look you want.
Rainbow Nursery Shelves
In this project, we turned house shaped shelves from the dollar store into an adorable rainbow of pastels for a nursery, using custom colour blends using a base of Homestead Milk Paint’s Raw Silk.
Creating Custom Pastel Milk Paint Shades
When you’re mixing custom colours, you can mix the already wet paint until you get the desired shade, but there can be a lot of waste when it’s done that way. Mixing in small increments using the powder gives you more control over the paint blend, and allows you to scale the quantity easily.
Starting with as little as ¼ or 1/8th of a tsp. Mix Raw Silk with your colour of choice in a palette tray. For the pastels here, I used Fort York Red, Acadian Pear, Garden Seed, and Laurentian.
Mixing Colours
Start by combining the Milk Paint powder, then add equal parts water - as a reminder, Homestead Milk Paint is mixed in a 1:1 ratio - so keep track of how much powder you’re using. Mix them together until it forms a milky consistency.
Keep adding Milk Paint powder until you’ve got the colour you want. Once you know how many parts each custom blend takes e.g. 2 parts Raw Silk to 1 part Fort York Red, make a bigger batch!
I found ⅛ cup enough to cover these shelves, so each mix is in proportion to that.
Pastel Rainbow Shelves
I love the soft pastels for a nursery because they allow the bright toys and decor to shine, without challenging the custom colour blends. Everything gets its moment here, and that works nicely.
Rainbow Nursery Shelves
Don't these look sweet above a crib? They'd also be fabulous hung a bit lower so that the kids can add items and use them for their prized knick-knacks.
We'd love to see what you make! Share your completed project with us in the Paint It Beautiful Facebook Group.
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