5 Fun upcycling projects to try at home using Paint pens

By @its_artsy_ella 

Uplift items found around your home and try these 5 DIY designs using Life of Colour paint pens while quarantined at home!

Being quarantined during these crazy times is the best way to be creative and practice some painting with Life of Colour Paint Pens. It can be super relaxing and fulfilling to see artwork come together! However, being stuck at home, coming up with unique creative projects for yourself or for your family is a super hard task. In this blog are 5 unique ideas to uplift objects you can find around home, plus each painted design is super achievable! These projects all use paint pens, so if you don’t have any, grab some from Life of Colour and come back to try these designs!

DIY painted craft boxes!

Its super easy to DIY craft boxes with cool designs. Little heart boxes like these are a perfect size to do some detailed patterns or simple landscape designs like these. Whether it’s a circle, triangle or square they would work perfectly for a small DIY project like this! These boxes had already been painted before, so giving them a coat of white before starting makes coverage a lot easier. For a simple design like these, sketch out some outlines and colour in the block areas with paint pen colours of your choice. Outline the shapes with a black fine tip paint pen and colour the “rim” with a colour you have used. Like in these I coloured the rims with shades “fire” and ‘storm” from the earth colours pack! That’s it for a cute craft box like these, a super easy and fun idea for the day!

Pretty butterfly on white singlet!

So, I think painting on clothes is one of the easiest ways to enjoy your artwork while wearing it. This butterfly may look intimidating to paint but doing bit by bit it’s so satisfying to see it done…so worth it!

You’ll need a few materials: black, white, grey and 3 shades of blue paint pens (can do whatever colour), a pencil, a singlet and a piece of cardboard. Insert the cardboard inside the singlet and lay flat, sketch the butterfly with a pencil and start painting with those colours! Using a paint brush makes it easier to blend the blues together for that ombre effect. Let it dry for 24 hours and to seal, iron your shirt on low heat for 5 minutes and now it’s done and ready to wear!

If you want to see the blending technique in action, click here and watch a video of a gorgeous whale painted blending paint pens.

Paint a Doorstop!

How cool is this doorstop? It makes it so easier to find, and such a cute little design for an everyday object! Basically, this is just a little wedge of wood, but I already had this doorstop and thought it needed a little paint. It makes it so much easier if you use a pencil to outline the shapes. No need to paint it all white first as the paint pens attach amazingly to wooden surfaces.

You could even switch up the colours, maybe a pastel look, or Fluro? It’s up to you. So, grab a doorstop and your paint pens and make this design! 

Colour your pen holders!

The things we see every day!! Most of us would have pen tins or holders nearby, depending on the colour you can try painting cool patterns of designs on the front to make the space a little unique and interesting. So, for this DIY all you need is a pen holder and your selected paint pen colours. Maybe wipe over the area on the pen holder if needed so the paint can stick onto the surface easier. For these tulips no sketching was needed beforehand. They are a pretty simple design, just paint each colour separately and don’t overlap colours!! Have fun DIY-ing your pen holders!

Mini paper bag designs!

One of the most interesting ideas is painting crazy designs on mini paper bags! Found in my craft box were these small brown paper bags. Something as simple as this can be really fun to make and that little more different from the usual painting on paper etc. For these designs they are ocean inspired and are playing with different techniques. The seahorse is made to look like a stamp, whereas the penguins are a series of retro coloured posed images … again, each design is a little unique!! These three have used only paint pens and paint pens only to create and look so cute as a room decoration or gift bag for a friend!

And that’s it, 5 fun uplifting ideas for you to try at home! Have a go at some projects above and share your creations with Life of Colour!

Save this post on Pinterest to read it again later