I started seeing these dimensional wooden wall art pieces on Pinterest and fell in love. Bonus was that they promised to help dampen sound! I knew this would be ideal for the wall of my office which already features my eclectic taste in furnishings.
MAKE YOUR PURCHASES
First stop was Home Depot to gather what I needed…
1.5” square dowels
Wood glue
Wood stain in asundry colors that you love (not paint, that will hide the wooden grain patterns)
Sand paper (more than I thought, had to make a second run — get a lot!)
Pressboard for the backing
Something to hang it. I used 8 heavy-duty Command Velcro strips.
Compound mitre saw
My first step was to cut the backer to the size I wanted. Note that you want the edge of the side blocks to stick out just a bit so the backer is covered, but NOT so much that the corner blocks aren’t secure. (See below for a finished view of the back.)
Do some math that leaves the backer about 3/4” smaller than your rows of blocks (split between top and bottom or left and right, that leaves 3/8” hanging off each side). My finished piece is 10 blocks high x 20 blocks wide (10 x 1.5 = 15” and 20 x 1.5" = 30”), so my backer was 14.25” x 29.25".
I’ll remind you of this later, but glue the blocks to the textured side so they have more to grab and leave the smooth side for your wall.
CUT AND SAND
The next step is the long one — cutting the blocks to various angles. My hubby helped with this because I’m afraid of the compound mitre saw. (Please be a better person than me and do it yourself. Note that he’s extraordinarily offended that this picture somehow looks like his hands are on the blade. They weren’t. Don’t. Do. That.)
The trick here is that one side of every block needs to be square to the vertical sides — and you want to mix it up with different heights from about 1/2” to just under an inch. (Any higher and the overall piece will be way too heavy.)
We managed a system of cutting like this:
Cut the entire dowel with straight cuts into pieces varying from 1 to 2 inches.
Then, split each of those pieces with a mix of angles (both ways, so a slant and a tilt) from 15 degrees to 35 degrees.
Now, start sanding. Not going to lie, this was the least fun part of the project. I listened to music, but I’m glad I invested the time so the final piece has a professional finish.
After you sand, brush with a damp cloth and get ready to stain.
STAIN
I already knew I wanted blue and yellow, with white and black added for some color dimension. It’s important here to preserve the cool cut grain of the sides, so test to be sure it isn’t too dark. I discovered that if I used a dark stain but wiped it off right away, I could generate some really faint/deep waves of color in the wood grain that I love.
Determine how much of each color you want and start staining. Most of my squares took two coats, and to mix up the colors, I did some yellow/yellow, some yellow/white, some blue/blue, some blue/white, and some blue/black. Experiment with deepness of the color by leaving the stain on more or less time before you wipe.
For my 200 blocks, I did somewhere around 30 black, 30 white, 20 bright yellow, 20 light yellow, 40 dark blue, 30 medium blue, and 20 light blue. (Don’t count the squares in my picture and tell me I’m bad at counting. Also, that doesn’t equal 200. But it’s art, so that’s ok!)
MAKE YOUR PATTERN
This is your art! Make your pattern what you want. Mine is representative of a sunrise of a mountain — but only vaguely. I just love the sense of movement in this wave I made. You can be more realistic if you’d like. If you really want to be specific, take a photograph of the thing you like and turn down the resolution on your computer until you can see the pixels. Then you can just copy the pixels to create the image.
For my pattern, I discovered that I liked some areas that felt like the colors were fading (bright yellow to light yellow to white) juxtaposed against other areas where the colors were starkly contrasting (bright yellow next to black).
Once you’re set on the color pattern, start twisting the blocks. If you cut with the compound mitre like we did, you should be able to mix on both axes — the tilt and the slant. Mix it up, twisting until you like what you’re seeing. The idea is to have blocks going different directions.
GLUE
Once your pattern is set, start the gluing. Note: Glue the blocks to the textured side of the pressboard so they have more to grab, and leave the smooth side for against your wall.
The shortest blocks will be pesky and try to fool you occasionally so make sure you pay attention and have the square side on the bottom (with the right angles), otherwise you won’t get a neatly structured grid on the top. The slanted/tilted side should always be up. Use a good amount of glue. I glued mine in strips.
Press a level on both sides to make sure you maintain the perfect grid shape. Overhang the edges just enough that the backer is hidden but not so much that the corner doesn’t have enough to grab.
You can’t really weight these from the top (since their heights are all different), so I used the level and some extra dowels pushed tight to the sides and some stretchy straps to make sure it stayed together and tight. No glue drift!
Leave it to dry at least 24 hours.
MOUNT AND HANG
My last phase was the Command Velcro strips. I’m sure you could also hang with a regular picture kit, but I don’t like to mess up my walls since I change things around a lot. Note, this will be heavier than you think, so go ahead and load them up. Full disclosure, the first day I mounted this with 4 strips (after taking the picture with 6). I cheaped out, and it came off the wall around 2 am. (Cue total panic!!) Fortunately, no breakage, because —good glue.
I rehung it with 8 strips (after my breathing returned to normal), and it’s been up for months with no issue.
Couldn’t be happier with my creation! I get compliments on it a lot, mixed in with, “what is that supposed to be?” Then I tell them it’s a sound dampener, and they’re suitably impressed at my ingenuity.
