Our purple family room

Ok, so.....the majority of the walls are tan, right? Tan and chocolate brown throughout the house can get kinda blah, so every room is based on those two colors, but with an accent color woven in to brighten things up a bit! The family room's color is purple. All the walls are tan except for the one accent wall which is purple. Not royal purple. Eggplant purple. My words for it? Rich. Elegant. Luscious. For this wall, I found this brilliant idea at the paint store (believe me, making tons of trips to Sherwin Williams for tan paint samples gives you plenty of opportunity to browse their "ideas" section while waiting on mixing paint!) This is a multiple step process and also a first for Luke and I for doing this kind of decorative faux painting. An interesting challenge! Here's my sample swatch I did on cardboard:

First, we (actually, Luke....I took pics! ;)) painted the wall a medium color of purple. Yes, I know.....I agree. I looked at this color after it was on the wall and thought...ummmm, I hope this works! Cause that color certainly isn't right! But for what we were doing, we had to have a light to medium color of purple to show through when we got to the second coat.

Next, mix the dark purple with a glaze which weakens/lightens it and makes it a little bit more transparent than just plain paint. Isn't the swirl beautful?!?! I'm still trying to figure out a way to imiate that swirl into a paint pattern for my kitchen; it's perfect for my chocoolate dessert theme kitchen! But that's another room and another story.....

Then, quickly paint a coat of the dark purple glaze and immediately brush the area with a wallpaper brush to get the wide sweeped brush look! See?

And once it's finished and dry.....it looks something like this. The color is a little bit darker than what this shows, but see the sweep brush pattern?! It's a challenge to do because you have to work so fast before it drys to brush it, but the pattern looks neat!