Fighting the war on neutrality: DIY Painted Vase

We recently (finally) purchased a dresser to replace the one we gave away in the move. Envision, for a moment, piles of clothes, underwear, and socks on our bedroom floor and crammed into the nooks and crannies of our closet and you can understand my excitement. So, I was thrilled to be able to use my $25 off coupon at Ikea (and free breakfast day!) and pick up this bad boy. We were equally as excited to be able to set up our nicer TV, although we prefer not to have one in the bedroom (there was no where else to put it).

However, things were looking a bit neutral (the rest of the room has a white bookshelf, white bedding) so I am trying to add more pops of color (mostly blues to tie in with a few framed prints I have). (Excuse the poor photo quality, it was a cloudy day when these were taken). 

So, I decided to add a pink faux flower I picked up at Ikea as well. I picked up a small bud vase at Target for $1.99 to hold it.

The stem was way too long so I trimmed it using pliers...

 and popped it into the vase:

I liked it, but things were still looking a bit 'blah.' I decided to try my very un-crafty hand at the painted vase tutorials floating around Pinterest to add some color.

via Pinterest, original link from Sugar and Charm blog

I have seen others use acrylic paints so I decided to use some leftover "Ocean Blue" Americana acrylic paint I had from another project.

I followed the directions of pouring the paint in liberally, and swirling it around as I turned the vase upside down.

After I had covered about 90% of the inside of the vase, I placed it upside down to dry on some newspaper. I later learned this would be a mistake and would recommend using plastic (bags or sheets) to dry on.

I checked on the vase periodically, moving its position on the paper so there wouldn't be too much paint piled up. I also used a sponge brush to help some of the paint along on the parts that weren't filling in. I don't know if it was because I was messing with it so much, but there were a few small gaps where the paint either dropped off or didn't fill in. Otherwise, it was looking great!

Remember how I advised against drying the vase on paper before?

Here is the finished product, tucked behind my candle sleeve next to the TV. It definitely adds that pop of color I was looking for, and the entire project was less than $5. Awesome.