Repairing Holes In Wallpaper (I’m Amazed At How Good This Looks!!)

So let me back up a bit and remind you that the reason my wallpaper had holes in them in the first place is because when I installed this floral wall mural from Anthropologie, I had originally intended to keep my wall sconces. So during installation, I cut holes in the wallpaper so that the wires for the sconces could come through.

Then I decided that I wanted to use table lamps instead of sconces, but that left me with these holes in the wallpaper. On each side, I had the big hole for the wires, and then smaller holes where the mounting plate for the sconce was screwed into the wall. Here’s what the one on the right looked like…

And here’s what the one on the left looked like…

The first thing I had to do was get the wires tucked into the wall. Don’t yell at me, but I haven’t yet disconnected the wires from the switch, but I did tape the switch so that it couldn’t be accidentally switched on. I will disconnect the wires from the switch tomorrow. But I’m the only person in the house who has ever flipped the switch on, and I won’t be flipping the switch on, especially now that the switch is taped so that I can’t. But once the wires are removed from the switch, these wires will be completely dead, so there no harm in having them buried in the wall.

Next, I had to cover over the big hole with wallpaper. Since this is a mural that doesn’t have a repeating pattern, I just used a random piece of the extra paper. I held it over the hole, and then used a utility knife with a new blade to cut a smaller square out of both the patch and the mural underneath at the same time so that they would be the exact same size.

With both pieces cut, I removed the excess to make room for the same sized patch.

Then I used wallpaper paste to attach the patch to the wall.

Next, I used lightweight spackle to fill in the screw holes and to fill in the tiny hairline space between the mural and the patch.

And I repeated that whole process on the other side.

I’m not going to lie. I was nervous. And at this point, I was very doubtful that this whole process would work.

After the spackle was completely dry, I sanded it smooth using 220-grit sandpaper.

So I texted my mom, my on-call artist, to see what she thought. She thought it was a great idea! So I went to Amazon, selected this 64-color set, and an Amazon drone dropped them in my back yard about two hours later.

But y’all! Check this out! I did it! This is what it looked like the first time I thought I was finished with this side.

I mean, that looks pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

It turns out that pastels are very easy to use, very FUN to use, and very forgiving.

You can add layer after layer of color. You can blend the colors together just using your finger. You can get different textures by using different areas of the pastel. You can get sharper lines by using the end, or more broad and textured looks by using the wide side. They are very fun to play around with. It took some mixing and blending and patience to get the color just right, but I was pretty proud of my work! This is the area that I was working on, and when I got it to this point, I originally thought I was finished.

But I decided to go back and add a little bit of highlights to that petal, and then darken that area just above the petal. So this is the final version. Does it look exactly like the wallpaper? Nope. But I don’t think anyone would ever detect that there’s a patch there.

For some reason, I thought the other side would be easier, but it ended up being way more challenging than matching the flower. Here’s what my first “finished” version looked like.

I wasn’t pleased with it, so I went back and added some light streaks to bright then area. But I still wasn’t pleased.

But then I noticed that a lot of the streaky areas in the rest of the wallpaper had color in them. They weren’t just white streaks, but they had orange and coral. So I added some orange and pink to make a coral color, and then added black over it. It was better, but still not quite right.

But with a little more black and gray added, and then a little more blending, I was finally okay with it.

I wasn’t quite as proud of this side as I was the side with the flower, but it was fine. Again, I don’t think that any casual observer would ever detect that there was a patch there.

The fact that this wallpaper is so busy really helps to disguise the areas that are patched and covered in pastels.

And here’s a look at the whole mural with the patches finished. Can you tell where they are? Even standing in the room, I can’t see where they are.

Not only did the colors blend in beautifully, but the sheen is a perfect match as well.

If this were in a high traffic area where a person might accidentally brush a sleeve against it while walking past the mural, I’d probably use a matte artist spray over those areas. But since they’re on a wall that no one will ever stand near or walk close to, I’m just going to leave them alone.

I’m so proud of my work, y’all! And I may have found a new favorite art medium. Pastels are so fun to work with, and now I want to try making some artwork with them! I want to spend a bit of time in Instagram and find some pastel artists to inspire me.