Dreaming in hexagons

King Me Boardgamery and Café is a new business in Saskatoon owned and operated by my better half. Having connections, I got involved in the decor!

The floors are diagonal black-and-white check (Knightsbridge!) with a deep red baseboard. A border resembling wainscotting, and matching the baseboard, was desired around the walls. Many contemporary games use hexagons for the game boards so I suggested a row of hexagons rather than a simple band of red.

I started with an 8" circle and made a hexagon inside that. I cut that shape out of a sheet of stencilling plastic intending to stamp the hexagons onto the wall. It leaked. Phooey. I think wall paint is too thin. Plan B: frog tape, which worked excellently.

First, a leaky stencil, then on to frog tape.

Many thanks to the Nice Young Man at the paint store who advised me that red doesn't cover well and I should start with dark primer. Good advice. Even with two coats of dark primer it took 4-5 coats of the red paint to get the coverage needed.

Five layers of red paint later... hexagons completed!

But wait! That's not all.

Of course, the hexagons didn't all fit neatly along the length of each wall. That would be way too easy, and not nearly as much fun. It was a good excuse for some funkiness. I added some offset, and some smaller, hexagons. I also color photocopied hexagon pieces from a few games and stuck them on the wall. There are only half a dozen of these scattered around the room, so they're a little surprise.

On the left: a large piece from the game Mage Knight.
In the middle: two announcements of the Catan World Championship in Berlin.
On the right: two planet hexagons from the game Star Trek Catan (yes, seriously).

On the left: the whole section of wall.
On the right: a close-up of tiny hexes from the game Castles of Burgundy.

One section is very short, bumping out around a post or something. It seemed to want a stop sign (octagon) and my husband suggested, "No, make it say 'Play.'" Brilliant. Wanting to get it right, research determined that the font on a stop sign is Highway Gothic. The wall beside it has smaller hexagons, oriented the other way.

And yes. I used some boards leftover from poking out game pieces for the smaller hexagons!

We had purchased a couple of interesting vinyl "paintings" at a yard sale thinking they might be useful. They're stretched on wood to look like canvas paintings.

They did fit quite nicely above a sofa in an alcove, but they really needed some hexagons, don't you think?

At the front, near the counter, is the unfinished back of a metal mailbox for the tenants upstairs. The wall is painted, but it looked quite rough and needed to be covered. I offered to do a painting. 24" square was a sliver too small so I worked on a 30" canvas. I planned a large red hexagon on a checked black-and-white background. I thought I'd tangle some patterns in the hexagon.

As you may know, one of my art mottos is "When in doubt, add more." The painting definitely became more. It almost took on a life of its own as I tangled away with some new paint pens I'd been wanting to try. Here are a few "in progress" shots:

Here are some detail shots of the red hexagon:

Hexagon friendly tangles: Afterglo, Beeline, Paradox, Phroz, Tripoli, Windfarm, Y-Not

And here it is, in situ near the front window. Well, that was fun!

And here are two photos of the business: the view from the front door, and the game library.