Pixelated Post-it Staircase

"Enough with the post-its, girl!" I know, I know, I hear ya loud and clear. But, when a girl's gotta post-it, a girl's gotta post it! The post-it projects (here and here) were actually all for this. I was asked to create an "inspiration wall" for a young adult conference here in Denmark and I thought it'd be groovy to finally try out the post-its idea. The theme of the week was "agents for good" and this wall was to serve as a reminder or instigator to do good. They were supposed to write the good things they had done that week on each post it. In all honesty, I thought the project would be a cinch because all you have to do is buy post its and then stick them to a wall. Not quite. First off, the post-its I could find didn't really have the longevity I was going for. They curled and fell off. Second, they come in not my favorite color palette. 
Solution? Buy paper and cut them down to size. Thankfully, I had a team to help AND a paper cutter. Glee! Though it was more time consuming.
Materials: paper in your choice of colors (I went for rainbow in various lights and darks), scissors or paper cutter, glue gun or glue stick, white butcher paper, duct tape, one real post it to use as a template Step 1: Cut the paper down to size. I used a real post-it to use as a template and then cut the rest to that size. To achieve this look, use various shades of the same colors. In total I bought about 30 shades of paper.
Step 2: We used white butcher paper to cover the areas we intended to post-it and secured it with duct tape.
Step 3: Start at the bottom of the paper and then layer on top. I started with the light values on the bottom and then worked to the darker values at the top. I also worked from left to right in a rainbow pattern: reds to pinks to oranges to yellows to greens to blues to purples. I didn't want there to be clean lines of color sections so I made sure to stagger the colors and then throw in a surprise color from another section every now and again.
Step 4: To attach the post it, just put a thin line of glue at the top of the post it and stick. Glue sticks work well, but I felt more secure with a glue gun as I knew it would hold. We tried double sided stick tape too but it took a bit longer. I had the best time behind me and boy am I glad they were there! I truly thought it wouldn't take that long to do and I always think that I can do things on my own so I was so relieved when they saved the day. We started at about noon and worked until 6 or so. Originally I wanted to do the WHOLE stairwell, but we ended up only doing three walls because of time. We had one person on the paper cutter, a few people attaching tape to the post-its, and then the rest attaching them to the butcher paper.  Start with the little things, my friends.
Thank you Heidi for being so open to the idea and thank you to all the helpers!
And after this project I have a whole new appreciation for this one
More post-it stories here and here and some inspiration post-it projects on my Pinterest