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Sunday, February 8, 2015

Fall Art Project - Pumpkin Canvas

I always wanted to be one of those people that change out their wall hangings seasonally. Something bright and cheery in the Spring and Summer; pumpkins, gourds, and leaves in the Fall; Santa, and frosty, bare-branch trees in the winter. A perpetual seasonal Pottery Barn catalog. You get the picture.

I'm not really one of those people, but in my quest to become one of those people, I created an art project that I WILL hang every Fall.

For this project, I used a canvas from Hobby Lobby (on sale, of course), a paint sample from Lowe's, some wall spackle (plenty), and some leftover paint, tinted glaze, and satin poly (water-based).

Here's the finished product.


I was inspired by this great pear art by Tracy on her SoulStyle blog, found here.
So pretty! Love the white-on-white!


The pear art above is fairly large, and I wasn't feeling quite that ambitious for my first foray into wall mud art, so I picked up a 20" x 30" canvas on sale at Hobby Lobby, and got down to business.

I googled for pumpkin art, pumpkin images, etc, and found a photo of a pumpkin to use as my drawing model.  Let the drawing begin!


And viola - my plain old imperfect pumpkin drawn on bare canvas.

Now the fun part!  I used the wall spackle that I already had on hand, which I buy from Lowe's.  



I started filling in the pumpkin sections, spreading the spackle out fairly roughly in the individual pumpkin sections. I worked every other section and let it dry a bit before filling in the remaining sections. I wanted that distinction between the sections.  Otherwise, this thing was going to turn out looking like a beach ball.  I built up a few layers. Then lightly sanded it, and sanded the edges between sections to round them a bit.


Once the pumpkin was filled in, I added a thin layer of spackle to the rest of the canvas, and textured it with a damp stiff paint brush. I just brushed the wet spackle horizontally outward from the edge of the pumpkin.



You can see the light texturing on the background in the close-up below.


Nest stop, paint. I painted the background with some gray wall paint that I had.


Then painted the pumpkin with an orange paint sample from Lowe's. It's sort of an orange sherbet color called Golden Chime.




Too stark, right? Right! So I used some brown tinted glaze to emphasize all the dimension and texturing, and add a little shading. Brush on, wipe off, like stain. 

Glazed the pumpkin first, then the background. Last step was to coat the whole thing with some satin water-based polyurethane. This step is not necessary, but I wanted the whole thing to have the same sheen, and the gray background paint that I used was flat, while the orange paint sample was satin.

Glaze on only the pumpkin


And there you have it. Can't wait to hang it next Fall!

Shout out to Tracy and her beautiful pear art, for inspiring me to try my own wall mud art!






Master Bedroom - The Plan

As with every room, I start with an idea of something I want to try (like a paint technique or a color combination), or an inspiration piece (like art or a fabric that I want to use). For the master bedroom, I had both a paint idea that I wanted to try, and a piece of art that drove the color scheme.

First, the paint idea. I had an idea rattling around my brain for a while; before I ever laid eyes on this house, actually. The idea was for a stenciled wall.


No, not like that, Crafty!  No, Nope, Negative.
More like this.


Guest Room - light gray on dark gray paisley stencil


I had done this wall in my last house, in a guest bedroom using light gray stenciled over a darker gray base. Sorry for the poor photo quality. It makes it look like a wall full of leaves, but it's actually a paisley design. 

Anyhow, the new version of the idea in my head was a tone-on-tone thing, where the base color and the stencil color would be the same color, but in different sheens. Base color flat, stencil color glossy (or base color flat, stencil done with clear satin or gloss poly). In my head, that would look like tone-on-tone damask fabric, similar to this tablecloth.

So that idea had been in my head since I did the last stenciled wall. Just suspended there, waiting for a duty assignment.

On to the inspiration piece.
My lovely inspiration art


I stumbled upon this piece of art at a furniture store, and fell in love with it. LOVE, people. It's serene, yet the berry color is so rich. It's also a statement piece at 48" x 48". It was also $149. LOVE. $149 for a giant piece of art that soothes my soul every time I look at it? Sold! In actuality, I did not buy it the first time I saw it, because I was between houses, and had nowhere to use it. But in spirit, I was sold! And like the stencil idea, this piece of art hung in my head (see what I did there?), waiting for a duty assignment.

Fast forward to short sale purchase, and I have my opportunity to use both ideas. The entire color scheme was based on that piece of art - gray, cream, and berry.

From that starting point, I needed to add all the usual necessities: bed, dressers, nightstands, lamps, bedding. And I definitely needed to do something about the window treatments.

Behold the vertical blinds.


Master Bedroom - window wall before
Those have to go.

You know what else has to go? These ...


Baseboards - before

The narrow, anemic-looking baseboards. I'm guessing it was a builder cost-saving measure to outfit the entire house with the narrowest baseboards known to man, but they don't do the house justice. It's like putting a 2-inch angel atop a 10 ft Christmas tree. The mismatch in scale is visually jarring. Plus, it looks cheap.

So now I had a direction, and I just needed to put it all together.

Here's a sneak peek at how the tone-on-tone stencil idea turned out in real life.



Get a load of that! That right there looks like high-end wallpaper. That is exactly how it looked in my mind. Nailed it!

Tune in again to see the finished room.

The Lint Bucket



I bought this bucket (really a plant pot) to use in the laundry room as a tiny trash bin for dryer lint.


My little lint bucket


Mr. Caulk was with me when I bought it. He knew the intended use. I just put some lint in it this morning. 






Headed to the grocery store, and this is what I saw when I came home.




This makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. The lint is literally a foot from the bucket. Mr. Caulk said he didn't see it. The bucket is bright blue, and right next to the dryer.

Some perspective