-
Paint me a picture!
Okay, so last week I posted the pic I bought at our neighborhood yard sale. The plan, paint over the original canvas (pray it wasn’t priceless) and update the frame. I really had no clue how long something like this might take. Honestly, I kind of thought it might take me a while.
Before Saturday morning while Matt was out golfing, I decided to start painting and see what happened. I made a makeshift painting station in the garage. One side has a small ledge a few feet up and a couple inches wide so I tape a sheet to the wall and was able to prop the canvas up on the ledge. From there I just started mixing colors. Originally I wanted to go more grey but my paint turned a little more green so I just ran with it. I started off with my brush just mixing colors on the canvas. (Really I should have put a white layer on first but I knew I didn’t have enough paint for that.) So I just kept going, mixing paint and brushing it on.
During Once I had the whole canvas covered, which didn’t actually take more than 15-20 mins. I stepped back to check out what I had. It wasn’t bad! I liked the color gradients, so I grabbed a palette knife and started building the colors on the canvas. At this point I was just mixing the colors together with the palette knife and swiping it on the canvas. And it looked pretty good. Once the majority was done, I realized I needed to add a little bit of coral, since the bedroom is basically coral and white! 😉 A little red, yellow, pink and white and I had something that resembled coral. I had no clue really where I wanted to add it and decided on a to just put it near the bottom and hope it didn’t look dumb. It turned out pretty good and is really only a small touch of color. After that I was done!
I texted a few people pics of it and they all thought it looked good.
This is upside down. I couldn’t decide which way I was thing to hang it. Later that afternoon I decided I was going to work on the frame. I ran up to my craft room and grabbed some rose gold and off white paint. I used the rose gold to neutralize the brassy yellows currently on the frame. Then I mixed my off white with a bit of titanium white and added water. Lots of water. It was kind of messy but the result was a nice, worn looking frame. (I will say, the titanium white really wasn’t needed.) The last thing I had to do was paint the outer edge of the canvas. In hindsight, I probably should have painted that white first and then taped it off but I didn’t do that. I had to very carefully paint white around the edges of my newly painted canvas. In the end, I ended up with a little more white here and there but I didn’t really mind the way it looked so I just left it. I did go back and try to fix one corner of the canvas I wasn’t super happy with. It was a little flat. I can’t say it helped but it didn’t hurt it either. Just added a little more color and texture.
I let everything dry overnight and Sunday morning Matt helped me reattach the canvas to the frame. Then I got up the nerve to actually sign it. It was really stressful. 😉 But I got my name on the corner and it doesn’t look awful.
Now it’s hanging over the bed in our guest room! I think it turned out really good!
~k
-
Priceless?
Over the weekend we had a neighborhood yard sale. This happens 2x a year and I’ve gone to all of them since we moved in. I’ve managed to score some pretty cool items, for cheap too. Last year I got a bag of pink Christmas ornaments for $5.00, much to Matt’s dismay. (This led to the purchase of a white Christmas tree! 😉 ) At the same house, I found some really large 24×36 wooden frames. I think they were $1.00 for both! They are currently hanging above the buffet in the living room waiting to be made over.
This year, my usual partner was actually participating so Mom said she would go with me. I managed to snag a few free baskets from a friend at our first stop. Mom found a large outdoor lantern and some pics at our 2nd stop (and spent almost all of her money!) After that it was kind of slow. It didn’t feel like many people were participating this year. As we were headed back to the house we stopped at a sale just down the street. There was a large painting sitting off to the side. Mom and I were talking about it when the sellers came over. Apparently it had been “Aunt Ida’s”. They said they weren’t sure Aunt Ida ever liked the pic but she had had it for years. It was about the size I was looking for for over the guest bed but the painting was not really my style. While a nice landscape, it just wouldn’t work in the house. I asked how much and when the lady said $10.00, I knew it was coming home with me.
I told Mom Matt was going to kill me but the frame alone was worth probably $50.00 or more. So my grand vision, paint over the existing canvas. Yep! Matt didn’t care that I’d bought the pic but he was curious as to how long it was going to sit in the garage. I might have a fewor fiveother projects currently sitting out there. :OYesterday, I ran to Michael’s to get some Gesso. I knew I could use that to cover the existing print and also to add more texture. So right now it’s in the garage with a few light Gesso coats on it. Since I hadn’t used Gesso before, I didn’t want to get ahead of myself and get paints too. Plus I wanted to use a 40% off coupon for the paint set so I ran back to Michael’s at lunch to get some paints and brushes. Now I have to figure out what I’m going to paint. Or just see what happens. I want to go for something pretty abstract. I’m hoping that equates to easy.
I’m hoping to have it finished this week so we’ll see what happens. For now, let’s just hope the original wasn’t some priceless piece of art!~k
-
From drab to FAB!
I mentioned that Matt and I went to Southpoint on Saturday. After lunch we headed towards the mall part, it’s kind of an indoor outdoor mall, but I wanted to stop by Anthropolgie on the way in. It’s super pricey and I never even look at the clothes but I do like to look at the random housewares. As I was browsing I noticed 2 big shelves full of knobs. Oh heck yeah! There’s a desk in our foyer I’ve been planning to refinish but I wanted to find new knobs.
Anyway I probably stood there looking at all the knobs for about 10 minutes. I asked Matt about a couple but he wasn’t very helpful. Then he noticed there were a few buckets of clearance knobs. These knobs were all 3.00 a piece instead of 8.00 – 10.00 for the regular ones. Don’t get me wrong 8-10 bucks a knob isn’t bad but for 3.00 a piece I could get 4 knobs for the price of two and don’tcha know that’s exactly what I did. 🙂 I found 2 sets I really liked but I couldn’t choose so I bought both.
Thankfully I am a procrastinator and I didn’t want to paint my desk last weekend because it was too hot. Well this weekend was amazing and a bit cooler so Sunday morning
afternoonI started working on the desk. First I sanded the top and sides with my mouse sander. Then I grabbed some course grit sand paper and began working on the legs. Legs are such a pain when they are spindley. Since I was going to paint the desk I knew I didn’t have to do a great job with the sanding. I just needed to knock the varnish off.I spent about 45 minutes sanding down my desk before I decided it was good. I picked out a bright blue paint so I wanted to make the piece look distressed and old. As I started painting on the top I found if I did a light enough coat I could almost dry brush the paint on. This was kind of giving me the effect I wanted so I continued. As the paint dried I touched up a few spots here and there but over all I think it turned out pretty good and I didn’t have to use any sandpaper to the finished paint job. 🙂
Before:
After:
~k -
It’s like a new room
Only it’s not. Over the weekend Matt and I FINALLY painted our bedroom! WOOO HOOO! This was the last “room” that needed to be painted before new carpet. We started Sunday afternoon with the expectation it would take us 2 days. I mean we even went to Lowe’s and bought a ladder.
Anyway once we got started, the paint flew on the walls and before we knew it we already had the 2 larger walls done. Two coats done. At this point I think it was probably only about 3pm and we didn’t start till after 1. With that we moved the furniture around again and started on the other 2 walls. Matt taped and I started painting the trim. You see, we’ve figured out the secret to nice lines, is a thin coat of white (or your base paint) on the moldings. Give it a few minutes, or half an hour, and begin painting. Before we knew it we were done with the whole room and it wasn’t even time for dinner. We’ve definitely gotten better and quicker. 😉
By 7pm the room was back to normal, all the paint stuff was put away and Matt was grilling dinner. We couldn’t believe just how quickly the painting had gone. But man was it nice to know we would have Monday free.
*You can’t really see the color but it’s the same as our spare room, which apparently I never blogged. 😉
As we were putting the room back in order I made Matt put our “ugly” chest up against the wall a different way which puts it behind the door and man oh man does the room feel different for me. You see the “ugly” chest had been pushed up against my bedside table for forever! When I moved in we ended up putting all my furniture in our guest room. That left Matt’s room with a bed, one bedside table, ugly chest and a TV stand and TV. Of course I hated this arrangement so we bought some bedside tables from Walmart and my mom gave us my old bedroom set, like from when I was a kid. Now our bedroom has a light colored bed and ugly chest along with black chest of drawers, dresser and beside tables. This is really not ideal and we will be getting new furniture shortly after we get new carpet.
I also decided it was time to change out the prints above the bed. You can see the originals here. I have to say this is one of the cheapest and easiest projects I’ve done. For the cost of 4 frames and couple of pieces of scrapbook paper you can make art. And then change it should you paint the room, move to a different place, relocate the pics. Whatever! It’s simple.
So that is kind of what we did over the holiday weekend. We actually got a lot done. 🙂
~k
