In Harmony With Spring

I recently decided to give two of my pieces to the Rotary Club of Eastwood to be auctioned off for charity.  It’s a cool way to give back to the community. Know, before you go thinking I’m this amazing giving person, it’s also a way for me to get my name out there as well (it’s a win/win). In return for the donation you get your name (and a picture of a couple of your pieces) in their glossy 8 X 10 magazine, pretty fancy, hugh! When you check out their website, oh and I know you will, (http://www.eastwoodrotary.org/) you’ll be able to actually see a copy of the magazine online. I personally picked up 25 copies for myself, not sure who I’m handing them out to, family and friends perhaps? Hahahaha! (I can hear them all groaning now!) Anyway, it was a lot of fun to do the pieces, you know me, any excuse to paint something!

Here’s the first piece. It started out as this "cuteugly" table. Cute when I first did it,  but ugly now that I look at it! You know what I'm talking about! You've all been there. My painting has grown and matured over the years, so a lot of my earlier pieces look silly to me now, but I still love the phrase on it though! It’s great isn’t it!

So, as always I primed it down. I had to sand the dots on the legs because they were a bit heavy (she said in a very critical voice). Next, I taped off the areas I was going to crackle (see http://thedecorativepaintbrush.blogspot.com/2010/12/girl-can-change-her-mind.html for a more detailed tutorial). I base coated in a tan, ragged off (painted on the brown with a brush, then took a rag and pulled paint off in a random fashion) with a darker brown (Ben Moore Roasted Coffee Beans 2098). Then I applied the One Step Crackle Medium by Deco Art. Dried it with a blow dryer to speed up the crackle process, then I wiped Minwax stain in Red Mahogany #225 over the surface to fill in the cracks and give it a deep rich leather feel.  I did this step on the legs as well.

Then when it was dry I pulled the tape and started painting the center parts. I laid down the base coat first then when back in and started to draw out and tape off where I wanted the designs to be.

I had recently gotten a Cherry Blossom stencil and knew I wanted to use it. Spring has finally arrived here in New York and I really felt like conveying that through this piece and felt like the cherry blossom stencil would really help me do that.  The great color palette of pinks and greens coupled with the earthy brown just pulled the look all together.  So, when I was looking for a word to go on top “Harmony” just seemed like the perfect choice!

Well, I’m hoping someone will love this piece enough to bid on it. I’m really hoping it brings in some money for the Rotary Club and all the wonderful charities they donate to throughout the year.  If you get a chance, really, check out all the other great artists that are participating in the show! http://www.eastwoodrotary.org/ I’m stoked to be a part of it.  Look for the second piece next week. Peace!

Cost: Table was free (given to me by my sister-in-law)


Colors Used: Benjamin Moore

• Pink Ladies 1347
• Island Sunset 1346
• Bermuda Breeze 1345
• Dark Celery 2146
• Olive Tree 390
• Roasted Coffee Beans 2098
• White Dove

• Minwax Stain Red Mahogany 225
• Reeves Acrylic Metallic Silver

Happy Painting,

Mary

Moroccan Stenciled Steps

I love painting furniture! But as you know, my day job is painting inside homes. On our other business blog http://2womenandapaintbrush.blogspot.com/ I usually blog about those projects but this one was so much fun I had to share it here as well.

The customer wanted to do something fun with her steps. She had seen an interesting treatment on another blog and wanted to know if we could duplicate it? Hahahaha! I laughed loudly (and flung my hair wildly over my shoulder) "Of course I can!"

She ordered these Moroccan stencils online and we got started painting the steps in 2 sets of blue and 2 stets of white etc.....

We knew we had to cut the stencils down in order to cut down on "fussing" time. Once we did that the process went very quickly.

2 of the stencils had very thin lines and when you stencil with paint it's very easy for the paint to bleed under the stencil, so when we were finished we had to go back and touch up with a tiny paintbrush just to freshen things up.

The end result was Fabulous! We were as excited as she was! Even though I couldn't stand straight for hours (sitting on a small step, twisted around, does a number on your spine), it was so worth it!