I'M BACK, again!

Hey Peeps! I’m back, ya, it’s been awhile, I know.  I've missed you too.  I actually had stopped painting for bit, well, not completely, but it slowed down significantly-LIFE-you all know how that goes. 

Anyhow, I’m back and with a vengeance. I’m painting like a mad woman, well, I guess I’m always painting like a mad woman, but this time I swear! I also went back to my business name, prior to changing it-BIG mistake there-lesson learned, so I'm sticking with The Decorative Paintbrush...

I've also started writing another blog; it’s called The Syracuse Art Scene.  It’s all about the goings on in The Syracuse Art Community-okay, not EVERYTHING, but things I find interesting.  If you have a moment maybe you’d like to check it out, perhaps follow along?  

I've also opened a new Etsy store too.  “Oh, Mary! How exciting!” You scream rather loudly!  I would bat my eyes and sheepishly reply, “Why yes. Please take a look!”  Hahahaha! Okay, we aren't that corny, right?  But really check it out-there’s some new things and some standard favs.  I’m going to be adding a whole new line of canvas work too, so be looking for that notice on my Face Book page. “What? You didn’t know I had a Face Book Page! Well today’s your lucky day, I’m including a link (several actually)!” 

I’m very excited to be back, painting, creating-it’s when I feel most alive. I don’t know about you…but I am sooooo ready to put 2012 behind me.  I’m anticipating 2013 to be a VERY innovative, creative and productive year!  So, let’s get this party started shall we!

Okay, enough shouting from the roof tops, onto my latest piece!  It’s actually a two parter.  I had a client who gave me two gently used stools. She wanted them to be transformed.  She intended to put them into her “Man Cave” as her son called it. She wanted them sporty, yet fun for the kids.  They came to me looking like this…

 Yep, that's my crazy studio in the background.  Please excuse the mess...Okay, not going to lie, it's never clean :D Let's face it the only clean & pristine studio's you'll see are ones where there isn't a lot of creating going on inside-are ya with me!

Now, these chairs left looking just a bit different! One chair was done in a Dallas Cowboys theme-the other a Syracuse University theme.  These are the pictures of The Cowboys chair. Tomorrow I’ll show you the SU one. Enjoy!

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!