Nursery Tree

Hello!

Last week, I painted a tree on nursery of a baby girl that will be born soon. Her nursery isn't finished yet, but at least you can see the tree I painted, and hopefully one day I can go back and get some photos of the nursery all done!

It's hard to see, because the colors we selected are pretty light, but you can make out the image of the tree here:

It even went onto the lavender ceiling a little bit:

I know you guys like to know a little about the process, so here it is: we wanted an organic tree - something natural, and not as stylized as a lot of my other "nursery" trees. I started by drawing just the limbs (with a watercolor pencil), then I paint everything else in with a brush, freehand. In addition to the light lavendar (the ceiling is the same lavendar color, at 25% intensity), we used another pale purple and green for little drops of color, in an otherwise monochromatic tree. I thought about adding detail to the flowers, but we decided we loved the silhouette look better!

New Light Fixture!

Remember when I showed you guys the ugly light fixture that was in the studio bathroom? It looked like this:

Gross!

I bought this new exterior light at Lowe's for only $25, and had it installed. I know the photo is a little hard to see, but here it is:

It's galvanized metal, and I think it fits the "industrial" look of the place - plus, it was so cheap! It's much better now. That brass fixture with the country accented glass was KILLIN' me.

Patterned Walls

A couple of weeks ago, I painted this simple wavy pattern on living room walls. It mimics the pattern in the lamp that they have, and creates a subtle design.

I did the pattern in a high-gloss version of the wall color.

I built a table.

My riveting post titles keep you coming back for more, eh?

Anyway, las week, I built a table for the studio. I was headed out to buy some salvaged wood from the Atlanta Salvage Outlet (I think that's what it's called - it's off Howell Mill), when I drove by a house that was being renovated in Grant Park. I saw a beautiful piece of chippy yellow wood sitting out by the road, so I immediately pulled over. Turned out, they had tons of long panel-like pieces of wood that they were getting rid of, and let me have. Yes! I'm sure construction workers think I'm crazy.

I also had these metal legs from a table that I bought from a thrift store for $10. The table was one of those mix-and-match Ikea ones, so I was able to easily remove the legs.

Here is a photo of that lovely chippy salvaged wood -- isn't it awesome? It was the exterior of the house, and you can see lots of layers of different colors that the house was painted over the years. It's also cool to build a table with salvaged wood from Grant Park, because it's where I live. Grant Park has tons and tons of beautiful old "storybook" homes.

When I got back to the studio, I laid them out on the ground, and figured out a pattern and size that I liked.

I wanted the table to be ten feet long, so I measured the pieces, and cut the wood accordingly.

I just laid all my wooden pieces out horizontally, then cut shorter pieces of wood and nailed them vertically all down the bottom of the table. I hope that makes sense!

As you know, I am NO furniture-builder, but it came out sturdy enough (I wouldn't necessarily recommend sitting on it...). It's going to hold brushes and supplies, and generally just be a long desk for the studio.

Here she is!

Rope Wall for a Nautical Nursery

I'm so excited to share this project with you guys! I truly enjoy my job, and the thing I probably enjoy most is coming up with new, fresh ideas that I've never done before (or never seen done by anyone else). Times like these are when I have the most fun, and feel the most creative, which is what makes this gig awesome.

My client told me that she and her husband were pulling together a nautical-themed nursery for their baby boy, in navy, white, khaki and lime. They wanted to leave the walls khaki, but other than that, I had a blank slate. I did a little searching under the term "nautical", and came up with this image from Pinterest:

I adored the rope pattern on the invite, and sent it to my client as a possibility for the inspiration for the pattern on the wall. She liked the idea, so we went with it!

Here is the nursery "before"

All of the cute nautical elements were there, but I really think the "rope" patterned wall pulls it all together!

First, I painted the white pattern, then went in and did all the little navy details with a brush. The plain white pattern looked like this:

All the little navy lines tone it down a bit.

I adore her navy rocker with the white piping, along with the chartreuse table skirt. And how great is the little lamp?

(ps, don't know where anything is from, sorry!)

A Commissioned Canvas in Beachy Tones

A few weeks ago, I got a commission to do a very large canvas painting. The canvas was 5 feet tall, and it was to go in a master bedroom, on a big blank wall. Here's what Sara said in her email to me:

"I love texture in paintings and we'd like to keep the color scheme within the same general family as the existing room (honeydew, acid green, light blue, white, cream...very relaxing and some would saybeachy-ish)."

She also sent along some inspiration images, and included links to some furniture items that are in the room.

Here is a fabric that is in her bedroom:

(from Ballard)

And an idea for the "feel" she wanted the painting to have:

(painting from here)

In keeping with the guidelines for the painting, here is what I came up with:

It's the first official piece to be done from start to finish in the studio :)

I also signed it, which I rarely do, but I felt like it made sense here:

A Pretty Cabinet.

Sorry to leave you with a sort of boring, ugly post yesterday -- but good news: I'm back with the "after" today!

So, as you saw, this cabinet at the studio bathroom was less than desirable. Actually, the whole bathroom was pretty scary. I painted the floors and walls a fresh white, which helps a lot (it makes it feel clean, even though it's really not, yet), and I also painted and gave the cabinet a little facelift. Here is the "before" again:

Like I said, the cabinet door on the right looked like it had been kicked in, so I went ahead and hammered out the rest of the inside of the door, then did the same thing to the other door. Conveniently, there was a little frame where the wood went, so I was able to come up with a new plan.

I painted the entire cabinet "Palladian Blue" by Benjamin Moore (left over from a client job), which is such a pretty blue-green, and gives such a fresh feel.

I also spraypainted the knobs a chrome silver. I thought about buying new knobs, but figured this would be smartest, as it was completely free (I already had the paint).

I had some plexiglass cut at Lowe's for the doors (after trying unsuccessfully to cut the plexiglass by myself the first time, the second time I bought it, I gave them the measurements and it was much better). I got plexiglass, rather than real glass, so that I could bend it into the little frame inside the cabinet door. It took a little while, but I really love the outcome. It looks like a cute little medicine cabinet now!

I also painted the interior of the cabinet the same color. It was really gross inside that cabinet, dudes! Paint makes all things fresh. Ahhhh...

I went over to Urban Outfitters to buy this rug for the bathroom, but they didn't have it in store. They did, however, have this cute round one, and it was on clearance for $8! Score! I think it is probably a better option anyway, since it's a bathroom for a painter, afterall, and who knows what colorful paint might drip onto the rug. Better to not spend too much on it, I guess.

(it's hot pink, royal blue, white, and orange -- even though that photo looks reddish)

I also found the cute bamboo mirror at a thrift store last weekend. I spraypainted it with orange spraypaint that I had on hand (surprise, surprise), and hung it up.

(I hold my camera weird)

Today, the electrician is coming over to install a new light fixture -- to replace this beauty:

Hah! The ugliness actually kind of makes me laugh. I found a cool exterior light fixture at Lowe's that I'm going to have it replaced with. I'll try and snap a photo of it for you guys once it's replaced!

Have a great weekend!

An Ugly Cabinet.

This is the studio bathroom cabinet...

Someone (I guess?) kicked a hole in the cabinet door on the left (!!!), and it was looking really ugly, so I went ahead and demo-ed the rest of the flat part out, and then did the same to the cabinet door on the right side. Have you ever demo-ed anything? It's pretty fun, I have to say.

Check back tomorrow to see how I made this ugly cabinet cute!

Striped Fireplace Wall

I've been so excited to paint this fireplace, and now I am so excited to share it with you guys!

These clients are a fun, young couple, that have a great sense of style and are adventurous (my favorite types) in design. Check out their family room sofa:

The "FAMILY" letters were collected over a period of about 6 months, and they were inspired by the Novogratz's when they started the collection. Aren't the letters awesome? (PS if you haven't already, you should pick up Courtney and Robert Novogratz's book, Downtown Chic. It's chock-full of amazing photographs and inspirational stories. I got it for Christmas last year and love it).

Anyway, as you can see, this side of the room was fun and wild, and the other side was a little less so:

I suggested doing stripes on the fireplace wall, to counterbalance the more organic feel of the modern-y chairs that flank the fireplace, so that's what we did. I grabbed 6 colors from around the room, and went to town.

I like the contrast of the chair pattern and the wall pattern:

Here's a funny photo I took while I was figuring out my pattern! I kept messing up the very bottoms, so I decided to make little dots with my colors, so that I could make sure everything was how it was supposed to be before I actually started striping.

Stir Stick Lampshade DIY

I know that I've been sharing tons of "studio" photos, but I've been doing so much stuff in there, I have lots to show you guys.

Here's a DIY project that I completed (well, almost completed) over the weekend. I saw a similar project to this on Pinterest, and thought it'd be cute to do it in a larger scale, to make a big drum shade for my studio. Normally I'm not into "cutesy" things, but I thought the paint stir stick shade would be pretty clever in an art studio -- plus the whole project only cost about $40.

I went to Lowe's to try and get some paint stir sticks for free (which I thought they might do, since I buy paint there about 3 times a week, and I rarely take stir sticks, but no. Major bummer. I ended up buying them online here), and also picked up some veneer edging for my brace on the inside as well. Here's what it looked like:

I thought it would be a little harder than it was, but it ended up working out alright. I also thought about using two hula hoops as my inside brace, but I couldn't find any around my part of town. I liked the veneer edging, though, because it was the same color as the stir sticks.

FYI, the Pinterest version of this project just simply hot glues paint stir sticks onto a store bought lampshade, but I knew a gigantic (mine was 7 feet in diameter) lampshade would be hard to find, and pricey!

Anyway, This is how I got my two pieces of veneer to stay in place:

After I hot-glued the two ends together, I placed them on top of each other, and started hot-gluing the sticks on.

Pretty easy to finish it on up from there. I just figured out how many sticks I'd need, based on the length of my veneer (each stick was about 1").

After I glued all the sticks on, I decided to stain it a slightly darker shade than the natural tone they come in. I mixed a "java" stain that I already had, and a "honey" stain that I already had together, then diluted it a LOT with mineral spirits. I'd say the mixture was about 1 part java/1part honey/20 parts mineral spirits. It was almost clear! I brushed it on with a chip brush. Here you can see the difference:

After I had it all stained and ready to hang, I looped wire around 4 sides of the lamp. I wanted it to hang evenly, so I just measured out the 4 sides from each other.

I hung little white hooks into the ceiling, and hung the wire from them. Very easy, and you don't even notice the wire and hooks. I do plan to hang a light kit like this in the middle soon (duh).

As you can see, it got a little uneven there at the end. DANGIT. This is where you learn from my mistakes - just be really careful to keep your stirsticks lined up directly with the veneer.

It's not completely attention-grabbing in person, but yes, it does annoy me that it's not perfect.

I like how the stain came out. I didn't want it to be very dark, but just dark enough to not look like giant popsicle sticks.