Stenciled Powder Bathroom

Whew! It has been a whirlwind few days. I feel like I have 7000 things going on, and I no longer am Kristen, I'm just a painting machine. haha. Anyway, I have actually spend about 20+ hours the past Monday/Tuesday, working on a mural for Shoney's, which I'll share here soon. :) 

Anyway, I wanted to show you guys the outcome of my stencil project from last week. It was a project for Lori, of Lori May Interiors and we both are so happy with the outcome. Lori and her client were a dream to work with, and I enjoyed painting in this teeny little bathroom for them! 

The inspiration for this stencil was the little sink cabinet you see here. Lori wanted to do something inspired by the shape in the middle of the drawer, so I came up with this pattern. What do you guys think?!

and here are some shots from in the middle of the painting action!

 initially, we were going to do a softer feel, so this is from when I first started. We ultimately decided to do just a solid application of paint.

I had to end up scooting the entire pattern a little to the left. perfectionism is a pain sometimes. :) 

and me, sitting practically in the toilet in the thick of touch ups! haha

Touch ups are always a big part of painting in tiny spaces like this! It's hard to get the stencil into those little spots behnd the toilet and around the cabinet, so it's a must. whew! 

what do you guys think!?

Wedding Signs

Hi all! I'm rushing out the door to do some work today after a long weekend for a friend's wedding. I made a couple of fun signs for the wedding, and I thought I would share them here...

I made several directional signs, and a couple of cutesie ones. 

Theres Jordan standing with my sign :) 

I even made signs for the port a potties 

hah!!

fanciest port a potties ever! 

What I'm Working On Now...

Headed out the door to finish this new stencil pattern... which is a new stencil I made yesterday for one of Lori's clients. Super fun, and I love the pattern, which was inspired by the little cabinet below the sink in this powder bathroom:

(before I even started using it!)

Fairies And Stripes In A Little Girl's Room

I recently painted some fairies and stripes in a little girl's room, and I thought I'd share them here. I think I already showed you guys the stripes, but I wanted to show the fairies too, because they're my favorite part! Painting stuff like this is so much fun. I came up with these fairies on my own, and I've always thought it would be fun to illustrate a book or something similar to this. 

here they are in the room, with the stripes:

stripes

I love a tone on tone stripe! In this case, we just chose two purples that were next to each other on the color wheel.

And, I painted some fairies over her dresser, too:

Paint Stripping Tips

I am back from vacation - sorry for my longer-than-expected absence! I really didn't mean to not blog all week. I was going to, and it got away from me. I'm playing catch up now, though, and it's not easy, haha. 

I wanted to write a post about the little furniture piece that I stripped and painted for a client. I usually never strip furniture, but I took on this small piece for some really great clients. I learned a lot, and thought I'd share a few of my tips here. 

Here's what it looked like before I stripped and painted it:



As you can see, it's a really old piece with a lot of layers of very old paint. I knew this going in, but what I did not know was that the paint was all oil-based and there was about ten layers of it! I believe this piece was very old, too - probably 50 years or so. Made for a challenge!

Anyway, I bought Citristrip after reading that Jenny from Little Green Notebook and Kate from Centsational Girl both had lots of luck with it.

The Citristrip container said it had an open time of 24 hours. Or, that it can take up to 24 hours to really work. I left it for about 2 hours or so, and came back to this:



It looked like it was ready to scrape. Jenny said that you shouldn't ever have to really push hard on the paint to remove it - it shouldn't be challenge. She is the DIY queen, so I took her advice to heart. I did, however, have a little bit of a hard time getting mine to all come loose. I think it's just because it was so many layers, and they were very old and oil based.



The first few layers came off, but of course I had about four more to deal with! I did another coat of Citristrip, and at that point I was about to run out of it. I decided to try Klean Strip. This stuff is hardcore, smelly and works much better than Citristrip, in my opinion. I think Citristrip would've been fine in the case that I had fewer layers of paint, or not as old of paint, but for my job, it was much better. I also picked up some stripping pads and little wire scrubbers at this point. They were both completely necessary and helped a LOT. A must for any stripping project! I also discovered a secret: as you start to scrub the paint (provided that it's oil based), the paint comes loose with the stripping pad and scrubbers, but it helps tremendously to have a little bucket of mineral spirits beside you. You can dunk both of the tools into the mineral spirits to clean them, plus the mineral spirits help to loosen the paint. Almost like water would with latex paint, but even better, I think. This was my secret weapon and it was pretty much smooth sailing after that. Scrubbing the hardware was almost fun after I discovered that!




After it was all stripped, I did quite a bit of sanding. You can imagine my excitement when everything was stripped down to the wood. I'd say the entire stripping process took about 6-8 hours of work and about $35-$40 in supplies.

I then primed and painted it turquoise!







It's going in my client's kitchen, where I actually just finished painting their cabinets white. Its going to be a fun little spot of color.

Lacquered Chinoiserie Side Tables

Hi all! I'm actually on vacation this week in Florida, but I thought I would check in today with a follow up to the cool Chinoiserie side table project I posted a photo of last week. 

A client dropped off two of these cool tables she had, that she wanted painted a high-gloss turquoise, in a paint resembling lacquer. True lacquer is a different ball game, which I warned her of (I dont do ACTUAL lacquering. You can take furniture to some car painting shops and they'll lacquer it for you, but it's a little difficult to find someone to do it for you, and also more expensive), but I do have a process that looks very much like lacquer, and the result is very shiny and durable. I like Benjamin Moore's floor & porch paint for this, in a high gloss oil base finish. It's very durable, and fairly easy to work with. 

(ignore the fact that this is a screen capture of a different paint I found online to get a photo of the paint!)

And these are what the two tables looked like to begin with:

and I'm pleased to say that my client and I were both very happy with the lacquer-like finish that the paint gave us! 

And here they are, in their permanent home

Don't you love this space? It's the home of Atlanta based designer Heather Yager. I love it!

Around the Studio Lately...

I have been so busy at the studio the past few days! I have been working late nights, preparing for a vacation next week (yay). 

Anyway, I thought I'd share some photos of what I've been up to. 

This is a painting that I'm working on for a client in Florida. It's all about neutrals with this one, which is hard to photograph. It's soft but edgy, and I actually sort of love it right now. It's given me lots of trouble, but I'm happy with where it's at now! It's funny, when I work on these large paintings, a lot of times I'll take them to three or four different locations... around the studio, outside, etc, etc. I put the painting down, and then don't look at it for like five minutes. Then, I walk about 20 feet away from the painting, turn around and gage my initial reaction when I turn around to look at it, to see if I like it. Weird, right? I think you get so caught up in the painting when you are creating it, that sometimes it's hard to be objective about it. This helps my objectiveness!

also, I have started a furniture stripping project. Well, actually, it's finished now, but this was towards the beginning. I had to strip about 6-10 layers of OLD, OIL based paint off of this little cabinet. It was crazy, you guys. I used Citristrip and Tough Strip and I am here to report that I think the Tough Strip worked better. At least it was way faster. I think Citristrip would've been fine if this was a simpler paint stripping job, but it was not, and so I needed to bring in the big guns. 

It looked like this to begin with:

So, you can see above that I was getting it down to the wood. It is going to be a fun new color, though, so i'll share it with you guys after I paint it. (today)

besides stripping furniture and painting canvases, I have also been painting some fun furniture.

I did this desk for a client last week!

It looked like this before:

and now this:

I painted the whole piece, and did the top freehand. It was my favorite part, and my clients loved it! 

I also did a lacquer like finish on these cute tables that will be picked up today:

phew! Headed to the studio to do more... wish me luck!

Dresser I Painted In A Nursery

A little while back, I painted a very old (maybe Depression-era?!!) dresser for a client. The piece was dark, dark stained wood, with its hardware still intact. It was going to live in my client's daughter's nursery, and yesterday, that client sent over some professionally-shot photographs of the room! It's so beautiful - I love how it turned it. The designer was Stephanie Gordon. She doesn't have a website, but I have her information if anyone is interested in contacting her!

The photography credits go to Nicole W. Photography.

Here is the dresser I painted. We did a pretty soft taupe color, then a custom champagne-gold color on the detail areas.

I love the nursery so much! Such fun colors and I love those baskets :) And the flower artwork over the crib is so cute. Great work, girls!

Modern and Fresh Fall Home Tour So Far

Have you guys been checking out the Fall Home tour series so far? Such great ideas. Now I'm inspired to actually do some fall-time decor. I did already buy some baby white pumpkins and a big Cinderella style pretty pumpkin from Trader Joe's for our front porch.

I just wanted to share some of my favorite photos from the tour so far:

 Lindsay's house is always inspiring, but its particularly cozy this time of year. I love all her blankets and rugs. She and I are always on the same page!

Sarah M. Dorsey Designs made the coolest candle sticks:

Gabbi from Retro Ranch Reno did the cutest little acorn project.

Brittany Makes' bedroom is soooo cozy!

Julia's Halloween decor is AMAZING.

Also head over to Jesse from Scout and Nimble blog's beautiful cozied-up space:

Here's the line up for the rest of the month, incase you missed it!

2 – Sarah from Sarah M. Dorsey Designs

3 – Gabbi from Retro Ranch Reno

4 – Brittany from Brittany Makes

5 – Jesse from Scout & Nimble

6 – Julia from Cuckoo 4 Design

7 – Carolyn from Sweet Chaos Home

8 – Jennifer from The Chronicles of Home

9 – Bethany from Dwellings by Devore

10 – Carmel from Our Fifth House

11 – Kristin from The Hunted Interior

12 – Annekke from This That & Life 

13 – Michelle from Décor and the Dog

14 – Cassie from Primitive & Proper

15 – Ally from From the Right Bank

16 – Shannon from Shannon Berrey Designs

17 – Danika from Gorgeous Shiny Things

18 – Kristin from Bliss at Home

19 – Jenna from Rain on a Tin Roof

20 – Jessica from Dear Emmeline

21 – Kelly from View Along the Way

22 – Sarah from Lacquer and Linen

23 – Eileen from A Creative Day Blog

24 – Sarah from Royal Marigold

25 – Lori from Lori May Interiors

26 – Jennifer from Dimples and Tangles

27 – Caitlin from Desert Domicile

28 – Sherry from Design Indulgence

29 – Lakeitha from Lakeitha Duncan Lifestyle Blog

30 – Shavonda from A Home Full of Color

31 – Angela from Number Fifty-three and Jennifer from Brave New Home.