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Thursday, February 11, 2010

My DIY art

After much hinting (meaning I wrote out my Christmas list, down to title and author) my long-suffering husband bought me the book "Artful Spaces: DIY Wall Art for the Home" by Gerard Smith. Besides being an entertaining read, there are 24 different projects in the book, with pictures and enough explanation that a non-artist like myself can actually do any of them.

I had been reading the book since Christmas, but still couldn't decide which project I would like to do, and with what colors, etc. Last week my mother undertook a re-do on my sister's homeschool room, and I decided to provide the art. I settled on doing one large painting (18 x 24) and a series of three smaller ones (12 x 12).

My first step was an adaptation that I came up with. All of the projects involve acrylics, but I wanted the painting to have some texture like an oil painting, so I decided to do a layer of paper mache before I painted. See below!


Next (after drying) was the actual painting, and below is the final result. In between the paper mache step and the final painting was a completely different painting, but I decided I hated it. The beauty of paint . . . I just covered over it! I made the orange squares with a potato stamp, and like that they all turned out a little bit different, although overall uniform.


Next up was the series of three. First I mixed my paint to come up with the right gray, and then painted all the canvases with two coats. I decided what design I wanted to paint, and used one of our small drinking glasses to make the circles. Dip and stamp!


I got all of my canvases from Big Lots. I had priced them at an art store, and they were as expensive as $50 apiece! Big Lots had them for $3 - 7 apiece, much more in my price range. And the paints . . . when we bought our house the previous owners left all of their house paint in the basement. I had gotten rid of 30 cans, and there were still plenty of cans left. Not sure I would choose to paint an entire room that color orange, but it sure came in handy for this project!

Now if only I could finally decide what I want to paint for our own living room . . .

3 comments:

Earlybirdmom said...

Excuse me...you may not be an "artist", per say, but you are only one of the most creative, artistic people I know!(Not to mention fearlessly confident in your willingness to tackle almost anything!)

Unknown said...

WOW Laurel I love it! You are soooooo good. I may use your stuff for an art piece for meagan and Keiths new bedroom. Greens and blues please :) You are awesome. How do you find the time!?

Kristin said...

Hey, I recognize those! : ) They're even better in real life, though I love these photos of them.

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