Welcome House Name Signs

Welcome Family House Name Signs

Dress up the Front Porch/Entry Way!

I visited a friends brand spankin' new house recently that she some how magically Mary Poppins style decorated in no time to perfection!  I really wonder if she had a magic bottomless bag full of cute decor and just sang and danced as it all came into place in a day! I'm too indecisive, frugal and DIY-er to get my house together that fast, and too ADD to notice that things are still not done...but her home did inspire me.  I fell in love with her custom family house name sign on her front porch and wanted to make my own.  I did a little research to find out what I liked and then made a mashup of a couple styles of family name signs put together.

My inspiration were these

 

By Longfellowdesigns on Etsy

And this gem I found on google image search by Mango Seed Designs...I cannot for the life of me find this again to post the link as I had saved the pic on my phone...

So anyways, Here is mine

I had an old canvas with a hideous reddish purple-y abtsract painting I had started long ago...I brushed on some turquoise craft paint and once that dried, I lightly sanded it so some of the darker colors underneath would show through.  Then Free handed the rest so yes it's imperfect, but isn't the the beauty of homemade/handmade items?  Not perfect!  At least at my house!  Anyways, I'm excited to finally not have a naked front porch!

I really like the chalkboard style welcome family name signs, but since I didn't have any black paint on hand and love turquoise I decided to make it a turquoise welcome house sign!  And being frugal, those bales of hay are dual purpose, it's future fresh hay for the chicken coop!  I can't believe it's like $8 or more for those tiny little decorative bales of hay when you can go to the feed store and get actual bales of hay for like $5!  Now...looking at this picture I just remembered I better go water those mums!  And...I guess I can take down the spider now that Halloween is over!

The Dress - Painting with Plaster

The Dress

Painted with Plaster

The first time I made a painting where the image was made with plaster and then painted over for a 3D effect was in college when I was doing some works for a production at the Yakima museum.  I made six 6x6 ft paintings...each one themed after the music compositions that were being performed.  My sister choreographed a dance to go with each song too so the production was a combination of live jazz, dance and visual art.  It was cool.  The plaster was used on a painting called Punctuation.  I made a huge punctuation mark on the canvas with plaster, then painted the whole canvas a solid color and then splattered it all jackson pollock style...I thought it went with the theme of punctuation with the punctuated marks they left.  ANYWAYS, I really enjoyed using plaster and have wanted to do it again ever since.  I have ALSO been wanting to make a dress painting for a long time too...like .....Then, a few months ago when I was researching faux finishing when I was getting ready to do the bathroom makeover  I discovered Segreto Finishes by Leslie Sinclair and fell in LOVE.  Then I was looking through the Segreto Art Gallery and saw the paintings by Rachel Schwind and saw the paintings she made with plaster and was inspired.  Her dress paintings with plaster are like the perfect combination of the 2 types of paintings I've been wanting to do for the last few years!  So I made this for the master bedroom.  

work in progress...

work in progress....

I wanted to make it more greyish and muted the way Rachel Schwind does, but wanted to have some blue undertones so I painted a mix of grey and teal on the background and then just teal over the dress.  I started adding a white-ish wash to the background..toning it down...but then I couldn't bring myself to do it over the dress...it wasn't what I intended...but I loved the pop of color...it still has the simplicity I wanted anyways.  I used plaster and painted it on with a palette knife.  waited for it to dry and then added paint.  Only mistake...I should have not done this on a canvas...the plaster is cracking like crazy so I am going to get a bunch of midge podge and paint that over top of the whole thing to try to keep it from cracking further and hopefully keep any plaster from cracking too much and falling off!  I would be so sad.  The cracks aren't too noticeable unless you get up and look real close but they make me nervous!  The punctuation painting was on canvas too and there was no cracking...even after trasport in a u-haul but maybe it was because that canvas was so thick and sturdy...these canvases I've been buying are really inexpensive and are light and flimsy...I'm not even sure if it's real canvas..it's almost papery because if I get it too wet...the edges start to fray...so maybe that is the problem.  But large canvases are EXPENSIVE!  This one was $16! and it's a good size!  you get what you pay for I guess.

And after I made this dress painting, my 5 year old, who is dress obsessed, wanted to make a dress painting too and design her own dress so I did a google image search for dress paintings and let her pick out a reference picture and she made this, all by herself and she is so proud of it she keeps saying we need to send it to a factory so they can make it into a real dress.


When she seriously wants to draw something, I sit down and give her a little instruction by drawing the same picture along side her on my own paper and explaining what I'm doing as I go and then she draws hers at the same time.  It's from the Monart method when I was teaching art classes and it's nice because I never touch her picture and she can look at it after and be proud that she did the entire thing by herself.  As you can see I turned mine into a silly clown picture as we painted along side each other.  She wanted it to have polk-a-dots so I had her make the dots with crayons and then paint watercolor overtop, a 5 year old couldn't paint a polk-a-dot dress it would be a mess...so this worked well and kids always love seeing the crayon resist the watercolor.  When is was dry she added glitter.

While doing the google image search for "dress paintings" we found the artist Roxanne Rossi and I am LOVING her dress paintings.  So simplistic and beautiful I had to share!  Almost made me wish I painted something like this instead of the plaster dress....(almost! still love the plaster dress painting)

Quick DIY Fireplace Update

Quick Easy 

DIY Fireplace Update

I have been doing tons of projects big, small, tedious, creative...you name it!  This May was our 1 year anniversary of living here in our first home and just as we were really feeling settled and starting to know what we wanted to do decorating wise (it took me a long time)...a great opportunity came up and my hubby's job is taking us to Georgia.  Our house was in great shape when we moved in a year ago so you wouldn't think there would be much to do to get it ready to go on the market....but there is still a lot to do.  One of the first, simple updates I did was paint the gold trim on the fireplace.  Our realtor said she spray painted hers black and I could not believe how brave she was to spray paint inside her house!  But I loved the idea so I found Krylon Satin Back Acrylic Latex Enamel paint at Walmart in the spray paint section and painted it on with a foam brush and it turned out perfect...I am so sad I didn't do this sooner so I could have enjoyed it more before listing the house (which will happen sometime within the next week).  $4 well spent!!!

I've done a couple other simple updates and projects so stay tuned...I've learned my lesson and will do these simple things right away in our next house!  (ps...So sad to sell this house...we LOVE it).

Here is the BEFORE.....outdated gold metal trim....

Here's all you need
                                      

Tape off the glass and handles if needed.

Here's how the first coat looked...I had a moment of panic if it was going to turn out super crappy...

Here is the second coat...looking a bit better....don't worry it dries pretty fast..5-10 minutes between coats

 Here is the 3rd coat.....

 and after the 4th coat (for good measure)

This is AFTER

So much better right?