Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Field of Flowers

I was musing last night about how I've all of a sudden begun to decorate my apartment when we're going to be leaving it in just a few months. This TTC life is making me so crazy that I'm taking it out on my apartment :-) I think I ovulated this month..but we chickened out and only BD'd once during my ovulation. What will be will be...

El Hubster has actually been banished from the bedroom for about two weeks now. He's snoring like a giant these days and it's kept me up every night...even if I go to bed first and get a head start. There are so many "cures" for snoring out there and  honestly we don't know what will ultimately work for him..short of losing a few pounds. So until we find a temporary solution...El Hubster is sleeping on the inflatable bed in the living room. Last night I watched him set it all up with his pillow and his comforter and I got the sense that he liked sleeping by himself! I was not pleased. I don't want him to get too comfortable being away from me.

I say all that to say...I'm the only one enjoying the art I'm about to share :-) unless there is a conjugal visit for insemination purposes. Ha!

My inspiration for this project was this one from Pinterest:

I loved the idea and felt it was something I, a painting amateur, could do. It's simply a large canvas, paint, making lines and circles. It wasn't rocket science. I assembled my materials:
A canvas that I bought for about $17 from Michaels...this was 18 x 22 in size I think but you can literally use whatever size canvas you want. And don't forget to put a tarp or something down to catch any drips.
I used the leftover paints I've been using for all of my art projects...
This time I added a paper plate to hold my paints and bought a cheap pack of small brushes, which you can get at most 99-cent stores, and a small inexpensive bottle of black acrylic paint to make my stems. You don't need much of the acrylic paint..maybe a drop the size of a quarter.
First, I brushed the whole canvas with my base color--Barely Beige by Benjamin Moore. I let that dry (about 10 minutes with the living room window open). I strayed a bit from my inspiration here because I decided I wanted to have a little grass on the bottom of my canvas. I used my largest brush and brushed up and down across the canvas and let it dry for another 10 minutes.
Second, I used one of my small brushes (the size of a pen/pencil) to make lines of different lengths across the canvas.You can make them as long as you like! Acrylic paint dries pretty fast but wait at least 2-3 minutes for your sticks to dry so you don't get any bleed through on your "abstract" flowers. I went over to my paper plate, sampled my turquoise paint (with a different brush) and added circles on top of the lines. Just make a circle with your brush by swirling the brush...in a circle. See, so easy!
 After a while, I had added more lines of different lengths and used my other colors(each paint color had its own brush) to make circles. It's pretty haphazard and there was no rhyme or reason as to what stick went where. If it looks good to you, it's where it's supposed to be! You can see that I started to make my sticks branch off eventually.
And here's the finished product! I love it and I can't wait to take it with us to our new place.

I've always been a lover of art..but not so much a lover of the price of good art. I only learned this year that I could make my own and save tons of money! I'm probably really late to this party. If you use a larger canvas...who can tell you it didn't come from a shi-shi foo-foo gallery?

I also added some DIY art to the living room...I went on a Marshall's spree and found a very beautiful Ralph Lauren scarf that matched my color scheme...blue/green/yellow...for only $12. I had some picture frames on hand that had been holding some scrapbook paper that I didn't love. So, I promptly cut up the pretty scarf and framed it.
The colors sort of blend into one another and provide a little texture for the wall.

Go forth and paint!

2 comments:

  1. That is so cute and simple! I think I'm going to try it. I think it will be cute to play with the colors and put one in the Cate's room.

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  2. It's so easy even I could do it! lol Try it... :-)

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