paint : ordinary mom

tag: paint

Sep 19

2011

my office: the cork board failure

Failure

Learned this lesson this weekend!

I gave myself a challenge this week to not spend ANY money on things except groceries. It is going well and has come quite easy and is inspiring me to get stuff done with the stuff I already own.

One example was that I had an old bulletin board that I was going to repaint white (ugly fake wood) for the office wall. I taped, primed, painted and sealed. Once dry I removed tape, which took paint along with it PLUS the fake wood paper cover and some of the cork! UGH! I was so frustrated.

And then I thought “well, now I guess I will have to buy a new bulletin board.” And then I remembered my challenge. And then I thought, do I want a cork board in my office SO much that I would buy a new one? The answer? Nope.

I don’t want a cork board OR a chalkboard in my office. Once I get things organized and put in place, I want the space to feel calm and inspiring. This means, no clippings, no scribblings, just pretty and fun framed pictures. I love the idea of a mood board but I also love the idea of calmness. A mood board may not be me. Is not me. I have mood scrapbooks that I love to work in and can put away at the end of the day.

I don’t think I would have realized this was actually what I wanted unless I had completely and utterly FAILED! So I am thankful for that green tape that just tore apart my idea of an “easy” project for the office.

Now on to the next thing.

What have you happily failed at lately?

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, life, musings, our house
Tags: decor, DIY, fail, new house, office, paint

Apr 20

2011

Robot Painting

While working on our son’s room, I had an old robot painting I did for him a couple of years ago. Here is an old picture of it:

robot painting: before

I liked it but never loved it. It was fun and colourful but too symmetrical and simple for my liking. So I decided to add some texture. And by texture I mean words. So I looked up as many words as I could find that could be associated to robots. I designed it in Illustrator, printed it out and transferred it to the canvas with carbon paper and painted the ones that were in the background. You can see in some areas, the carbon letters go over the robot that I did not paint. I liked the added interest it gives, and now it looks like this:

robot painting: after

I am almost done the rest of his room, and will post pictures of the completed room soon.

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Posted by Janet under create
Tags: art, create, kids, paint, typography

Apr 06

2011

our house: girl’s bedroom

I am VERY excited to post that I am finally done our daughter’s room. D-O-N-E.

Even though a lot of this I have changed/made myself, this will not be a place to share a “how to” with anyway. If I showed you how to paint furniture, you would have little hard paint drips in more than one place, like me, from not sanding enough or painting too thick. If I showed you how to quilt a pillow, you would be tracing your fabric squares out in PEN and not really caring if your corners match up.

But if there is one thing I would like you take away from this, is that no one ever looks close enough to see these imperfections, so let’s not focus on them, shall we? (This is a good lesson for other aspects of life as well)

Without further ado, here is her room:

Her bed, painted nightstand and bookcase

Her bureau, kitchen and table

This was an old fake wood bookcase I painted green. I followed Censational Girl’s directions for painting laminate. I also wanted to put numbers on the tags for her bins, but she demanded letters, and not just any letters but P, Q, R, & S. I figured, why not? [owl is from a great etsy store: Manic Muffin Totes]

Her bookcase

I just finished this today and LOVE it, but don’t look too close at my corners. ;)

Her quilted pillow

I love this nightstand. It was black from Loblaws and looks awesome green. I also like that I hung her night light super low so she can turn it on and off herself from bed. [artwork by Holli Conger]

Her nightstand and night light

This is her princess mirror. Again, it was black (from an Ikea bureau) and I painted it slightly greener than her walls. And added some rhinestone stickers from the dollar store.

Her princess mirror

This is her play kitchen. I made it out of an old nightstand of my parent’s and love it, although I would do a bunch of things differently if I did it again.

Her play kitchen

And lastly, this is her table and chairs where she serves all her meals. I painted two discount canvases with a window design to give her dining room a view (of the beach since I miss the East Coast).

Her table and chairs with a view

So there you have it. Now that I am done her room, off to finish my son’s.

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Posted by Janet under decorate, our house
Tags: art, create, decor, DIY, dollar store, kids, paint, sew

Apr 03

2011

collaborative art

As all parents can attest out there, my kids inspire me. But I never expected my son to inspire my artwork. And that is exactly what he did.

When trying to figure out some artwork to put up in his room, I knew that I wanted something colourful and fun. I started thinking of things I could paint when I was inspired by the blog The Painted House where you can see in her school room tour a painting she did based on her son’s drawing. I loved it and thought what a great thing that we could create.

So I put aside all drawings that have been created in the last few weeks. Which isn’t hard since we probably average about 5 a day these days (can I say I love having a little man artist in the house?). And then I picked the one I loved the most and photocopied it in the right size and transferred it to a dollar store canvas:

the city painting: before

And after a night of painting in his lines, I came up with this:

the city painting: after

Can’t wait to do another one and then finish up his room with these.
Total cost: $5 [$3 for carbon paper & $2 for canvas]

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Posted by Janet under create
Tags: art, dollar store, kids, paint

Mar 31

2011

colourful stars

So I don’t have a real before picture of this area, but next to the desk area in our kitchen (currently where I work until I get my office next month!) I had hung my three barn stars that I had collected over the years. Two were brown and one was blue. Now one thing that I realized when I looked at them daily is that they bugged me! They really bugged me.

I am learning that in my design tastes, I don’t like high contrast. It is knowledge that is really helping me to figure out the areas that draw my eye (in a bad way) and to change them to be something I love. So I knew I had to change these dark stars that sat on my yellow walls. But I liked the stars, so what I need to do was keep them but change them.

And then I came across the blog junk garden girl which was FILLED with lots of inspirational photos for me. And this one in particular caught my eye:

source: junk garden girl

The stars! Look at how great they look, all textured and painted. So I pulled out my trusty acrylics and some awesome stencils I got from the dollar store and came up with this:

my new stars

Here are the close ups of the designs:

green & swirly

green & floral

blue damask

Can you tell what my favourite colours are?

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Posted by Janet under decorate
Tags: kitchen, paint, stars

Mar 30

2011

french to farm

So I have had this sign in my kitchen for years. I can’t even remember where I originally picked it up at, but it was perfect for hanging under my cabinets on the back splash where I wanted a little interest. It worked o.k in our last house as you can see from this picture:

sign before: cafe

As a designer, there was always a few things that bugged me about this sign:

The letter spacing was TOO wide. In fact the sign was too wide for only the word “cafe” but it was a nice size for a sign.
The large letter “c” was too fat for the other letters, it is a problem that bugs me with all small cap designs, but really bugged me here.
The fake texture looked cheesy up close.

So when I pulled out this sign at the new house, I knew right away it wouldn’t work. At first I just put it aside and then decided it was a perfect opportunity to MAKE it work and fix all those issues I had before. So going with my country/farmhouse theme on the main level, I looked up some vintage signs for inspiration and then came up with this:

sign after: farm fresh eggs

I love it! It now adds a little colour above the stove, doesn’t bug me anymore and fits with our decor.

Now what else can I paint? ;)

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate
Tags: farmhouse, kitchen, paint

tag: paint

my office: the cork board failure

Robot Painting

our house: girl’s bedroom

collaborative art

colourful stars

french to farm

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