I had seen something similar before in a store like Bed, Bath and Beyond or maybe it was Gordman's. Anyways, I'd seen something like this in stores before and I'd liked it. So I thought, how great would it be to be able to make it for cheap instead of paying the $30+ to buy it? We need some art for our living room, since I have one completely blank wall so I thought I might be able to make this work for that room.
First I read over the tutorial a couple times and got an idea of whether I really thought I could do this. I've attempted some artsy projects before wtih mixed results...ha! But this one really involves a minimal amount of actual "painting" so I thought, I probably couldn't mess it up too badly.
So I went to my local craft store and picked out some paint colors that I thought would coordinate with the living room, a canvas, some spray paint and a paint pen. I was good to go after that trip and pretty excited. The one hiccup was that I couldn't find the round sponge brushes you need to make the flowers. I had to go to a couple other places but eventually found those. So now, I was in business!
The first step on the tutorial is to spray paint the canvas. I didn't expect that step really but it totally makes a differnece in the end product. The canvas comes in a very bright white color and I was going for more of an antiquey look. I used a beige spray paint color and had to do it a couple times to get the color even (lesson learned: do not spray paint directly above a canvas or the excess spray paint will drip and make big globs on your canvas :) but eventually I got to a great beigey colored canvas and I was ready to start the fun part of this project.
So the tutorial says to use a paint pen to draw the branches since that is easier than trying to paint them. Well I couldn't find a brown paint pen, so I got black, which I already was not super happy with. Then when I started using the paint pen it was turning out to be a big hassle. It was covering unevenly (possibly because of the spray paint) and was just really hard to work with. I had some brown paint leftover from another project so I decided to go ahead and paint the branches.
Well that was a huge pain! and took forever! ha ha! But I think it really paid off because I love the way the branches turned out. I got a little obsessive with painting them and trying to make them look "pefect", but whatever. I let those dry for a day and then got into the fun part of doing the sponge flowers. I originally had chosen those colors: light blue, lavendar, a burnt orange/red, dark blue and dark purple. I did the painting with those colors and after letting it dry, decided they really didn't go together super well. So I experimented with some other colors I had and ended up covering up the light blue with a sage green and a few others.
I also had to redo over the dark purple because the paint (I guess because it was older, from anther project) dried all funny and globby. It didn't look good. So I painted over those as well.
So after a few hiccups, I came up with this finished product. I am actually really happy with the way it turned out! I'm also very proud of myself for making this artsy-ish painting. Steve was kind of enough to hang it up in the living room for me and I'm pretty happy with how the colors I chose go in that room.
What do you think? Easy peasy DIY painting! More DIY to come :)
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