Wisconsin love: John Michael Kohler Arts Center (artist Jessica Calderwood)

Bloom by Jessica Calderwood

First off, if you ever end of traveling in Wisconsin and you like art, well, you better get yourself over to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheybogan. We were having an "off" day (2.5 weeks of togetherness will do that to a family) and the weather was so-so and after having a very windy picnic I kind of insisted on going to this place. Y'all know me, I had done my research ahead of time so no awesome art destination was escaping my radar. It was one of those places that was really for me more than anyone else in my family but they all found it amusing enough. All that to say, please visit!

Head Full of Thistle, Bad Seed, and Haze – all by Jessica Calderwood

My favorite new artist discover in Wisconsin was the lovely Jessica Calderwood. I imagine her to be a lovely person since I find her work lovely. Slightly odd, occasionally disturbing, but mostly pretty. I was very amused by the lady legs attached to plant life. Or the portraits of flowers. And her clever titles are just as telling as the pieces. Despite these pieces being faceless there is a startling amount of emotion in each of them.

Succulent, Barren, Propagated, and Rooted – all by Jessica Calderwood

I just had to devote a whole post to her because I couldn't pick just one favorite.

So Square by Jessica Calderwood

old windows and chalkboard frames in progress

In a burst of spring cleaning/nesting I have given away most of my old window frames. I kept two and got them going. One I am sealing with a coat of fresh white paint and I intend to put black and white photographs in it. I have a wall of black and white art in my basement (the wall itself is red, such a great color scheme if I do say so myself). The other I am going to turn into a chalkboard for the kiddos but first I painted it the same great teal as my kitchen. I want to let that teal paint get nice and dry and hard before I put paint tape on it and do the chalkboard paint.

I have a great vision of having a whole chalkboard gallery for my kids to draw on. Originally my thought was to paint the chalkboard squares right on the wall and hang empty frames over them. Then I discovered via Pinterest that you can just paint right on the glass and thought that made much more sense! If you are interested, I found this blog post comparing brush-on chalkboard paint to spray-on chalkboard paint most helpful. I already have a can of the brush-on version so we are sticking with that.

So I got a whole collection of frames in the middle of being painted.* Actually, they are done. But I haven't put them back together yet. So they are in a sorry little heap. I don't think I can hang them until I get the old window chalkboard done. They are all going to be hung in the same stairwell and I need to map that out all at one time.

I am starting to think this is not a project I will get done before baby arrives so I figured I would give you a sneak peek for the time being. Oh, and I must show you my inspirations (via Pinterest of course). See it? Won't that be fun?

*Did you notice the crazy rainbow collection of colors. Gallons upon gallons? Every one of those colors is on a wall in my house somewhere! Hee!

Chalkboard labels for toy bins

When my girls combined bedrooms they also combined toys. This motivated me to label the bins on their IKEA toy storage containers. I also went to the further unnecessary step of labeling the toy bins in the baby's room. Chalk it up to nesting, I guess!

My main challenge was that I did not want to make the labels out of sticker paper or anything too permanent. I settled on cutting apart an old corrugated plastic sign, coating it with 3 coats of chalkboard paint, and then adhering it to the bins with hot glue. It's been a few weeks and the hot glue seems to be holding up as an adhesive. I imagine they could be picked off of the plastic bins pretty easily.

A note on knobs

As part of the dresser update I had fantasies about all the beautiful knob options that are out there. The fact that I needed to purchase 16 of those babies brought me and my budget back to reality. Then I went on a pinning spree about all the cute ways you could paint the plain wooden knobs that the dressers came with.

Never one to be daunted by a craft project, I had my husband help me screw the knobs into a box top for stability and got painting. I went with yellow to match the room's walls. The dresser with pink drawers had knob designs in blue. The dresser with blue drawers had knob designs in pink.

Now that it is over with I am going to say it was not as easy as I had expected. I think I may have been hindered by my lack of artist quality brushes as well. So if you like the look of hand-painted knobs but have any doubt about your ability to paint fine details, I would strongly suggest you support one of the lovely etsy artists who sell these!

Dual dresser updates

Part of the pre-baby plan is to move little sister in with big sister. Since big sister's current bed is also her dresser we needed a new dresser for her and then also for little sister. I got obsessed last fall with cruising Craig's List and visiting the Allegan Antique Market. I found two vintage dressers in need of a little love. Then the weather got colder and I got to feeling sicker and all progress stopped. So there the poor dressers sat in the garage all winter long.

Fast forward to spring and here we go!

This is as close as you're going to get to an official "before" photo. The one on the left was from Craig's List and had been painted at least twelve times previous. It did end up being the better functioning piece of furniture in terms of the drawers sliding. 

The one on the right was from the Antique Market and upon closer examination by my husband we've decided it is likely homemade. I did fall in love with its sweet details: the picket fence sides and the sweet little curves along the top and bottom. However, the drawers definitely don't glide as nicely. Ah, well.

My first design idea was white dressers with drawers done ombre style. So the top drawer would be pink at 100%, the next at 80% of the original shade, 60% and 40%. Of course, I was going to do this on the cheap so that meant I would be adding white to the original shade and trying to invent my own lighter shades. This looks very cool but in the end the idea kind of tired me out.

So the modification was to do all the drawers the same shade. The room is already done in pink, yellow, and green and I had in my head I wanted to add some blue to the mix. So one dresser has pink drawers (a wall color choice of the previous owners; yay for leftovers). The other dresser has my beloved blue from painting my kitchen.

The lovely "after" photos:

Art-making as a birthday gift!

One of my dearest friends "kidnapped" me for my birthday and whisked me off to a surprise destination: Naked Plates! It's a do-it-yourself pottery painting place. I was in a panic about what to choose to paint but luckily she had bought a special promotion. So I got a matching cup and bowl and a small plate. We started around 10:00 in the morning and totally intended to wrap it up before a nice lunch date.

As it turns out, we weren't done painting until 3:30 pm! Wow! I had a container of trail mix to sustain me and we always entertain each other quite well. Besides all the yacking and snacking, there was the fact that the base coat needs to be painted 3 times as does each individual thing you paint on top. If you check out my plate above you can see I didn't exactly make this easy on myself!

Our beauties before firing:

My plate after:

I thought it was going to be Christmas decor but I might just leave it up year round.

And my bowl and cup hard at work in the kitchen (not holding food though!):

A brightened basement corner

Speaking of the basement, I painted two walls back in the laundry/utility area with some leftover kitchen paint. I was loving the color, I had extra, and it was, well, gray, down by the washer and dryer. Top things off with my wooden fish that I bought one per year at Festival of the Arts long ago and have never ever hung on the wall and you have an improved space. Someday, I'd like to add some beach photos of my own to the room.

And now that I have fish swimming in the laundry room, this octopus laundry dryer from IKEA makes even more sense! I chose the red, of course.

I finally painted my kitchen! Rhapsody!

Once upon a blog post written in 2010 I lamented that my husband had "successfully put me off for almost four years now" from painting the kitchen. I then enthusiastically described the color I had settled on… perhaps with thoughts that I was going to paint it soon.

Well, fast-forward to August 2013, and my dear husband surprises me by bringing home a couple of gallons of "Sweet Rhapsody" by Behr. I was so excited I screamed! Painting a room a bright, fresh color is such a joy to me. I absolutely adore the transformation. Our girls went camping with grandma & grandpa for 2 nights and we used the kid-free time to paint the kitchen (and go on a romantic dinner date too!).

Check out this post from earlier this year when I finished the new kitchen curtains. Then you can see a proper "before" image.

And, here is the lovely, bright, cheerful "after:"

Christmas gift crafted: chalkboard ornaments!

I found this idea on Whip Up from a guest post by blogger Curly Birds over a year ago. I was originally aiming for the little people shapes as shown. And I had the thought to throw in pets too – little dogs and cats. But then I could not find the flat wooden people and decided to go with flat round discs instead, which made things simpler anyway.

Each one is painted with chalkboard paint and served double-duty this season as gift tags! Every family also got a box of colored chalk along with their individual ornaments to inspire future creativity.

My 4-year-old daughter helped me paint them this past Septembert. My only regret was that we did not paint them on a better surface – perhaps wax paper. Our generous application of paint made little puddles that ended up sticking to the newspaper. When everything was dry, we'd have little shreds of newspaper to pick off! The ornaments were unfinished so they soaked up the paint. I think we did 2 coats on each side.

I am hoping to keep up a similar craft in the future that can involve my little ones. I like the idea of them experience the joy of creating and giving and not just receiving.

Easter basket upgrade

Similar to the way I decorated my older daughter's basket long ago, I am now beautifying a basket for my younger daughter.

Before – your basic thrifted treasure. If there is one thing that is plentiful at thrift stores it is baskets:

Painting with older sister's help. I just used some extra house paint from the basement:

Some fabric on the inside along with some strips of fabric scraps as "grass" on the inside:

you blogged it: paint party

Painting with kids in a large-scale fashion is something I've done (inspired by The Artful Parent, one of my favorite blogs). However, the mom bloggers over at Couturier Mommy take it to a new level with their annual paint parties.

We were inspired to do a little outdoor painting ourselves. The oversize cardboard canvases came from the purchases of furniture and a television. Never let a good box go to waste!

Two halves of a box propped up together became an easel. Then it became a house to be painted inside and out. Then artist children ended up with paint in their hair!

painting outdoors

The poster I recently framed was wrapped in a deliciously large piece of brown kraft paper. Right away I knew this would make a fabulous canvas for my 3-year-old daughter.

I clipped it to our fence with clothespins and let her have free reign using her brushes, her hands, and even her feet. I love watching her go for it with complete freedom. She doesn't feel constrained by the idea of making her art look like anything. Instead, she just enjoys the process. Us adults could stand a bit more freedom in our creative doings!

 

valentine hearts

Instead of making valentine my craft project, this year I collaborated with the resident 2-year-old artist.

 In what became multi-step project, I first cut out hearts and she painted them.

Another weekend I glued them to cards and she added marker drawings. During the first drawing session, she focused on drawing around the hearts. When we returned to the cards to finish them up she went a totally different direction and colored directly on the hearts. I was interested to see her two different approaches.

a color choice has been made

Well, we're one step closer to updating the future "big girl room." My daughter has made the color selection and we have purchased 2 gallons of paint. We've both got time off between the holidays so hopefully we can make some paint progress!

Pantone has announced their color of the year!

A sassy pinkish red dubbed "honeysuckle!"

 

It reminds me of the hard-to-define color I pulled from some fabric we used in the nursery and put in the mural I painted once upon a time:

paint project: rain barrel

I started with a coat of primer, followed by two coats of a solid dark green, and finished up with experiment I am about to share with you.

I will say that I did not completely solve the mystery of how to best paint a very smooth plastic barrel. I am wondering if I should have roughed up the surface with some sand paper before I even started. The paint has been chipped in a couple of places. A chunk is peeled right back to the original smooth plastic.

Since the rain barrel will live in my garden I wanted it to look like it belonged. I suppose the other tactic would have been to transform it into an eye-catching piece of artwork. I did consider this... I mulled over coating it in broken plates and mirrors. At any rate, I finally settled on the more "natural" look by choosing two rather tame shades of green.

As I mentioned, I did the darker green as a base. For the lighter green I gathered various leaves from around the yard and used them like stamps: dipping them in the paint and pressing them on the rain barrel. It worked fairly well. I would suggest doing an initial print on a piece of paper to remove excess paint before stamping it onto the rain barrel.

The result looks rather abstract and textural but I am happy with it. I got so excited about the fern and the reverse side of the hosta leaf (where the veins are thicker and pick up paint better) that I printed some on paper. I might just scan them and make some notecards or stationery with them.

paint project: doors

Bright and early Saturday morning I got started painting the front doors. The directions said to wait four hours before a second coat, which I did. Then we just left them open all day letting the cool breeze blow over them. They dried rather quickly. I always love how fresh something looks when it has been repainted.

The before and after doesn't do justice for the door since it is in shadow behind the screen door. But you can still compare the shutter colors!

Before:

After: