So here’s another post pretty quickly, to push down the last post that shows my living room! Why? I’ve always felt weird posting my home on the internet. I don’t know how other bloggers do it. I’d rather show small glimpses than full rooms. Hence, the lack of a House Tour tab here. (I’ve also noticed people saying “hence” a lot lately. Is it a word trend?)
Because I’m more comfortable showing small snippets of my house, here’s a few projects around the house that I’ve done lately as a contributor to Paint + Pattern blogzine. If you haven’t seen Paint + Pattern yet, it’s all about painting with stencils in lots of creative ways! I tend to paint patterns on “off the wall” things: fabrics, furniture, scrapbook paper, wood and MDF boards, even paper mache boxes.
Painting on Ready-to-Wear Shawls
Here’s a tribal stencil pattern that I painted on shawls found at World Market. You can get all the how-to details at Paint + Pattern:
Painting on Paper Mache Boxes
Here’s some grrrrrrrrrrrreat animal print storage boxes. They were plain brown paper mache boxes from the craft store, then stenciled with … hold on … fuzzy flocking! I told you some things over at Paint + Pattern get really creative. Find out how to stencil with flocking at the tutorial post:
Oh, to make the boxes look more like travel trunks on safari, I added little leather handles and metal corners which you can find in scrapbooking supplies from Tim Holtz.
Painting on Porcelain Mugs
With paint pens made to paint on ceramic and porcelain, I drew outlines in stencils on some mugs to make a morning cuppa creativity:
After painting the mugs, you put them in the oven and bake them to permanently set the paint. I’ve been throwing these mugs in the dishwasher and they still look good as new!
Painting on MDF Boards
Here’s an oldie but goodie from Paint + Pattern — these are actually 12″ x 36″ MDF boards sold as inexpensive $5 shelves at home improvement stores like Menards and Home Depot! I covered them with scrapbook paper, then stenciled on the scrapbook paper. The MDF bookshelves became wall art:
So if you’re curious about stenciling but you can’t paint walls or don’t want to, there’s many other things you can paint with stencils! Follow along over at Paint + Pattern to see some ideas.
And now I’ve shown you smaller glimpses of our living room and sunroom, a peek at our wintery gardens and even the inside of my oven! And yes I furiously cleaned it before photographing it to put online! But it’s far more comfortable to put a picture of the inside of our oven online (it’s a KitchenAid Architect series oven, about 10 years old) than to show my entire kitchen. Maybe some day …