Painter Girl

Trees

My love of trees is no secret. 

I have birch trees on the walls in my livingroom.

 

Recently had two jobs, back to back, where I stenciled some trees.  I used two stencils that were new to me, which I had been eager to try.

 

First up, is this beautiful Topiary Tree stencil by Olive Leaf Stencils, done in soft shades of blues over a yellow/gold background.  These trees are stenciled on all walls in this dining room. I love this tree.  You will be seeing it in my own home, shortly!  I'm sure I have a wall somewhere that needs this tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up, is a fun tree from Cutting Edge Stencils, their Large Tree with Birds.

I did this for my daughter's long time friend, Tanya and her husband, Shant, who are expecting their first baby very soon.  Once the baby is born, I will return and add her name in between the two trees.  The crib will be placed in the center.

A Little Help

So what I basically did for the Peacock and Butterfly room was to stencil the silhouette shapes of the peacocks, vines and leaves.  I created all the large silhouette stencils for this room myself because all I needed was the basic shape, no details.

Here are the 3 peacock silhouette shapes I used:

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I had the silhouettes on all of the walls, I knew just who to call to add the details!

Chris Smith to the rescue!  Chris spent 3 painstakingly days embellishing all the peacocks and leaves!  Using a variety of small scale stencils and freehand techniques, the flat silhouettes came to life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't you just love the blue tape all over her top?

Here are some of her creations:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, I added the gems.  I went all out for the peacocks, but because I had already put about 1,000 (literally!) gems on the butterflies, I decided not to gem the individual leaves.  I just added sets of 3 gems to each stem.  I ordered 1 gross (1,440) of each of the three colored gems I would use  for both of these rooms, so that's 4,320 gems! In the end, I probably had 500 left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        

I loved the way this room turned out and truly appreciated Chris's patience with all the detailing!

Tomorrow we will look at the Tropical Room.

The Peacocks and Parrots Series

Oh, yes... I know I have once again shirked my blogging responsibilities, but I have just been too over scheduled to find a minute to pull together a post.  I have been dying to show you the latest rooms I have had the pleasure to work in though, so I vow to carve out an half hour each day this coming week to put my fingers to my keyboard and write this Peacock and Parrot Series!  A long time client of mine recently had twins and needed some extra space in the house, so the attic was reconfigured and two huge bedrooms for the oldest girls in the family were created.

One room, I refer to as the Peacock and Butterfly Room and the other is the Tropical Room, featuring fish, parrots and palm trees.  I'll start by showing you the Peacock and Butterfly Room.  These rooms are big.  I spent three weeks between the two rooms, so I will need to break the work down in sections as I post. By the way, over 3000 gems were used between the two rooms, so get ready for a lot of bling! ;-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above, you see the "before" shots.  At each end of the Peacock and Butterfly Room, there are these sloped walls.  They are not mirror images, but both have the slanted walls.  The photo to the far right shows how the room connects to a Jack and Jill bathroom, with the Tropical Room on the other side.  I started by putting a soft glaze over all of the walls, which you will vaguely see in photos to follow.

For both end of the room, where the walls slant, I used Cutting Edge Designs fabulous Butterfly Dance wall stencil.  This stencil has a great placement of small to large butterflies, making it perfect to scatter on a wall, very quickly.  I used metallic paints for all of the butterflies, and applied gems to each. I did initially try using some foils, but found this too time consuming for this particular project, so abandoned that thought after doing a few! 

The color in this photo is truer to the actual rom color.  This shows a good portion of one of the slanted walls.  Later, you will see a full shot of these slanted ceilings, when I show you the Peacock and Vines on the adjacent walls. 

Peacocks and Vines tomorrow!

Two Girls Rooms

The project I am currently working on is just too much fun.  The entire attic of this large home has been converted into two very large bedrooms with a connecting hallway and Jack and Jill bathroom.  I hope to have these two rooms done by Thanksgiving.  The pink room has a butterfly and peacock theme.  The blue room has a tropical beach and fish theme.

The pink room has some very interesting ceiling lines!  Btw, I don't know why the contractor before me did not clean up his mess.  The nice thing is, there is only a sub-floor down now, so no need for drop cloths and no furniture in the room to have to move or work around!  I had the slanted ceilings painted a dark pink, while the flat ceiling piece and the walls are a light pink.  A soft glaze will be applied over all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the opposite end of the room.  I have already added the glaze to the darker pink slanted ceiling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blue room has only one area with a slanted ceiling.  I had the entire room base coated in a light blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the opposite end of the room. This will be the sleeping area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using some flex tape, I have taped out a band all around this portion of the room where a wave will be added. I glazed the walls in the entire room starting with a very light blue at the ceiling line, progressing to a deeper blue at the baseboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using Cutting Edge's Fish Scale Allover stencil, I created the wave. I have had my eye on this design for some time now and am thrilled to finally be able to put it to go use!  I love the way Cutting Edge packages their stencils.  The stencils are large and sturdy and come with a topper and a small singe stencil on one scale... all for a great low price!  Having three sizes of the same stencil included in one package makes it much easier to stencil those hard to reach areas without having to cut or bend the heck out of your stencils.

 

The opposite end of the room will be the study area and have a tropical beach scene.  I have taped out the bottom, again using the flex tape, for the beach. 

I have miles to go with these two rooms!

Fireman Room for Boy

My client wanted to use this Pottery Barn bedding as her inspiration for a Fireman Themed Room for her 2 year old son.

 

 

 

 

 

I did a rough sketch of an idea for one wall, using some off-white wooden letters she already had, that spelled out her son's name.

 

 

 

 

Here is the completed wall...

 

 

 

 

 

and a closer look.

 

 

 

 

 

Next, I fooled around with a rough sketch for another wall where a shelf would be mounted to store some small fire trucks and toys, and hang some items.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the finished wall...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a closer view.

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, was a dog vignette.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a fun room!

Expanding at the Learning Zone

You have seen me working in all of the Learning Zone Day Care Centers  before.  Owner, Melissa Ananias is in the process of expanding the Waltham location and I was happy to be included in the expansion plans!

As with all the Learning Zones, we try to keep the walls simple, colorful and educational.

How can you not be happy in this room?!  Melissa thought she'd try something new here, and this really works well on this wall, greeting the kids as they arrive for the day.

 

 

 

These circles are in the new reception area.

 

 

 

 

Lastly, a former office space has been converted to a classroom, so I added a few geometric shapes.  It's always fun working at the Learning Zone! 

Nursery

The last room I will feature here from the Cambridge House Project is actually the first room I started with here.  A big, lazy willow tree spans two walls, giving little baby Ezra something fun to look at while lying in her crib.  This first picture shows the work in progress.  You can see my rough sketches taped to the wall.  The trunk of the tree starts out with the deepest color orange and gradually fades to a lighter orange as the leaves and branches spread to the second wall.

With the crib in place, so can see the effect. 

Did you catch Ezra name "hidden" in the branches?

Across the room, on a slanted ceiling, another branch with a butterfly, bird and dragonfly greet you as you enter this room.    The same simple color palette was used.

Again, I used a variety of more abstract reference materials, adapting them to fit the space and overall design concept. 

Well, I hope you have enjoyed seeing all the fun painting I was allowed to do at the Cambridge House Project!  

Boys Room

Continuing on with the Cambridge House Project, today I will feature Rafi's Room.   After much debate, a transportation theme was selected.   I used a variety of reference materials that featured more abstract cars, trucks, etc. and kept the color palette limited to blues, greens and oranges.

 

   


This was a fun room to do and because the designs are loose, they were easy to freehand.

I also needed to incorporate Rafi's name in this room, so I found a font called "ciclo" that looks life a chain link for a bicycle.   If you click on the photo to enlarge, you will see some of my notes scrawled on this paper.  It was decided to do the letters in all upper case, in two shades of blue, with each letter being approximately 15" tall.

 

 

I created a "link" stencil using some left over RocLon Multi-purpose cloth.   I have found that this fabric works well for stencils and it is a good way to use up the left over scraps.  For the centers of the "links" or the holes, I used a circle punch and cut out as many as I needed using some masking film.

 

 

 

The finished project turned out cute!

ABC's

 

 

I recently returned to my favorite daycare center, the Learning Zone, to add a few blocks to two walls.  They are quite large, approximately 18" each, so they make quite a statement when you walk into the room.

 

This is a very fun time of the year to be at the Learning Zone, because every room is decorated for Halloween!  Many of the decorations have been made by the kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was very fun to do.  I really wanted the blocks to look like the old fashioned blocks I had as a kid.  While I love this idea for a daycare center, I think it would made one cute nursery too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the blocks are so large, they can easily been seen when you are in the adjacent room, looking through the window.

 

I have to tell you, every time I am working here, it is either in the evening or on a weekend, when no one else is around.  I am always completely freaked out by some toy sounding off, out of nowhere!  All of sudden, I will hear something talking, or some music playing.  I go and look around, but the sound stops, so I can never find the source! 

Windows

In my last post, I showed you some finished windows I did at the Weston location of the Learning Zone.  In this post, I thought I'd show you the process, from start to finish, for the Belmont Learning Zone location.

After talking to the owner of these daycare centers, Melissa Ananias, I took a few pictures of the exterior of the building.

          

Next, I did a rough sketch of the concept for Melissa:

See what I mean about 'rough'?!  Thankfully, Melissa knows my finished work! There were 3 sets of windows to work with.

To start, I sketched all the grass and flowers directly on the windows, with a water-based marker.  (All work was done on the interior side of the glass). I then filled in everything with a glass primer, to give my paint layers a tooth to grab onto, and make the paint a little more permanent.  Once the primer had dried, I went back over all my semi-permanent marker lines, with a black paint pen. 

Here you can see the green semi-permanent marker, the frosted looking primer and the black paint pen lines.  When working on glass windows, you have to remember to work in reverse, adding all the details first.

 

 

 
I painted all the grass first, then the flowers.  For paint, I used a combination of latex interior house paints and craft paints.   It took two coats to get a good coverage.

 

 

 

When dry, I sealed with a water-based sealer to protect it a little more. 

This type of painting on windows is semi-permanent.  If the windows are handled a lot, they will scratch and chip, even with the sealer.  Most of the windows are out of reach from little hands, so should hold up quite well for a long time. 

This Belmont location is right up the street from where I live.  The other day when I was driving by and stopped at a red light, I quickly took this photo from inside my car.  The happy flowers "growing" in all the windows really do grab your eye as you drive by!