Love, Lydia - Notes from a geeky, plus sized artist.: Beginning to Decorate

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Beginning to Decorate

Hello everyone,

I've spent some of my weekend working on my studio.  It's finally starting to feel like my own space as I put things in their place and nail up various shelves and planning tools.  At the new house Bryan and I will have a shared workspace in our second story "rec room".  The space is a great size for an extra large office that will accommodate our three desks, all my art storage needs and incorporate a little lounge area.  Our end goal is using the upstairs space more for our down time needs, so we can keep our downstairs spaces cleaner since they're more public.  For now there are still a enough boxes left to be unpacked that it's hard to get a good picture of the room.

So now I'm feeling good about how our space is coming along.  Here are a couple shots of my corner.  I still have more to put on the walls and supplies to sort out, but it's coming along nicely.


This picture is from Friday and over the weekend I completed a couple of small projects, which are going to enhance my work corner even more.

Splatter Painted Paper Honeycomb Balls


First off I got a pack of these tissue paper honeycomb balls◊ and decided to DIY a splatter paint job on one with watercolor.  I think the first try looks ok, and I'm going to do another with acrylic paints to see if it works better or just ends up sticking the paper together too much.


Here are really easy instructions for how to do it.  First off you'll want newspaper to protect all surfaces near your project.  You probably need two sheets, I only used one in the image above because I'm lazy.  It makes for messes later though, and that's never worth it!


Next off pick your color scheme,  I decided to go with mostly cooler tones.  Here are my colors:
Winsor and Newton - Potter's Pink◊ (very delicate old rose color)
Winsor and Newton - Winsor Red◊ (probably the best true red watercolor I own!)
Winsor and Newton - Cobalt Turquoise Light◊ (this is one of my favorite shades!)
Cotman - Phtalo Blue [Green Shade]◊ (high staining color that's brilliant and good for the budget)
Holbein - Lavender◊ (this color is lovely though it contains some white, making it more opaque than true watercolor)
Holbein - Cobalt Violet Light◊ (a fantastic purple that's quite lightfast too)
Lukas - Gold◊ (a good color that looks a little funny in the palette, but dries down nicer)


Here's what they look like with water.


For this project most any brush will do, though it might get ruined if you're too vigorous.  For real brushes I loaded the brush with paint and flicked my wrist to move the paint.  The picture above gives you an idea of how much water was used VS paint.  It really only takes a little!  However I only mixed enough of each color to create the one honeycomb ball, so I wouldn't be wasteful.  Also for opening some of the tougher paint tubes I use a silicone jar opener!  It works wonders, and I've been given several over the years as freebies.


And here my first version is done.  It's more pastel, which I love, but you can use less water to get brighter results too.  I found that because the paper is easily saturated you can only use two colors at a time before letting everything you've done dry (about an hour and a half) before going on the the next colors.  This honeycomb has a string you can hang it from so you could paint it while it's hanging to be more neat, especially if you have a porch where you can set things up.  Sunshine would definitely speed up the drying process, my work was done on a rainy day, so it took longer to dry.  Then you just have to decide how you want to display them!

Refinished Shelf Cubes

A while back we got a set of shelf cubes for our bedroom, but we don't need them at the new house because I now have enough space for a bedside table rather than having the bed too close to a wall as I did at our old rental.  So I decided I could put the cubes up in my studio as extra storage for little inspirational items.  The cubes came in a set of three different sizes and though it looks like they might not carry the plain ones at Target anymore here are some similar ones from Amazon◊.

The ones I had were more matte in finish so I didn't even need to sand them, I just used two coats of custom mixed paint colors.  If you have shelves with a shinier finish rough them up a bit all over with a fine grit sandpaper before painting them so the paint will stick and not peel off.  I used Winsor and Newton Acrylics because I had a lot left over from college (Freshman year kits were required gear!), but you could use most any brand you want.  If you wanted to buy online you might want to give Utrecht Acrylics a try, they're a good deal for good quality paints. Some brands and colors may need more coats than others.  I added a good bit of white paint to all three of my chosen shades, which helps make them more opaque.

Here are my finished shelves!  I set them down to dry on newspaper after each coat, and held them on my hand to paint them.  If you want to paint them easier without having to hold them I recommend using a cork trivet or putting them on top of a cardboard box.  If you have drips it will stick to newspaper and might mean you have to touch up a little later, cardboard is less likely to run into this problem, and cork is free of it unless you have a bad enough drip that it just peels the paint off.


Mint, lavender, and dark blue are some of my favorite colors.  And finally here's a shot of my studio with the shelves and my watercolor reference chart set up.  It's still pretty crazy, but getting better every day.  I almost know where all my supplies are!


That's all for today.  Let me know what are some of your favorite colors to decorate with in the comments!  Thanks.

Love,
Lydia

2 comments:

  1. Love how your creative studio is coming along Lydia!! LOVE the coloured box shelving...might have to steal that idea! :-)

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    1. Please do! It's really fun and easy to do. The hardest part was choosing the colors!

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