‘They are so bright and cheery as they look back at me. Such a simple and easy project, yet so rewarding…’
As you now see, as you get to know a little about me with these articles, that I like to paint. Although I definitely do spurts of painting, and most often paint my rocks, let it be known that I have used paint to create or recreate so many different things.
At home, in the city, I painted several wall murals. Those started out being cheerful fantasy scenes for my children. Rainbows, and clouds was the theme for a baby, then polar bears, and shooting flames was what a teenager wanted. Gardens, flowers and birds, oh, and a cat in the garden was mesmerized by a butterfly sitting on a flower in my master suite bathroom, (which was four walls surrounded by outdoor scenes). Well, I was going through the 80’s and 90’s, and so I painted several wall murals in my house. It almost killed me when the house was to be sold and I had to paint them all over, ah, such is life, c’est la vie!
When my children were small I got into a stencilling rage, and hand-cut hundreds, yes, hundreds of stencils. I made dinosaurs, the Ghost Busters logo, and the Transformers for my children. I cut a comical airplane to do on a birthday t-shirt for a stewardess. I cut animals, and birds, like my beloved loons, (again, that’s another story, those loon stencils).
So, you get that painting things is in my DNA. At the lake one day, I decided to use some of the bright fabric I had recently brought up to the cabin to recover and refresh some items as a basis for an art painting project. It was a very simple project, one that anyone could do because it is similar to a stencil in the way that is just a simple shape, or shapes, painted on fabric that I had first applied and stretched over simple art canvases with my light duty staple gun.
I used my standard inexpensive acrylic water-based paints and painted my shapes in black on the fabric. I chose to do an couple of loons on one, (now there’s a surprise, you think to yourself), a little squirrel perched on a branch on another, and a hummingbird in flight on the third.
Each one turned out spectacularly and added bright and cheery elements to the cabin, which is a Godsend because the cabin walls are generally in the original brown shades of the wood construction. The fabric I used matches some throw pillows, and it also matches the fabric I used to update and redecorate those chairs that I did, the four of them gifts from my neighbours. (see my other post Reclaiming and Updating What the Cat Dragged In).
In any event, being up at the lake inspires me, and brings out the creative spirit in me, and so the personality of my cabin is a reflection of elements of the forest life, like the animals or birds, and a reflection of my arts and crafts abilities to add and brighten my cabin life world. These bright and cheerful wall art pieces were simple and easy to do and look great on my cabin walls.
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