Ever since we've moved into our new house, I've been wanting to paint our very vanilla walls in our living room and dining room. We've managed to paint most of the 
upstairs rooms and half the downstairs rooms before we moved in but we've been wracking our brains on what to do with the high ceilings.
Air Boss and I aren't quite ready to pay for a painter to take care of our two-story living and dining rooms. Nor are we quite ready to rig a scaffold in our stairwell so we can try our hand at painting 16 feet up. So in the meantime, I thought an easy way to splash some color on the walls was to simply slap some large-scale painting on the walls.
But then I remembered that I'm cheap.
I couldn't bring myself to spend $100 on some mass produced abstract artwork that I thought my kids could paint for way less. So that's just what we did (little did 'Shroom and Lolli know that they were being exploited for their creativity).
For less than half the price, 'Shroom and Lolli have injected some--er, very colorful---original artwork that's prominently on display in our living room. As they do on HGTV's show "Design on a Dime" here is how I spent my money:
1. acrylic paints and paint brushes: $8
2. aprons for kids: free (they just used their Home Depot aprons)
3. drop cloth: free (reused from a previous home painting project)
4. two 36"x24" stretched canvases: $44
5. painter's tape: FREE (leftover from painting upstair rooms)
6. warm CA sun that dried the paint in less than half hour: free
7. finished artwork: PRICELESS
Hmmm . . . I wonder if I can convince the kids that climbing scaffolding is like playing on a jungle gym . . .
6 comments:
They really did turn out great. SO VERY COOL! And that picture that Steven took with Nicole at the piano should be sent in to some contest...it's such a cool picture.
So, (letting my ignorance of these things show here)...I'm curious as to why you did the "Wash"...would the colors have looked different if you hadn't? How did you know to use that particular color. Having very little creativity makes me very curious about these things that seem to come so naturally to some folks.
Hmm...I'm not altogether up on these artistic things either. The dark plum "wash" didn't affect the intensity (or hue or saturation for that matter) of the other colors.
I just had the kids do it so that I could cover up the borders of the shapes with the painters tape. That would leave the dark plum intact as they kids went to town with the other colors.
I think I could have achieved the same results if I painted the plum last but it would have been a lot more labor-intensive and I don't think the kids could have painted straight crisp lines.
Hmm..."wash" is perhaps not the correct term. Maybe "base color" is more accurate . . . ?
WOW!!!! I absolutely love it. I also love that you let the kids do the painting. Dee...you are so clever!
Duh...I should have figured out that myself... :-)
Looks so great! I just can't figure out how you hung them on the wall..........????
Wow, Dee! I absolutely love it!!!!! And it is priceless that your kids did it...so much more meaningful than buying it! I have been thinking that we needed something in our living room as well...but I'm too cheap too! Would you mind if we "borrowed" your brilliant idea?
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