Hello Monday! Hello Decor!

I know I said I would be showing off all kinds of new work on Mondays, but who says it has to be a new work of art? Geesh, that’s a lot of pressure and I’m new at this “art on demand” regimen I’ve put myself on! So it’s no surprise that this week got busy and I did not make it into my studio. Remember, I am wearing many hats! But going without creating something for a whole week would be like skipping showers. I could do it but in time I would start to stink! I have to create! So I have a few original creations I would like to share with you to keep rolling with the Mondays!

In this week’s hustle and bustle I got a lot of cleaning, sorting and decorating done around the house. After moving in June of 2010 (yes, 18+ months later,) I have finally hung a myriad of things on my walls. Lots of photos of my boys; dozens really. Art and artifacts picked up from around the world.  A giant fork and spoon. My mother’s travel photos. My father’s paintings. And this:

I picked up this beautiful 30”x30” tin ceiling tile from Second Chance in Baltimore. The store is a string of warehouses filled with reclaimed items. It’s a scavenger’s dream come true. The tin came with the distressed lead paint.

So I put on a mask and gloves and carefully put a thin wash of turquoise paint over the white paint and tin. I added a thin wash of brown to keep it looking old. When it was dry I coated a generous layer of clear acrylic polyurethane over the whole thing and once dry, repeated again. And without a second thought I nailed that sucker to the wall and called it architectural art!

In this grouping you will find two paintings: the purple one on the left I picked up in Nice, France from an artist selling on the street, and I did the one on the right, the landscape. It’s a pastel of Belgium that I did last year. I’ll fill you in more later, I promise.

The shelf was an ugly old red country thing. I painted it turquoise first, and then white, and then distressed it. I lined the back of the shelf with chalkboard paper and put a set of old skeleton keys and motorcycle tags from Belgium hanging from the pegs. And I proudly display a beautiful card that my cousin in Washington made and an vintage postcard of Le Arc De Triomphe in Paris.

The piece-de-resistance is my treasured café sign from Europe. I rescued it right before our move home. It was yellow and battered and you could not use the board for writing. I lovingly painted the trim white and carefully painted new chalkboard paint on to the surface and reattached the Grimburgen beer emblem. I’m so happy to see it hanging in my house.

This last grouping is a little collection of favorites. The framed print is from an artist we stumbled upon in the little town of Giverny where Monet is from right outside of Paris. I finally got it framed and hung. On the stand you will see my crow print and my Hello Monday altered sign, a hand blown glass vase from my mother's talented partner, a ceramic vase my father made a couple decades ago, and a couple of my mini travel scrapbooks. It's turned into a happy little vignette of collectible memories!

It’s all coming together; all the little details that make my home a fun place to be, to live and to laugh with my family. The only thing better than the brightly adorned walls on this Monday morning are the monkeys I share them with. Hope you have a Happy Monday!