A Simple Splash of Succulents

Last weekend I had fun bringing in a little bit of color and happiness to my kitchen. I hung light-weight 9'' square wooden planter boxes as shelves, and then took a trip to the SOMA flower market. The flower market is a magical wonderland! There are dozens of vendors, with hundreds of varieties of fresh flowers and plants. After restraining myself from buying everything, I settled on a bunch of succulents in 2'' pots. I didn't like the plastic pots they came in, so I decided to paint the pots in simple color-block patterns. I used wall paint so that they would be waterproof and survive watering. Now, I just need to water every 7-10 days,  and I have myself a mini succulent garden!  Such an easy way to bring some greenery into our urban place!  

Living Room Larks

I spent the better part of last weekend making a simple mural on my living room wall. We have lived in our current place for three years now, and still really haven't gotten to decorating. I really don't know where the time goes, but I feel like I only get a chance to do 1 painting project a year! So when A told me that he was going to have to stay home all weekend working, I jumped at the free time to do a painting. We live in a loft, so our ceilings are high and we have this one huge wall that I have never been able to find artwork big enough for. A mural ended up being the perfect way to liven up the space with a personal touch. I was originally planning on doing a bunch of birds on a few electrical wires, something I had seen at Golden Gate Park a while back and had since been inspired by, but A was worried that that would be too monotonous on our huge wall. So, we decided to something a bit more whimsical instead. 

We found a 12-foot orange ladder in the garage an hauled it in. Honestly, maneuvering the ladder through our building's narrow hallways and stairwells was the hardest part of this project. Working on this massive ladder was a bit nerve-racking as well, but I only had to go about 2/3 of the way up. The max height of the painting is about 12 feet. I loved how the bright orange ladder looked against the backdrop of the paining. Maybe we should leave it in the living room as an art fixture ;-)

I drew all of the branches and leaves free-form directly on the wall. I didn't want to have to erase too much to get the birds just right on the wall, so I made a few bird stencils instead. This made the sketching portion of the project go much faster!

Here are some pictures of the work in progress.

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Horse Hues

 

I love to paint, but as you can tell from the absence of paintings on my blog, I hardly ever have the time to do so. This was a painting that took me months to complete and even longer to hang up. But I did finally get it up, and I love it on my yellow wall! I have done a few paintings in the orange-yellow palette, as I love the warmth of it, but this was my first in the blue-yellow combo. I struggled a bit getting the motion of the mane to work, and I am used to using much finer lines, but somehow, I ended up with this, and I really like it.  

The story  of just how long of a project this was...

It became a running joke, as friends would come over and find it lying on the living room floor with no progress in the weeks since they last visited. It took me just under a year! Worse, I have a really bad habit of finding painting inspiration in random objects, and my poor parents have struggled with this my whole life. I have painted rocks, and pine cones, candles, tin cans, etc. When I was in elementary school, I did detailed sketches of little girls on the backs of Macy's garment boxes. My mom loved them, and still has them up in her house, but they don't make standard frames for Macy's boxes. My poor mom had to get custom frames for them! I painted this horse on an old side panel of an IKEA dresser--a random piece of ply-board. Of course, I don't have the engineering know-how to hang this up, so it sat on my floor for over a year, until my dad came over and devised a way to hang it. At last, it is up and brings so much color to my room! I am making a promise to myself to paint more (and on canvas), and I promise you that I'll post them on my new page, 'Paint Splatters'!