Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Make at Home: Simple Art for the Artistically Challenged

I have a degree in interior design and when I was pregnant with my daughter I was really excited about getting her nursery just right!  I knew I wanted it to be girly and creative and not feel cold and uniform as so many nurseries today are.  I wanted bright colors and beautiful decor that would not be outgrown too quickly.  I found the most beautiful art online from Oopsy Daisy.  If the sky was the limit I could have placed quite an order with them, but I decided to keep it simple (I purchased a growth chart and two small bird prints shown here and here- LOVE them all!)  As I thought of ways to fill the other walls I had the idea to make my own art for my daughter, something personal that would hopefully be meaningful to her.  I took oil painting in college and was not all that thrilled with my work and I also didn't want to use something toxic in the nursery. 
I noticed that so many of the pieces I loved were simple shapes layered over each other.  I have stacks and stacks of paint chips from hardware stores and I went and got even more.  I purchased a large canvas (24x36 I believe) and some mod podge from a local art store and that was it (total cost was under $30).  The paint chips were free and gave me a great selection of colors to work with.  I decided to do the tree because it was cheerful and because of the associations with life that trees have.  I included our dog (at the time) and some birds and butterflies. 
The flowers were a pain, but the whole thing was worth it!  It was fun to work on something like that, anticipating my daughter's arrival!  I hope to do more art like this in the future and maybe even incorporate other elements (shells, buttons, ribbon, glitter, etc) so it is more of a collage. This is such a forgiving project- so easy to just cut out another piece if one doesn't look right.  If you try this let me know how it turns out!  I would love to see your creative ideas!

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