Paint

DIY Octopus Wall Art

6 · Jul 10, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Create a simple DIY octopus wall art piece with The NEW DecoArt Americana® Premium Artist Acrylics found at Michaels.

• This DIY Octopus Wall Art Post is brought to you by DecoArt •

Back in December we purchased our PERFECT home! Perfect for everyone but our little guy Gage. His room was a rather bold pink and purple. This kiddo has spent 7 long years with only sisters. We have a soccer ball and a volleyball that he plays with and they are hand-me-downs from his sisters and they are, you guessed it… PINK. To say that the little guy is over all of the pink, is an understatement. This week we are starting his room transformation and we are going vintage nautical for the theme.

Now, any vintage nautical themed room NEEDS a cool piece of art. This year in Gage’s 1st grade class he worked on a really cool report on his favorite sea creature, the octopus. We decided he needed a cool octopus for his room and set to work to create “Davy Jones,” Gage new octopus friend.

Gage’s sister Jane helped to create this with me using the NEW DecoArt Americana Premium Artist Acrylics and Mediums.

DIY Octopus Wall Art Supply List

DecoArt Americana® Premium Artist Acrylic Paint in Prussian Blue Hue, Dark Grey Value 3, Titanium White
DecoArt Americana® Premium Artist Acrylic Matte Medium
Art Wood Canvas (I found mine at Michaels)
Paint brushes
Paint rags
Jar of water
Pencil
eraser

DIY Octopus Wall Art Instructions

The cool thing about this project is that you really don’t have to be an artist to create fun art for your home. With this type of vintage looking painting, perfection is NOT NEEDED. Whew! That’s my kind of painting!

First thing you need to to is to take your Titanium White and mix it with the Matte Medium. Why would you mix the paint with a medium? Here is what the matte medium adds to the acrylic paint…

“Add Matte Medium to Americana Premium acrylics to create a matte finish, extend color, increase transparency, and enhance color blending. Can also be used as a clear coat for a matte finish. It is water-based and fast-drying.”

Pretty cool huh? Now if you don’t want the paint to dry too fast, you want to have more time to work with it, you may want to use and Extender Medium…

“Add Extender Medium to slow the drying time of Premium Acrylics. It can also be safely added to the other mediums in the line. Any time you want the paint or medium to have more working time add some Extender to it. Extender also allows you to perform oil techniques using acrylic paint.”

Once you have your white and matte medium mixed together, roughly paint on a white surface onto your boards. That reminds me… I used 2 of the 16×20 art boards to create a longer octopus to fill up more wall space. Because we all know… Davy Jones needs to be huge!

I left a boarder around the edge leaving some of the raw wood. But, if you notice, it’s all really rough. We aren’t looking for perfect lines here.

Next, Hannah sketched the octopus onto the boards with a pencil. Again, we aren’t looking for perfect. She even traced the legs off of the white section to make them look like they were coming off the canvas. Don’t trust your sketching skills? No worries, Angie from The Country Chic Cottage shares a great tutorial on how to use transfer paper to create a good sketch for sign making on the DecoArt Blog. It’s PERFECT for those of us who are artistically challenged.

Again, we added the Americana® Premium Matte Medium to the Prussian Blue Hue Americana® Premium Artist Acrylic Paint and mixed it well.

Then we set to work painting good ole’ Davy Jones the Octopus for Gage’s room…

I wanted as much texture as possible so we tried to create really rough brush strokes. I was really impressed with how fast the paint dried, it was so easy to use!

Next, we painted on rough circles for his tentacles and eyes. Again, we wanted things to look really rough. That’s why this type of project is so good for beginner artist. That leads me to the Americana® Premium Acrylic Paint, here’s why is it the perfect type of paint for this application… Americana® Premium™ acrylics provide a medium-bodied formula for the hobbyist-artist at an affordable price point. Its satin-sheen formula was created to work well on canvas, and other artistic surfaces. Its simplicity of design and use takes the intimidation factor out of fine art painting. Use it alone or mix with mediums to create original pieces of art at a budget-friendly price. It’s the perfect, easy to use, budget friendly paint for this kind of home decor project.

I’m even thinking of drilling some holes into the two boards and connecting them with rope. I think that will look really cool. I’ll let you know as we get started on Gage’s room. Davy Jones will for sure make a few more appearances!

Looking for more fun painting projects for the family here is another one from WhipperBerry that you might like…

Gnome Garden

Disclaimer • This post is sponsored by DecoArt. I receive product and payment to help create this fun project. Please remember, I will only share what I truly love and use all of the time.

Copper Basket + Styled X3

0 · Nov 11, 2015 · 4 Comments

I’m super excited for today’s post… I’ve teamed up with Stacy Risenmay NOT Just a Housewife for her Styled x3 series. I adore Stacy, she is one talented, hilarious, generous & genuine lady! Have you seen her new book, Natural Accents? (affiliate link) I bought one at the Pinners Conference this weekend and I LOVE it! She is so creative and her ideas are amazing, you should go grab it quick!

Each month Stacy selects a simple item that works well for home decor. She styles the product in her home and then sends two more of the same item to two other creative bloggers to see what they would do with the item.

This month she sent out a wire storage basket (affiliate link)…

To myself & to Amy from Her Tool Belt to use this in our decor somehow. I was kind of excited for this challenge. I’ve been to several Junk shows like Junkstock here in Nebraska and those vintage locker baskets (that this is a replica of) go for big bucks. They are so fun for using as home decor along with corralling small items as well. As far as I’m concerned they are also a blank canvas. You can paint them whatever color you want!

I decided that with all of the fun copper elements that are popping-up this season, I wanted to transform my wire storage basket into a copper basket. I used Krylon Premium Copper Brilliance Spray Paint (affiliate link) to transform my basket…

It looks fantastic! I turned the copper basket on it’s side and added some books and some white bowls for my Fall display in my kitchen.

I love what it adds to the display. Now you need to run over to check out Stacy & Amy’s projects!

How to Make Paint Look Like Stain | Faux Stain with Chalk Paint

72 · Oct 29, 2015 · 6 Comments

Do you love the stained look, but can’t stand the idea of staining?

It’s smelly, sticky, messy… Not to mention all of the chemicals that you are introducing into your home. I have a fabulous alternative for you!

Faux Stain with BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder®…

Doesn’t it look fantastic?! BB Frösch is an ALL-NATURAL paint additive that you can add to any flat latex paint and turn it into chalk paint. Mixed with a low-VOC or no-VOC paint you don’t have to worry about any of those harmful chemicals from other stains or paints. With the addition of BB Frösch, you are giving your paint the fabulous adhesion properties and manipulatable properties that everyone loves about chalk paint.

Which Kind of Chalk Paints Should You Use to Make it Look Like Stain?

As you can tell I love BB Frosch. There are a lot of different brands and types that you can use for chalk paint though. I wrote a post about the best chalk paints you can read. The down and dirty of it is that BB Frosch Powder is number one in my heart, and then you have the rest. The difference is that you mix the powder with any paint that you want to use instead of buying actual chalk paint.

PSA- DON’T EVER USE THOSE DIY CHALK PAINT RECIPES! They are harmful to your health and won’t work for this technique. Plaster of Paris and Unsanded Grout have caustic chemicals in them. You don’t want to introduce those into your home or your body for sure.

Now onto the fun stuff…

I’ve been traveling the country teaching BB Frösch Workshops and one of the techniques that we teach is a color wash technique. This is a technique you would use if you wanted to still see the wood grain when painting a piece. Even though I am the co-founder of a chalk paint company, I still am a lover of the natural wood look. I hate to cover up all of that character, BUT… Sometimes a piece still needs new life with a little TLC, OR maybe you have some raw wood that you would love to add some nice rich color to. For example like my shelves…

I LOVE the look of a nice rich stain, but I hate to stain! That’s when I thought… Why not use that color wash technique that I teach all the time and make it LOOK like it was stained? That is what I set out to do.

How to Faux Stain with BB Frösch Chalk Paint

I found a beautiful brown paint color from Benjamin Moore called Mink and I LOVE it!! When you are faux staining with this color it’s super fun because it pulls a little gray when painting (faux staining) your project. It’s a beautiful weathered wood look but, when I finish it with our Dark BB Frösch Premium Finishing Wax it gives it that nice rich stained look that everyone loves. If I want to keep the weathered wood look, I would just finish it with the clear wax.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, you need to mix your paint with BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder. Here is a quick video on how to do that…

Mixing BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder from BB Frösch on Vimeo.

Once your paint is mixed, you’re ready to go.

You’ll need your trusty BB Frösch paint brush and wax brush for this project and a jar of water along with your mixed BB Frösch Chalk Paint.

This technique works amazingly well on raw wood, but it can also be used on a finished piece with a little extra care. We have a customer that faux stained her entire kitchen without any sanding or striping before she set to work. Here’s a look at her before and after…

YEA, it’s that aaaamazing!! Not to mention the fact that this took DAYS rather than weeks or heaven forbid months to finish. Couple that with the fact that this took less then a gallon of paint and your golden!

For this tutorial, I am using raw wood that I purchased at Home Depot. All you need to do is make sure your brush is pretty wet, dip it in your paint and then swirl it around on your paint lid, mixing the water and paint a bit.

Then, going with the grain, brush the watered-down paint onto your wood. Follow that with a lint-free cloth and lightly wipe the surface of your wood exposing the grain of the wood. THAT’S IT!!

Continue that process until you’ve finished your entire piece. It will literally take just minutes to dry and then you’re ready for the wax.

This is another simple step. Take your wax brush and butter a little bit of wax onto your brush, just like you butter your toast. Then, with the grain brush on the wax in a small section about the size of a 12×12 piece of paper. Then using a lint-free cloth, wipe off any excess wax and then rub the area until smooth. Move on to your next section and repeat the process until your piece is finished. Go back with a lint-free cloth and then buff to your desired sheen.

These shelves took only 30 minutes, start to finish… READY TO HANG in 30 minutes!!

You can’t do that with stain!!

Funny thing… Both of those signs that I made for my Fall display are also Faux Stained with BB Frösch as well, using the same technique just on a smaller scale. See, you can craft with BB Frösch Faux Stain and transform your kitchen at the same time. It’s BRILLIANT if I do say so myself!

This technique is catching fire… Here are a few more projects that use the same technique.

This beautiful desk was transformed by Kacey Stout one of our BB Frösch Masters in Las Vegas. She painted the base of the desk with Behr Paint “Hummingbird” and then Faux Stained the top with Benjamin Moore “Mink combined with BB Frösch Dark Premium Finishing Wax. She transformed it from this…

To THIS…

I also transformed an old desk with the same idea…

I bought that desk at a garage sale for $10… After I gave it a good once over with BB Frösch, I sold it for a couple hundred. Not to shabby!

Needless to say, this is by far one of my favorite techniques. I’ve even used it to make a large set of dice for Yard Yahtzee… This set I kept that weathered wood look and just used a clear wax to finish the look.

Here is another set of shelves that we made for an appearance on Studio 5 in Salt Lake.

Here’s Kristin and I on set, AND… Here’s a link to the segment.

If I haven’t convinced you yet to try this… I don’t know what will!

Go grab yourself some BB Frösch and get to work. You’re going to LOVE it!!

How to Paint the Perfect Stripe

11 · Jan 26, 2015 · 4 Comments

Raise your hand if you have ever tried to paint a stripe on furniture or any project.

Now, raise your hand if your painters tape miserably failed you!

No matter what they promise, I have yet to get a perfectly clean line from the current painters tape out there. Believe me, I’ve tried them ALL. Yes, some work better than others, but 100% of the time I will have bleeding issues. Nothing can kill your day worse than your tape failing you.

I have discovered the secret… Want to know what it is?

How to Paint the Perfect Stripe

First, I use BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder for all of my painting projects. You can use other types of paint for furniture that may be better than chalk paint for longevity, but I don’t mind painting things every few years.

Why? Well, I LOVE it!

You don’t have any prep work… No sanding, priming or striping. Sometimes it can be good to use stencils but not this time. I get all of the wonderful properties of chalk paint, plus I get to select my own colors! Also, it’s a fraction of the cost of boutique brands of Chalk Paint. Yea, total SCORE!!

You can learn more about BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder HERE

Here’s your checklist…

+ Select your piece

I found mine at a local Eco Store. It’s an old desk that they had pulled out of a sorority house. Kinda funny!

The desk was nice solid wood, just with some cosmetic issues. All it needed was a little paint love.

+ Select paint colors

I’m using Toasted Marshmallow and Saffron Strands, both are stock paint colors from Behr Paint found at Home Depot. When I’m painting with BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder, I use Flat paint without primer if available. I’ve been using Toasted Marshmallow quite a bit. It’s a nice warm white that I’ve fallen in love with. I used it on my kitchen table makeover as well. I’ll be sharing that one soon!

+ Paint base color

Paint the base color of your piece and take it all the way through your finial finish.

My typical routine when painting furniture is..

+ Paint one light layer followed by one to two more coats if I’m wanting a nice smooth modern finish.

+ Next, using a sanding block, I lightly sand my entire piece creating a nice SMOOTH finish. Some people have been turned off from chalk paint because they don’t like a rough finish. What they are missing is that you don’t have to have a rough chalky finish. Just with a light once over with a sanding block will get you that smooth feel we all love.

+ Then I vacuum the dust and give it a once over with a damp (not wet) cloth to remove any dust.

+ Finally, I wax my piece. This is quite frankly my FAVORITE PART! This is when your piece starts to come alive.

If you are planning on distressing your piece, do that now before you add your stripes. Also, I HIGHLY recommend waxing your piece as well BEFORE you start working on your stripes. I use BB Frösch Premium Finishing Wax. It is a revolutionary wax that cures within minutes rather than weeks! That’s a huge deal in the chalk paint industry. No one wants to work hard on a piece and then have to let it sit for a month (with an armored guard) trying to keep hands off while the wax fully cures.

The wax is the final process to help the paint fully adhere to your piece. By waxing first you won’t have to worry about the tape accidentally pulling paint off your piece when you remove the tape. Again, no matter how gentle the tape says it will be with your piece… My experience is that without the wax, it will still pull paint off.

+ Tape the stripes

This is where it gets FUN!!

Decide how you want your stripes to appear and tape your piece. For this one, I wanted a large center stripe with two thinner stripes on either side. I would love to say that I’m one of those people who measure things to the T, but I don’t. I eyeball it. I tend to trust my eye more than I trust my math skills!

Think about your piece, notice the curves and lines and plan accordingly.

My desk has a curvy cutout on the side of the desk, so I used that as my guide for creating my stripe pattern.

Side note… I paint most of my pieces on top of a card table. It’s just so much easier to for me to tackle those hard-to-reach spots at the bottom of the piece just as well as the easy-to-reach spots at the top.

+ Paint another layer of the base color

Now, all you need to do is paint another light layer of your base color just along the tape lines.

This will seal the edge of the tape and any bleeding that will occur will just blend right in! Let this layer dry and prepare your stripe color.

+ Paint your stripes

Now all you have to do is paint your stripes!

For this piece, I painted two coats of the Saffron Strand stripe. I wanted the color to be nice and rich. Sometimes, you will want a more subtle stripe and you will only need one coat.

Once I have finished painting, I let the paint settle for a few minutes, then I carefully pull the tape while it is still slightly wet. This will help avoid accidentally pulling the dry paint off when removing the tape.

Don’t sit around too long though. Paint that is treated with BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder dries pretty quick. So, I would only wait for 5 minutes or so.

For this desk, even though I wanted a nice deep color for the stripe, I still wanted it to be distressed. I again used my trusty sand paper, for this I use a 400 grit, fine sand paper. With flat fingers or a flat hand, I work with my sand paper to get the distressed look that I like.

Don’t ever use the tip of your pointer finger to roughly gouge your piece. At that point, you are just scratching your piece (not naturally distressing) and that’s not the look you are going for… I promise. Unless you want your piece to look like your son took his soccer cleats to it, then by all means… scratch away!

+ Final Wax

Now, all you have to do is your final wax with the BB Frösch Premium Finishing Wax. Wax the surfaces where you added your stripes and you are finished!

Isn’t it FUN?!

Now that I’ve discovered the secret, I want to stripe EVERYTHING!!

I will keep myself in check though… maybe.

Disclaimer // This is not a sponsored post, I was not paid by any company for this piece. However, I am the co-founder of BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder along with Kristin Smith and we would love for you to try our product!

Paint

Create a simple DIY octopus wall art piece with The NEW DecoArt Americana® Premium Artist Acrylics found at Michaels.

DIY Octopus Wall Art Supply List

DIY Octopus Wall Art Instructions

Which Kind of Chalk Paints Should You Use to Make it Look Like Stain?

How to Faux Stain with BB Frösch Chalk Paint

Raise your hand if you have ever tried to paint a stripe on furniture or any project.

How to Paint the Perfect Stripe

Here’s your checklist…

+ Select your piece

+ Select paint colors

+ Paint base color

+ Tape the stripes

+ Paint another layer of the base color

+ Paint your stripes

+ Final Wax

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