Spray Paint

I've had an incredible urge to get out in the barn and find my old cans of spray paint ever since I discovered this artful blogger. If you found me by clicking through from Dispatch from LA then I don't need to tell you how inspiring she is. If you haven't been there yet, you must pay her a visit!

I haven't played with stencils much at all. Maybe never. I had a stash of a few that I picked up on clearance thinking they might be fun to experiment with one day. Once I tore through my art room and found them, I discovered they were rather large stencils. So off I went to the barn and found a rather large scrap piece of wood to accommodate the rather large stencils.



It became apparent to me that I have a thing for metalic spray paints when I found many cans of copper, hammered silver and gold. It started with copper when I first spray painted an old metal bed that came out of my grandmother's house. After that, I went on a hammered silver rampage and spray painted the base (once shiny brass) of a chandelier that came with our old farm house.

I never was much for shiny brass and the gold was too glaring for me. It didn't fit into the "country cool eclectic" look I was going for. So, with the help of a couple of my girlfriends, we took each crystal off and painted all of the metal with hammered silver spray paint. It was a breeze to paint, not so easy to replace all of the crystals. I liked the transformation but there was still a little something missing.

So, off I went to a lighting center and purchased those tiny little lamp shades for the bulbs. While at the lighting center, I mentioned what I had done to my chandelier. The older European woman looked at me, over her half glasses, down her nose and said "Next time you have a Schonbek, I recommend you not painting it. It could have been a family heirloom."

Thinking the woman was quite brash to say that to me, with a smile I replied "Well, I hope whoever inherits it has my good taste." It wasn't until recently that I learned all about Schonbek chandeliers and realized that was a very expensive chandelier.

The official Certificate of Authenticity that came with the house should have tipped me off. Oh well, such is life. It's a pretty funny story and I like the chandelier now more than before. Enough of the tangent, I don't have any photos of the chandelier right this minute so I'll have to find them to post another time.

Back to my stencils...not sure what I would do with the stenciled old plywood, I played around in Photoshop with the photographs of it. I'm liking the looks of this one, I used a set of PS Actions from Action Central.



While out in the yard, I was enjoying the last of the fall leaves. Our oak trees are the last to get leaves and the last to shed their leaves. Same PS trickery as the other photo.



I'll leave you with another one of my photos and a quote that I found on Roben Marie's page of inspirational quotes.