Dinning Room Part 5: the finishing touches

 All DONE!!! Napkins and candles from World Market. Candle holders and China from our wedding. Yes people, I did use it and LOVED that I had it. Hurricane candle holders from T J Max. The paintings I did in 2007. It amazed me how the colors matched today. I guess I have a palate and stick with it. Napkin rings and mirror at Old Tyme Pottery. All in all it didn't cost as much as I thought to complete the dinning room. Now our home feels complete. At least down stairs.

Dinning Room 4: Filigree Ceiling

 Finally the paint it complete. I am really ecstatic about the way the ceiling has turned out. It is by far my favorite thing that I have ever painted. And I have been painting for a while now. In ever category. There are things that have sentimental meaning, which this has none. But other then that..... 

Oh, is it bad to love something that you did so much? I guess it is something that I have dreamed of doing for over 7 years now. Long before I even owned this house. I always wanted to do a filigree/flourish in a trey ceiling. I even did it in my brother's house for free just because I wanted to do it. Now, this was before kids and time to paint was only limited to a work schedule. Then we moved in this house with this beautiful architecture I was really excited to do it. And low and behold, what couple in a new house with an ever expanding family has the money for a dinning room suite. And I refused to do the ceiling until I got my furniture. I wanted to make sure that it fit perfectly together. If you see the almond shapes echoed in the design, I pulled that shape from the back of the chair's wood work. So having this ceiling I guess is a dream come true. 

shhh sneak peak...(Dinning Room part 3.5: the filigree ceiling?)

Okay, so I am horrible at secrets, surprises, Christmas presents whatever. If it is good news, don't tell me because I am going to tell everyone! I couldn't wait to show off my ceiling. There is more to do in the corners of the trey. Which are designed and ready to go. I haven't even cleaned up the drop cloth and I had to post this. I am SOOOO EXCITED with the way this is turning out. Sometimes putting in the extra effort in the design really pays off. And thank goodness my hand wasn't too shaky and that I was able to paint almost smooth lines. I might add highlights in a metallic or maybe just cream. It isn't quite done... But too happy not to share. I plan on doing a tutorial with this one too. It is really simple to transfer a design and create your own custom mural... Now on the ceiling, that isn't for the feather weights. OUCH!

Dinning Room Part 3: the ceiling design

It is always a love hate relationship coming up with a design. I want it to be perfect. Sometimes I get too far in one design that when I see an error I don't want to start over. But this design, this room, I think I started over four times. I didn't want it to look like a cross, not too many swirls, not too many leaves and so on. 

Now mapping it out in the actual size. I did the drawing on graph paper then drew grid lines on the larger white paper. The design needed to be flowy but intentional. Slight variations to show that it isn't a stencil, but not sloppy. 

The next step, transferring the image on the ceiling. Out comes the ladder. (you do know that it will be symmetrical, right. I will just turn the paper and draw it on the other side. No need in drawing everything twice)

Dining Room Part 2: faux ceiling

Here is the faux base of the ceiling. 

And now is the hard part. Designing and executing the flourish, filigree and leaf pattern on the top. Wish me luck. I have googled trey ceiling murals in about every word combination possible and still haven't seen exactly what I want. 

Dining Room Part 1: faux walls

We recently decided to start on our dinning room. And here is phase one. The base coat is "Tawny Mushroom" (or as my friend called it "Burple") and then did a smoke stain affect with glaze. 

I am not sure that it is my favorite faux finish that I have done, but I am satisfied for today.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it''s off to faux I go.....

 I think that this technique was labeled suede, or maybe leather? It was pretty simple. Did a base coat. Then I  measured off and taped rectangles in the room. Slapped some glaze in a square, pressed a huge piece of thin, plastic drop cloth on it, took it off and Viola. There you have it.

The next few weeks I will be working on a dinning room. Smoke staining the walls and doing something fancy in the trey ceiling. Probably something with flourishes (my new favorite word) and filigree. Yeah!

Marble Columns

Marble!!! I completed these marble columns this week. I fell in love with this technique. In our new home I am going to marble everything.