Master Bedroom ~ Stage ONE

   The master bedroom is not a room that I was ready to start working on just yet. It's a huge space, with a sitting room area. At the moment the sitting area is my office\work space. It's where I make jewelry, paint, sew etc... It's not what I want to do in the space, but I don't currently have a craft~art~sewing room and it's tucked out of the way upstairs. The garage will eventually be the work room but I haven't reached that room yet either!

   Anyway, sometimes creativity has a mind of its own. I found a piece of fabric.... not just any piece of fabric - the fabric. The one that you just know is the perfect fabric for that room. I'm just crazy about travel & advertising art. I especially love the work from the 50's and 60's. It's all so fun and colorful. When I saw this fabric with the awesome Hawaiian vacation motif I just knew I had to have it. So, of course I bought 10 yards of it without actually having a plan.

    As the plan began to coalesce in my tiny pea brain, I saw curtains out of the fabric and the walls in red, dusty blue and green... too much? NO!! Fabric in hand, I head for Lowe's -- I need paint samples! I'm a huge fan of paint samples - it's a great way to see if what's in your head is actually going to work out on the wall, and I had a coupon for free samples!

   I got samples of all the major colors in the fabric, even though the red is very intense. The thought being that maybe it would be okay as an accent wall - besides, my sister said it would be ok and she's very color conservative. What I like to do is try the samples out on several walls so that I can see what the paint will look like in different light sources. I also put all the colors close together to see if they're going to reflect in an odd or unpleasant way.

   I decided that the red is going to make a great accent wall and the dusty blue is going to be a nice calming influence. The green.... hmm, still thinking - might be the bathroom color... or the ceiling.... think, think... I'll get back to you on the green.

   While I'm pondering paint, I got distracted on the internet while looking for art for my new master bedroom. I found a fun, graphic piece for an airline. When I tried to order one it turned out the the largest size they had was 12"x16" - harumph! What I had in mind was more like 30"x40" - sigh. Fine, I'll do it myself.... and that's how the master bedroom project became several projects.

   I went to the Hobby Lobby - bought the biggest picture I could find on clearance - it's 33"x44" - cost me $10.00 - this is a great way to get canvas cheap, a stretched canvas that large would have cost upwards of $80.00. I got a container of Gesso, which is an awesome product for prepping a canvas for paint. I coated the ugly picture with Gesso. While I waited for it to dry - I went back to the internet and saved the picture I had found. I printed it onto a clear transparency and put it on my handy overhead projector. With a little putzing around I got the image the size I wanted and in the right spot on the canvas.

   I lightly traced the image onto the canvas in pencil and, using the poster as my guide, I painted the picture.

   Now, I have this great piece of art that will go on my very red accent wall... right - back to painting the walls. Next time I'll show you the finished walls and we'll talk about making curtains!