Tuesday 29 April 2014

thought processes.......


As soon as I had finished my mini bathroom makeover, I started updating it, and adding things to it.

The positive comments I received about my yellow bath, made me re-assess the look.
Let's face it, I'm probably never going to get it re-enamelled in white, so I'm embracing my retro vintage yellow bath.
The walls are grey, and yellow and grey go together, right.......... so I thought I'd mix it up a bit more......

I thought I'd add a colour I would never normally use........


um....yes....I painted the chair in AS Emile.
I bought a match pot of this and Paloma when I went to the shop in the previous post.
All the gorgeous blues and greens were drawing me towards them (all the gorgeous blues and greens that would have gone great with yellow !) but no, I was trying to think outside the box.

I think I like it, I'm still not sure......I quite liked it when it was white !
I painted a little wooden pot in the Paloma, distressing through to the cream and adding charcoal as highlights.
I like this........a lot.

.
Then I tackled the gap on the wall.


I had always wanted something to the left of the round mirror and originally envisaged some empty white frames and then I thought an eye chart would be great, because it would make more of a statement.


After embracing the yellow retro/vintage bath and painting the chair I thought maybe something colourful would be better, like a circus font, maybe saying 'HOME', or a Mexican style floral skull (done in colours to suit my bathroom of course).


I liked the idea of both of these, but knew they would take a while, when I remembered I had some old artwork in the under stairs cupboard........................
 
and where I found a couple of near perfect (colour wise that is, I'm not saying my artwork is perfect) pictures.
 
 
The yellow is nearly identical to the bath, and the pink ties in with the chair, and they're perfume bottles (in fact one of the perfume bottles is in the cabinet on the right). I painted them for a company that used to print my stuff and give me royalties. I never made much money out of it and I'm not sure I ever showed them these.
 
 
Anyway, I played around with displaying them.
 
One went on the shelf. Actually I tried both on the shelf and managed to break a pretty pot in the process, but c'est la vie. That's what you get when you keep re-arranging stuff.
 
 
Then I painted an old gold frame in turquoise and then in grey (because I tried to live with the turquoise and couldn't) and distressed it, to frame the yellow picture.


 
 
And although there are lots of different colours in here now, it still feels like a restful place, and I've tied them all together in yet another project, that I'll post about next time.

And thanks to my thought processes, I've added more empty frames, eye charts, circus font artwork, and skulls to my looooong list of things.to.do !

Btw, I was drawn to Paloma because I used to wear Paloma Picasso perfume and because of Paloma Faith, She's an amazing singer and recently did an incredible performance on a chat show. You can see it here.

Tuesday 8 April 2014

shopping for chalk paint



The first time I bought some AS chalk paint was in Blakes in Hove. They had some beautiful furniture, but the owner wasn't particularly friendly, in fact she was rather snooty.
So the second time I wanted some chalk paint I went to a small shop only ten minutes from the first one, in Portslade. There wasn't much furniture to look at but the owner was really pleasant, so a couple of weeks ago I drove there again to get some red for the chairs at work and maybe a couple of sample pots for me !

I was really happy to see that they had moved to much larger premises, and were showcasing loads of gorgeous things.
As you can see, it was a very sunny day. I love all the chandeliers, and the way AS fabrics were being displayed, as a banner across the ceiling.
I got a litre of Emperors Silk and made a start but as we need somewhere for the customers to sit (and I don't want a house full of furniture), it'll be slow going.
One down, quite a few to go !
 
It wasn't my intention to match the paint to the fabric because we intend on changing it, and it's a bit of a scarlet red, as opposed to the pillar box red that we have used elsewhere, but I will paint some of the other chairs in a different shade. It wouldn't suit the café if everything matched.

I like the look of the red against the dark wood though.
Btw, Blakes the first shop, seems to have gone from Hove, but moved to Devon, although it's now selling a different make of chalk paint !