Tuesday's Tip revisited

Remember when I told you to label your leftover paint?  I also gave you a link to a page with some ideas for what to do with leftover paint and mentioned that my favorite idea was to make artwork.  Well, my friends, the time has come for me to show you what I came up with.

I wanted to create some artwork for our guest bedroom, which recently moved to a new space that we painted a lovely tanish shade with a bright blue accent wall (this color scheme was unabashedly stolen from one of my favorite sisters in law because, while I know what I like when I see it, I have absolutely no "vision" when it comes to decorating).  We actually didn't have any paint leftover from the project, so I bought some 11x14 inch canvases and craft paints in complementary colors and got to work. 

I love being outside, so I wanted to bring the outdoors in by using items found in nature to paint.

 For this piece, I had Bubby use a foam brush to paint the background a swirly blue, then I used willow tree branches dipped in off-white, tan, brown, and burgundy to decorate the canvas.  The effect almost looks like birch trees, which I love.

 For this piece I used a foam brush to paint blended vertical stripes of brown, tan, and white.  The effect is almost like tree bark, which I also love.  Then I applied paint to a couple of different sizes of birch leaves and used them to decorate the canvas.

For this piece, I first painted the canvas using an antique white, allowed it to dry and masked off different sized blocks.  You can see I got a little over-zealous with the brown at the bottom (oops).  This is actually the second iteration of this piece.  In the original, after the painted blocks dried, I dipped the base of a pine cone in burgundy and turquoise paint, and rolled it on the canvas to create rings.  I got a little over-zealous with my rings, as well, didn't like the way it looked, and decided to start over.  It looks a little plain to me, so I may try to do just one burgundy pine cone ring, off-set over the center light brown, blue and light blue squares--I'm a little gun-shy, though, so I haven't quite worked up my courage to try it yet.

I'm happy with my one-of-a-kind artwork--I think they'll look great hanging in our guest room...as soon as Hubby gets around to helping me hang them...and it was so easy.  You should try it.