DIY Large Scale Art & A Few Styling Tips

(Note: Modern Masters provided the Pale Gold metallic paint for this project, but I was not otherwise compensated. All opinions are my own, as always!)

Art. It's a key part of making a room look finished, adds style and personality, and can unfortunately cost a pretty penny for good, quality pieces. I'm all about investing in beautiful pieces that you love, but sometimes that's just not in the budget.

Enter DIY art: the affordable alternative that lets you flex your creative muscles as well! Making art can be totally fun and therapeutic even if you're not what you'd call, ahem, artistic. You can make some beautiful stuff for your home. Promise.

I talked about a bunch of options for DIY-able art here, so if you're ready to take a project like this on, try my idea below or check out the other ones in that post.

In our dining room update earlier this week, I mentioned that I created these two pieces of large scale art for one of the big ole blank walls in there. Here's where they are:

(*Side note: ugh, I just can't handle that brass chandelier - it's high on the list to replace!)

Let's take a closer look at those two pieces. They're super simple to make.

Here are the supplies I used if you'd like to try your hand at making some of your own:

• Royal blue acrylic craft paint
• Modern Masters Pale Gold paint from their Metallic Paint Collection
• Craft paint brush - I used a fat round one
• White poster board - yep, nothing fancy here! If you mess up, it'll only cost you about 25 cents to start over.
• IKEA Ribba frame - these are the 24"x35 3/4" size and the poster board fits perfectly in it

I decided to make two patterns: one "U" pattern and one "V" pattern. I sketched these out on a smaller scale first to make sure I liked them and then just went right at it. I chose blue as the predominant color and gold as an accent color, adding it in randomly when it felt right. I was inspired by the mud cloth and shibori looks that are so popular right now and wanted the patterns to look more on the imperfect side. I think I achieved that! 

Plus, perfection is overrated sometimes. ;)

After the paint dried, I popped them in the frames, securing them to the mat with washi tape at each corner.

I like how these two complement each other in color and style, but that the patterns are still distinct from one another. Also, that Modern Masters Pale Gold paint was the perfect metallic touch - it ties the art into the nearby kitchen pendants and the overhead lighting in the living room, all of which helps make these rooms look cohesive, but not matchy matchy. The gold paint is such a dream to work with: it goes on smoothly and is a true metallic with beautiful reflective qualities. Open floor plans can be tricky sometimes!

I had a lot of fun figuring out how to style these pieces for photos - styling is always a trial and error process for me - and thought I'd share my process as a fun little bonus for this post! I even made a gif for it - I think that's a first for MRFB! If you can't see the gif, just scroll down. The photos are there individually too.

I started with two stacked stools from our bar area and topped them with a potted succulent (jade)...

Added a second potted succulent...

Brought in a dining room chair...

Then a pillow...

And finally, one more plant for good measure.

I'm not an expert styler by any means, but I've learned a few things that are important to make vignette look great:

1. Always include something living - either a plant or flowers.
2. Vary the textures. Here I've mixed in metal, wood and soft fabrics.
3. Gather items in groups of threes.
4. Mix up the height of objects.

I hope you'll try some DIY art! It's a fun project that can totally transform a space.

Have a great weekend, y'all!

Enjoy what you read today?  Enter your email address below to subscribe to May Richer Fuller Be!  Delivered by FeedBurner

"State of the Dining Room" Update

Hello friends! I hope you're having great weeks so far. Work has been keeping me quite busy lately and I'm ready for things to slow down a little bit! I'm popping in today to share a little update on our dining room. Though it's far from what I'd call "done," I'm ok with that and I figured y'all would like to see some of the progress and hear about the process. After all, real life makeovers don't happen overnight!

The last time you saw a full shot of our dining room, it looked like this:

Our petite, but lovely farm table (a family piece) lived here, and we were using a secretary for storage. We knew we wanted a larger dining table to host folks for the elaborate dinner parties we're planning - I kid, but seriously, we wanted to be able to have more than two people over at a time - and better storage for serving pieces, barware and china.

I hit the jackpot with a thrifted china hutch I found at my favorite local Philly spot, Uhuru, back in January, and that piece has become a workhorse. I wrote about it in this post if you want more details about it and the little DIY magic I worked on it. You'll see it a little later in this post.

Then, after months of hunting Craigslist for the perfect dining room table that my husband and I could both agree on, the Dylan table from CB2 popped up for nearly half off the retail price. It was the perfect mix between traditional farm table, mid-century modern and industrial, and we love it. Enough chit chat though, let's get to to the photos!

Can I just tell you how pretty this table is? It has a thick, solid wood top and iron hairpin-like legs. And yes, it does weigh approximately a thousand pounds (I'm exaggerating, but not by much). Like true city-dwellers who don't have a large car to pick up giant Craigslist finds, we called an UberXL to pick it up and bring it home. The driver was so awesome - he even helped us carry it into the house. It was quite a hilarious scene.

It fits six to eight people, and clearly we are in need of more seating! We're contemplating doing four chairs and a bench - do y'all have thoughts on a bench? I think it would look less crowded visually than having six chairs since our space isn't huge, but I worry a little bit about comfort for the folks sitting at a bench for long periods of time.

I can't get over how thick and beautiful the table top is.

If you're paying very close attention, you might notice that the china hutch swapped walls and I added some large-scale art to the wall where that piece used to be.

I'll share a little more about that art in another post, but I will let you in on a little secret: it was a DIY I put together with some acrylic craft paint and some Modern Masters Pale Gold from the Metallic Paint Collection. They're super simple and add a nice graphic focal point to the room.

I'd say the dining room is coming right along!

What's left to do in here? A few things:

• Change out that unfortunate shiny brass chandelier for something awesome. Jury's out on what that will be, but I talked about some recent favorites last week in this post.
• Figure out the seating. I'd like to get four of these white Eiffel style dining chairs (*affiliate link) and a bench. My husband isn't sold on those chairs though.
• Paint the radiator white.
• Maybe add a rug? 

So that's the "State of the Dining Room" update. Do y'all like these "in-process" posts?

Like I said above, I'll be sharing more about that DIY art in another post!

*Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a FREE e-design package if you're in the Philly or DC areas. All the info on how to enter is here.

Enjoy what you read today?  Enter your email address below to subscribe to May Richer Fuller Be!  Delivered by FeedBurner