DIY art

Last week we actually had a pintucksandruffles reunion.  I flew out to see Brittany and help her get her new place set up.  We didn't do anything too exciting besides paint and shop, but we did have a lot of time to think about home decor.

And I started thinking about art.  I love to paint, although I don't do it nearly as often as I should.  But when people find this out about me, I always get the same response: "How cool!  I wish I was aristic."  And I always want to say, "Well, you play the piano, don't you?  I bet your mom made you practice every day when you were little.  And you probably weren't good right away.  And I really bet that if you practiced painting every day, you'd be much better at it than I am."  But for some reason, not many people enroll their children in art lessons or make them participate in an art team that travels from school to school and competes.  That enthusiasm is saved for music and sports.

So, why not try it?  I put some pictures here that wouldn't require much skill.  Sunsets are always easy.  I did a sunset once and it took me three hours.  And I painted it with a knife.  The middle picture is a litle more complicated but when you look at it closely, it's just a bunch of vertical stripes and dots on a blue and brown background. And the last one-- seriously, anyone could do that.  If you don't have a lot of technical skill you can always call it abstract.  Don't have any good ideas?  Just copy something you like.  (I went to a lecture by an art critic once-- he said real artists do it all the time.)

by Wendy Puerto

by papermoth on etsy

Happy painting.  I promise, it feels awesome when you finish one.

Fabric dressing room

This summer I have been helping my mom decorate the "play room" for the grandkids.  We decided that we wanted a little screen for the kids to change behind when they play dress-up.  At first I envisioned a painted plywood wall, but I remembered how kids like to knock things over.  And then I envisioned a trip to the emergency room to suture a dressing-room-induced wound from it being pushed onto one of the kids.  Not such a good idea after all.

And then I remembered PVC pipe. It's light, easy to cut, has ready-made joints, and rarely injures people (unless you make a potato gun out of it, but that's entirely different.)  So I headed to Lowes and concocted this frame, using four 4' segments, two 2' segments, four 1' segments, four t-joints, four 45 degree joints, and four 90 degree joints.

 This was the only tricky part.  They didn't have a 45 degree t-joint, so I had to use a plain t-joint and attatch a tiny peice to connect it with a 45 degree elbow joint.  It worked out just fine.

 Then I sewed up some curtains that were easy enough that they don't even need an explanation.

It's going to look so cute in our lemon parfait-colored room.  Ahhh, PVC pipe.