Triptych Tandem

Years ago my sister made a triptych painting of a white two seater bike with a navy blue background.

I have been begging her for years to make me one, but finally decided to make my own. I am decent at painting, but usually dread it because it takes me forever to draw the object on the canvas. My husband on the other hand is great at drawing and is much faster than me, so one night I convinced him to draw the bike and told him that I would paint it in. When I woke up the next morning he had stayed up hours working on it and had already painted the background and started painting in the bike. I took over from there and painted in about 5 coats of white over his bike drawing. So thanks mostly to my husband, we now have this awesome painting in our bedroom.

 

We used acrylic paint and chose "English Ivy" green for the background to match our green dresser and lampshade.

Here is the painting we had hanging there before, which I painted back in high school.

It now lives at the end of our hallway.

What do you guys think? Has anyone else ever done a triptych painting? Or a painting made by two people?

Adding Antlers to Our Home

I am surprised by how much I like the look of antlers painted white in all the recent magazines, blogs, and pins on Pinterest. I never thought I would like them in my home, it always reminded me of a dusty old wood paneled log cabin in the woods. But here I am now having won a pair after bidding on eBay. After seeing all the pictures of them in beautiful homes I started to appreciate the 3rd dimension they give to wall collages which usually consist mostly of flat frames. By painting them white they no longer looked like animal remains hung up on a wall, but more look like something more pristine like bleached coral or a pretty porcelain sculpture.

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This one is actually from my sisters house.

Here is the picture I saw of them on eBay. Most of the other ones I saw had felt in the middle with the antlers attached, which I thought would make it difficult to paint. These seemed like the best match and they ended up being a great price. I have seen them in antique stores in town with the felt center for $30 which seemed like a good deal, but I wanted to try to beat that price. After lots of sifting through listings on eBay I found these. I only had to compete with one other bidder, and ended up winning them for $16.50 including shipping!

Here they are on the wall right out of the box, before any paint. They looked better than I had expected, from the picture I saw on eBay. They obviously aren't centered or anything, I just hung them on the nail a frame had been hanging on. For a second I actually considered leaving them natural, but my husband hated them, and had the same dusty log cabin feelings I originally had. Luckily he said he would be ok with them if they were at least painted white.

It probably would be easiest to spray paint antlers, but I was trying to save money and I already had a bottle of glossy white acrylic paint, so I decided to go with that.

 Here they are after 2 coats of paint. I could tell it was going to be a long process, but each coat was quick I just had to wait between coats for it to dry. 

After about 8 coats of paint, my antlers finally looked like this.

 

I moved around a few things on my wall collage for my antlers to fit in.

Here's a picture a while back of that wall. A few other things have changed along with the antlers.

What do you think? Has anyone else come around to liking antlers after thinking they never would? Do you like them better white? or natural?

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Wooden Cable Reel Update

I decided I was tired of the plain wood look, and wanted some color on my cable reel (I originally talked about here). 

I sat and stared at my porch for awhile, trying to think of what color would look best with everything else and decided to try to match the color of my hanging door flower holder.

So with my picture of the flower holder in hand, I went to Lowes and picked out Valspar's Surf Spray and bought a sample size of it, which ended up being the perfect amount. I think the color was a little less green, but I think it still looks good.

Here's how my table looks now. As you can see the bottom rim is unpainted. I ran out of paint at that point, but decided not to buy more because I thought it made it look more interesting and it matches the rug color.

I also decided not to paint the bolts because I like how the rust makes it looks more like an antique and gives it a little more personality than a regular table.

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