Thursday, September 20, 2012

A little 'therapy', part one

For me, projects have an almost cathartic affect, and given our loss of Ty, and the emotions tied up in that loss, the small projects I have done since his passing, have given me a place to capture and re-purpose my grief, and breathe him back into our home, in other ways.

Today I started another project.  This is just part one, parts two and three will come in the next few days, but I thought I would post part one now, just to keep the project flow going, both at home, and here.

 
This will eventually be a set of photo pieces that will feature my three beloved dogs; two still here with us, and Ty, no longer a part of our physical world, though very much with us, within our hearts.

I found these small, unfinished frame sets at Walmart for $4.00.  I thought they were kind of cute.  I really had nothing in mind, in terms of how I would use them, and if I failed to come up with an idea, a return to the store would be easy enough.



I decided I wasn't crazy about them in their current state, and my developing idea would take me in a different direction, so I disassembled them.

 
Once I had just the three wood frames, I sanded them down, taking the sharp edge off all the way around.

 
Then it was time for paint.  First a layer of cream, then a layer of brown, both of which I had leftover from the canvas artwork I had done for the head board.



Once fully dried (and using acrylic paint, it took very little time to dry) I started to sand off the 'shine', lightly removing the brown to reveal the cream underneath.  This technique is very easy.  It's just a matter of creating a rustic look by roughing the surface, and exposing the color layer(s) below.  Because the look I'm going for is rustic, perfection is really not desirable, so small mistakes were really okay.  As a matter of fact, they were better than okay.  They lent much more authenticity to the rustic look I was hoping to achieve.



And thus concludes part one...stay tuned for more.




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