New Oushak on the Landing

Thank you all for the kind words about the studio reveal! I hope all of you have entered the $2000 give away! I'll be posting more info and sources and angles of the room soon. :)

While I'm working on those posts and tutorials, I wanted to share this pretty rug find with you! My friend Kendra Smoot tipped me off to an eBay listing for this beautiful little Oushak rug (what a friend, right!?). I think I got it for just over $100 and I love how soft and worn it is. It's slightly overdyed with blue and pink pastels. So pretty!

Right now I have it on the landing by the girls' rooms. It fits the floor space perfectly up there. It might end up moving around to one of the other rooms, but I love it here for now.

There's a lot of black happening up there with the stairs still being bare and all the pretty but dark black doors. I think the rug helps lighten things up.

I have the little scalloped secretary on the landing still, but I've yet to decide if I'm going to paint it or leave it as is. I'm leaning toward trying to paint it or doing a limed/cerused finish on a dark base. I think it would look so pretty if I could pull it off!

I put some art up in the landing too. I've had this very naive painting for a couple years now and it always feels like it belongs in the girls' space. I think it's sweet and I love all the bright pops of colors. The frame was pretty lame though, so I painted out the faux gold glaze with some Gentleman's Gray paint I had laying around, which is a deep, soft navy color.

I leaned the painting against my framed button collection that I made a few years ago using buttons I inherited from my grandmothers. The twisty concrete planter was a more recent project.

Anyway, I'm loving my new Oushak! It makes the landing feel like an actual room! :) Makes me also want to put a little bench up here against the stairs. I also need to pick a flush-mount light for the ceiling, and I really need to finish up the stair runner. 

PS if you're looking for a Oushak on eBay, always sort the listings by lowest price first. The private seller listings will almost always be auction style and not Buy It Now.

Adding Detail to Frame Mats

I've been picking up new pieces of art for the studio here and there since the big gallery wall in the living room and the other spaces in the house have swallowed up most of the art I already had. Last week I found a cool etching of a Manhattan street scene that reminded me so much of our old neighborhood that I had to have it. It didn't come with a frame, but luckily I have a habit of buying thrift store art just for the quality frames, and one of the ones in my collection had a mat that was the exact right size for the etching.

The whole thing looked a little blah together though. Lots of yellowed paper and browny-black. I first thought about painting the pretty, ebonized frame a more interesting color, but I hated the idea of covering up the old black finish. So I decided to try one of my old tricks on the matting. It was fun to think back on this five year old (!) post - I still love the concept.

I kept it even simpler this time and instead of gluing down tape trim, I used just a felt-tip marker and a straight edge to add a little interest and color to the old, yellowing mat.

Using a clear ruler made all the difference here in keeping my lines pretty close to straight and evenly spaced. I'm crazy about how this turned out. Such an easy and effective way to bring in a little color without having to buy a new mat! I love a good two-minute DIY! :)

DIY Custom Chalkboard Paint

One of the sad casualties from the move was the glass in my beloved scroll mirror. :(

This mirror has had a prominent place in our past couple homes - I love its unique shape.

The movers accidentally knocked it over when they were loading the truck in Brooklyn. Luckily, there was no damage to the brass frame or to the composite wood backing.

I can always go and get more mirror cut, but I wanted a chalkboard in our kitchen and this spot over the garbage cans was that perfect place. The frame just barely fit, so I was worried a traditional black chalkboard would be too dark for the space. My sister reminded me I could custom mix chalkboard paint colors, and there was no looking back!

Here's how we turned my old mirror into a chalkboard:

The backing board was in good shape so we just needed to trowel on joint compound to create a new, smooth surface to paint.

It's just like frosting a cake, but significantly less tasty.

One of my readers gave me this tip for smoothing joint compound. Rather than sanding the dried compound (which is an unbelievably dusty undertaking) using a damp grout sponge and "wet sand" the compound by smoothing it with the sponge. It is SO easy to get a silky finish this way, and there's absolutely zero dust. Works great on walls and for small applications like this one.

If you have any air bubbles or spots that need touch ups, I like to water down the joint compound a lot. It's easier to put on a small amount when the compound mixture is thin.

After the joint compound is completely dry (maybe wait an entire day or two?), it's a good idea to give the surface a coat of primer (like Zinsser) before painting on the chalkboard paint. Then to make your own chalkboard paint color, you just need a bag of unsanded grout, which you can find at any hardware store, and a bit of regular latex paint in any color you want.

I wanted my chalkboard to be a medium gray, so I mixed some Chelsea Gray and some Brushed Aluminum together until I got about what I wanted. To make the regular paint chalkboard paint, I added two tablespoons of the unsanded grout for every cup of paint. It's important to mix the grout in really well - clumps are no good here! An old whisk works great.

I gave my primed backing board two good coats of my custom chalkboard paint using a foam roller.

Once the paint was totally dry (only about ten seconds later in the AZ heat!), I smoothed out any bumps in the paint with a fine grit sanding block. Then Heather and Gracie helped me condition the chalkboard surface by rubbing the entire surface with chalk. This helps make the chalkboard more easy to erase - the chalk sits on top of chalk rather than getting into the pores of the painted surface.

We put the frame back together (there are eight individually cast scrolls!) and hung it up in the kitchen. I love having a place to write up a weekly menu.

It's a fun place for the girls to doodle, too. Last night we had a lot of our extended family over for a dinner party to celebrate Michael's mom's birthday and the girls decorated the chalkboard for the party.

It's a little big for the wall there, but I still love it. I have lots of art hanging in our kitchen right now (to make up for the current lack of shelving) and I like how the chalkboard is a part of that. It all sort of works well together.

And I think the gray is a little more subtle than black would have been. Since I used half Brushed Aluminum, which is the wall color in the living room, I think the chalkboard doesn't feel too imposing, even though it is huge on that tiny wall. :)

Fruit Painting

Pulling out my paints is the fastest route to my happy place. It's so nice to be able to turn on a good Spotify playlist (or a short story podcast), and settle in and zone out.

Someday I'd love to figure out portraits, but for now fruit and flowers are simple and fun to paint. I've been doing a few of these more graphic collection-style paintings lately inspired by some of the pre-pop Warhol prints above. I started a butterfly one for Evie's room that I need to finish still - it feels like I have a lot of half-done paintings sitting around. :/

I wanted something to hang on the wall in the kitchen right away, something big (to better fill the tall space) and colorful to pop against the new pale gray walls, so I thought a fruit collection would be really fun for the room and would be simple enough to finish in one night.


I don't often buy new canvases. I think it's fun (and less expensive) to recycle thrift store paintings. I got this giant one for just a few dollars. Shocker, I know. Who wouldn't want this gem?

The canvas was in great shape (there wasn't any texture to the old painting - and if there had been, it would have been pretty easy to sand it down). I gave everything including the frame a quick coat of white paint. (PS I have some plans brewing for that unfortunate frame)

While the paint was drying, I quickly sketched up the layout of my fruit collection idea. I tried to group them loosely by color.

I love oil paints, but the clean up is a pain, so I just used acrylics this time. I lightly sketched the fruits on my canvas and then outlined them with black paint. 

Then I just layered on colors. Like for the grapefruit, you can see on the plate here I had ivory and white and pink and orange and red and two or three different yellows. Then I've found the easiest way to get a painterly but still sort of realistic look is to just use a light hand to sort of layer on color according to how the light would hit the fruit. I really love it when little pops of the black base peek through the top layers of color.

I love painting this way - where you purposefully think less about what a banana looks like and more about texture and how light changes the eye's perception of a color. It's easier to do with fruit than with butterflies. :)

I know it's not some great masterpiece, but it was a fun exercise to start and finish a painting in the same day. And at the very least, the painting fills my wall up well and is a shot of bright, happy color in a pretty monochromatic space. Perfect for a kitchen!

Hearts Aren't Just for Valentine's Day

My girls are getting a little older now (my oldest is eight) and while I really miss having babies around, I am having so much FUN with my kids! Every holiday is a million times more exciting. We are in full Valentines mode this week (only handmade cards in this house!) and I love seeing their little creative sides come out. They made me this bouquet from flowers and plants they clipped in our yard a few days ago and I was so proud of the arrangement! :) These little ladies make my heart burst.

Kristen from KFD Designs emailed me this Valentines-worthy project earlier this week and I thought it was so cute. Reminded me of this heart print we all love.

Kristen's more detailed tutorial is here, but the gist is she picked up a pair of really inexpensive thrift store frames, painted them gold and created the peach and neon pink hearts from scratch for the inside.

I love these two colors together and hanging the pink heart upside down was a genius touch and helps keep things in the not-too-sweet zone.

Well, done Kristen! Thanks for sharing.

If you have a project you'd like to share on LGN, email me a link or photos.