A Closer Look at the Office Projects...

On the wall above the sofa, I painted a very simplified cherry blossom branch using stencils.  I decided to make two sizes of blossoms and then just hand painted the branch and buds.

This is my stencil maker.  It looks like a soldering iron but with a very fine tip at the end.  Basically, the tip heats up and melts the plastic as you draw your design.  You can get them online and I highly recommend getting one. 

I cut out the petals I wanted to use and then just traced them onto plastic using a thick sharpie. 

I moved the petal I cut out around a center circle, tracing it as I went along. 

Once the flower was traced, I put an "X" in all of the areas I needed to remove - It's pretty obvious on a simple design like this, but if you do something more complicated, you'll want to make sure you are removing the correct areas.  I then tape it down onto a plate of glass.  This old frame worked great.

I did a sample of the stencil on a piece of paper to make sure it looked the way I wanted it to.

Looks good to me!

I started by adding a few flowers along the wall.

Next, I very loosely painted the branches, then stood back to make sure the branch was hanging the way I wanted it.

I painted the larger and smaller flowers and, when finished, I went back over the exposed branches and added little buds just with the tip of a small paintbrush.



Almost finished.  If you look at this photo and the finished product at the top of this post, you will see that I actually removed several flowers on the side walls.  Once I put the furniture back into place, I thought it looked too busy.



A few other small projects I used on this room...

Two very different lamp bases.  By painting them both red and adding matching lampshades, they look very nice flanking the sofa bed.

The lamps on either side.



I wanted to bring some red to this side of the room and so I wrapped some manilla folders in red and white wrapping paper (thank you Sally Foster wrapping paper..).  Ignore the cords beneath the table, I will be hiding them once I'm sure I like the layout.



Lastly, the bookshelves.  This is a "during" photo, with one light coat of primer.

So pretty with the red and white!

I've spent this weekend at our lakehouse.  One of us needed to come down and make sure everything was ok and I volunteered - nice of me, right?   As I look around the house, I am making a list of all of the painting opportunities that I can look forward to doing this summer to spruce things up and I can't wait!  In the meantime, this week I will be trying my hand at cake decorating...stay tuned!