Top Decoration

I still have "Green" on the brain.
Yes, I realize St. Patrick's Day is behind us, but the past two days have flown by and I'm playing catch-up!

Which leads me to...

The need for some green art in the small main bathroom across from our kitchen. And I don't mean "green" as in earth-friendly (although, I think this would count as that because I did re-use what we already had!), but "green" as in, the color!

This particular bathroom in our house is pretty small.
It has a specific function, without any frills.
I have done what I can to make it nice and inviting for the few moments that anyone may spend in there.

We added a frame around the mirror, exactly like the one in the living room and that made a HUGE difference! I painted the walls a warm, medium brown color with just a hint of pink in it. You'll see more signature 90's mauve in this bathroom (just like the tiles in the hall and the living room fireplace)! In this case, we can't cover it up, so I had to find a way to make it all cohesive. When we moved in, the walls were a very light "packing paper grey" color which made all of the pink in this bathroom scream "hello!" The new paint color added some much needed drama to the space and took the focus off all of the pink.

But, back to the green.

I have this vase of greenery sitting next to the sink and I've always loved how it pops against all of the neutral colors that surround you in this space.

But I needed to stretch that color through to the opposite wall to relate the two sides of the space.

I have recently taken a liking to botanical art.
Specifically the ferns.

I looked at a few stores and found.....nothing!
Absolutely nothing!
Which seemed odd to me because I know that not too long ago you could find framed fern art everywhere. Obviously, I missed the boat on that one!

Hmmm.....what to do?

I was definitely becoming impatient on this one. I knew what I wanted for the space and I wanted it now.

I recently brought this Boston Fern into our home and I love it!

The wheels started turning....

Conveniently, there was an unwanted cabinet door that my husband had in the garage. He had made it back when he built the bookcase for our bedroom, but cast it off because it didn't turn out quite how he had wanted.

As far as I was concerned, it was the perfect canvas!

I started by painting the inset a Spring Green...

I cut a few of my fern leaves and laid them out how I wanted them to look.

I took the whole thing out into the garage, just as it had sat on my kitchen table, and gently spray painted it glossy white hoping that enough definition would come through and you would be able to see the individual leaves.

It turned out.....ok.
Definitely not like what I had imagined in my head.
Time to modify the plan.

I grabbed a different shade of green craft paint and a small paintbrush...

I watered the green paint way down (David Bromstad style!) and started to paint in the individual leaves...

I was happily surprised that it actually worked!

Moving onto the frame.

I taped off the picture from the frame and started with a dark brown semi-gloss paint.

Then I wiped on a layer of matte black paint.

The goal was definitely to make it look old.
Not like it was the product of an idea I had 10 minutes ago!

Once it was dry, I took it into the garage, gave it a quick sand with the palm sander, sprayed a good coat of matte polyurethane on it and called it a day!

Does it look professional?
Probably not...

Am I at all worried about that?
Definitely not!

It does for the space exactly what I had set out to achieve!
And I made it myself!
With stuff that we already had!
And that feels good!

I'll post pics of the bathroom soon!