Most of the time I love LOVE veneer. And I’m usually hard pressed to change it up.
Why mess with perfection?
However.
Although I loved the shape of this dresser, the strip veneer wasn’t doing a lot for me. In my eye, it seemed to be competing with the curves of the moldings. Plus, the stripes pointed to the ‘Georgia O’Keeffe’ – and I couldn’t NOT see that.
And so…I decided to go for it…and change it up.
The center portion of the dresser was CRYING out for an image. It would be so perfectly framed.
Most of you know that I normally favor Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Just dreamy, and lovely. And they make my knees wobble. But this piece was going to be different. I wanted more of a ‘vintage’ feel to it. The dresser is probably from the 1930’s (ish) and so I started looking for paintings around that era. Think 1912. I wanted the image to give the appearance that it had always been there.
And so I went towards Paul Emile Chabas.
September Morn (1912). It was quite controversial when it was released, some said it was “immoral”.
Overtime it became known as his ‘masterpiece’.
It’s not hard to see why.
Truly, I love it. It makes my knees wobble.
Normally, when I do image transfers most of my time is spent trying to ‘hide’ the seams. It’s a challenging past time, to say the least. This time, I decided I actually wanted the seams to show.
HUGE departure for me. You have no idea.
Instead of getting my tiny paintbrushes to blend in the edges, I worked with a sharp razor blade and focused on making them more apparent.
She is quite lovely.
The painting has beautiful warm tones. And I really wanted to play on the warm palette.
Enter this color.
Summer Melon by Pure & Original. (affiliate link).
I have to confess then when I first opened the can I didn’t jump up and down. The company had sent me a few random colors to try; Summer Melon being one of them. It took me awhile to warm to it.
But when I did (especially when it’s paired with a glaze) oh boy, oh boy.
And of course, you need gold leaf. Life would be so sad without it.
Seriously, I can do detail work all day long. It calms me and takes me to my happy place.
We all need a happy place to visit.
So, there you have it. Little change with the choice of color, little change with the choice of image, Big change with the technique
but
seriously
I couldn’t love it more.
{insert catchy ending phrase here}
Diane aka The Paint Factory
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