My Art & A Fun Space

I am not a big do-it-yourselfer when it comes to work projects, around my own house yes, but not for work. This isn't because I don't feel like I can do it, I just really appreciate the quality of work from people who have perfected their craft and that is what I like to provide for my clients. This little space, however, belongs to a family member, my sister to be exact, and well, you know family gets special treatment ;-)

My sister is a hair stylist and has her own space inside of a large spa/ salon building. Because this is a leased space, we were very limited with what we could do with it and also how much she wanted to spend on it. We needed to do 2 rooms for under $500, yikes! So, that budget equals quite a bit of DIY!

My sister is young and hip and I really wanted the colors and vibe of her space to reflect that. I opted for a fresh and vibrant color scheme with trendy patterns and fabrics. The space, again, is a leased space so we weren't looking for longevity. The new design feels very Tory Burch.

I upholstered the wall, behind where she stands, in a cool, acid green greek key graphic. I then made a center panel out of orange faux leather and piped it in midnight blue grosgrain ribbon. The orange faux leather has the texture of a handbag and gives you the idea of Hermes.
I then centered a Hollywood Regency style sunburst mirror in the center. When you are in the space, this mirror and the mirror that the clients are sitting in front of are parallel to each other and produce that interesting eternity effect.
We painted the walls an intriguing high gloss midnight blue. They are sleek, inky and very now. I accented with gold touches throughout the space. The gold on the deep blue is timeless.
I painted the sides of the custom art gold.

So, that brings me to the art. I don't know why but I was inspired by this Duralee bag that is sitting in my sample closet and I thought "that would look awesome on that wall that I don't know what to do with!". Something about the colors just made me think this would be fun. With our budget, a new piece of art would have been hard to find, not impossible, but hard. I decided to just paint a canvas. I really love to paint and wish that I had time to do it more often. It is cathartic for me. My husband knows this and has always encouraged me to create more art. One Christmas he bought me all of these wonderful art supplies...paints, pastels, canvases, a wooden easel.

Using the Duralee octopus as sort of a guideline, I free-handed my interpretation on the canvas in pencil.

See all those paints below, that was part of my Christmas gift. It makes me happy.

I painted over my sketch with an inky midnight blue acrylic that looks blue in some light and black in others.

I think that it works great with the space and my sister likes that I made something for her :-) She is always asking me to paint something for her.

The panel on the back wall was a little DIY too.

I, first, drew out the pattern in AutoCAD to get the dimesions and scale accurate.

I glued the grosgrain ribbon to the faux leather.

I mitered the corners of the ribbon to get an exact 90 degree angle on the pattern and to make it look more custom.

Ta-da!

I think the space turned out fun, updated and fresh...and most importantly, we made it work with our budget.

I'll be back next week with another fun living room project.

Have a great weekend!