Plywood Tulip Wall Art

Have you checked out Vintageprintable.com? It’s a very cool site full of images in the public domain. The moment I saw this tulip picture from “The Great Tulip Book” published in 1640:

I knew I had to use it as inspiration for some type of wall art. When we moved into our new house there was tons of scrap wood in the basement, I found a nice big piece of plywood, gave it an once over with some 220 sandpaper and started outlining my flower:

I wanted a deep dark red so I used oil paint rubbed on with scrap fabric:

As you can kinda see in the photo the oil paint had a tendency to saturate the surrounding area with oil. I used more 220 sandpaper and removed the oil stains and gave the petals some grain show through. I used acrylic with a paintbrush for the white parts of the petals and then did the same to them.

I used a dark brown oil paint to finish off the stem and the stamens. To hang it on the wall I drilled two small holes at the top and threaded some sisal string through, and that was it, a super quick and easy large piece of wall art.

My First Kitchen Table

When Matt and I moved into our first apartment almost three years ago, we had very little furniture and very little money. We bought a sofa set soon there after, and ate every meal on it, so buying a table fell by the wayside. The next year we moved into a new house and the previous renters had left a table set. It was a terrible thing, unfinished on top, sponge painted green and black on the bottom. However, since it was usable, we never ended up purchasing a table of our own. Fast forward another year or so and we were in a new townhouse, without a dining room table or chairs and very tired of eating on sofas. Not anymore!

Here are the chairs we found at Goodwill and really liked:

It took us a few months to figure out what kind of table would look good with these chairs. Matt and I decided that, we wanted a circle table, and we wanted it to be white. That left us very few options, so we bought the very budget friendly, albeit fairly cliché white tulip table (Docksta) from IKEA.

I really like the way the table plays off the white in the artwork and the bright colors of the walls. I love the chairs’ streamlined look and dark brown wood. The server… although I love him very much doesn’t really fit with any of this.

One day I will re-finish the server, and change out the hardware to go with the kitchen’s mix of modern design and earthy colors and textures. Until then, he is just too useful as storage space to move out of the kitchen. Here are a couple more shots of the kitchen, including my woefully uninspired cabinets.

As you can see we also bought a jute rug (Tarnby) from IKEA. I had mixed feelings about it at first, since the color looks kinda odd with our reddish flooring but it’s very nice to have something warm under your feet when sitting at the table. Plus I love the texture:

So there you have it almost three years of marriage, and we finally got around to buying a kitchen table. Give it another three years and I might finish our wedding album.