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Saturday 2 January 2016

Folk Art Furniture - turning trash into treasure

I became interested in Folk Art after reading Earlene Fowler's Benni Harper mysteries, in which Benni runs a museum and manages a community of artists. That's how I came across Folk Art. She doesn't go into great detail in the series, but I was interested enough to investigate and what did I find?

Something that filled me with excitement, that's what.

To my surprise, I also discovered a friend had a secret passion for it. When I reached under her coffee table one visit and brought out a treasure box painted like a space galaxy, she confessed. 

Now, this wasn't totally out of the blue because I've always defaced furniture and walls with stencils or calligraphy, much to Husband's dismay. Whilst selling our last house, the firm of 20 real estate agents did a 'walk through' before commencing the sales process which would take us to auction. At the end, one of them took my husband aside and gave him some advice. 

"Get the marijuana off the walls, mate."
"Aye?"
"Yeah, the stenciled hash. Paint over it. It'll make it hard to sell if you don't."

Now, I know it was maple leaves. I know that because it looked like the beautiful delicate fingers of a maple AND it was a child's stencil set. What kind of manufacturer gives children hash leaves to colour in? Perhaps there was something about the type of green I'd used but ah well; they were gone before the first viewing and I've been reluctant to stencil walls again. 

But furniture...my eyes lit up in a way which makes Husband cringe and think, 'Here we go again.'

So, for the last eight years, nothing's been safe or out of bounds. He can't protect everything; he has to leave for work sometime and I get home earlier than him. That's what I call my Golden Hour.

Below is the link to my latest bit of Furniture Fiddling. It's not overly lush in the paint effect used because the point of this piece was to reduce the busyness around that area, so to cover it in loud flowers and dramatic colours would have negated its effectiveness.

Read and enjoy.

Click the link HERE

#FolkArt
#art
#furniture

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