Saturday, April 7, 2012

A Happy Little Laundry Room


A few months ago, I decided to give my small, somewhat hidden laundry room, a mini makeover.  You can see by looking at the picture below that while it wasn't a disaster, it was just looking a bit plain and shabby. A coat of light blue paint ( left over from some accents in Karmyn's room make over) did the trick. I also painted the shelves a bright white as they were looking a bit dingy as well.


This space used to be only used as a utility closet...(for some reason) the previous owner had the washer and dryer in the middle of the kitchen instead of having it tucked away in this perfect little nook. With that being said, I decided it would be more practical to just cover some of the bumpy spots left behind in the dry wall with a larger piece of art rather than redoing the existing drywall that no one ever sees except for the one doing the laundry ( that would be me!). 




I wanted to create something in this space that would make me happy and optimistic every time I slid open these doors to do yet another load of laundry.
I chose the phrase "work hard, and be nice to people". I wanted this piece to be very graphic but hand done, not printed. So I worked on the layout and graphics in illustrator then printed each section to scale on 8.5x11 paper for the large canvas. The canvas had lots of texture because it has a few paintings underneath that I have painted over when I get tired of a certain piece. So its recycled! 


Next came the hard part. Using my x-acto (actually its an "olfa" knock off) I cut each letter out, then used the negative space in the paper as a template, laid each page out over the canvas, and painted. It took for-ev-er! You can see the steps below...




 I must say that I am happy with the way it turned out. Its not perfect but I love the distorted edges of the letters that still have some accuracy to them from one of my favorite fonts (BEBAS).


And yes, everytime a do laundry, it puts a smile on my face!
It's the little things.