Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Freshen Up


I have not been doing any art lately... I think I am taking a break and will come back to it fresh when my inspiration and enthusiasm returns.  Right now I am mostly working in the garden, and taking the kids swimming nearly every day (I am pretty sure they think swimming is their full-time summer job).

I have been trying to help the kids get some projects made to take to the fair at the end of summer, and one thing we tried was some molding with Plaster of Paris.  I've never done it before and it didn't quite turn out very well, but I think we will come back to it and try again.





I did repaint my kitchen, however!




(The sign in the above picture was made for me as a gift by a dear friend, it is still waiting to be hung in it's designated spot.)  

Since we built the kitchen, it has been a bright sunshiny yellow, which I liked very much.  But it was getting very dirty and dingy-looking and I was ready for a change and a freshening-up.  





I had a terrible time picking a new color, however, and as it turned out I still was not happy with what I ended up with.  The photos don't exactly show it as it looks in real life... The color is called "Cool Sea Air" and I thought it would look gray with a little hint of blue-green.  In reality, it looks much more blue than I expected.  When you get a whole room-full of it and add changing light, it just doesn't look like the sample.





Granted, it is a very trendy color right now.  I see this color all over the decorators that I follow on Instagram.  So maybe it was some sort of subconscious color choice on my part.  And I am adjusting to it.  It does look really good with my counters and floor, and once I got some new decor up, I do like how it looks.





(That pot-rack is the one my Mom hauled back on an airplane from Switzerland for me!)





Taking everything out of the kitchen made me rethink how (and if) things go back in.  The decluttering effect has been nice and I have moved some things to make them more attractive and functional.  I would like to add in a few new things, such as a basket or something to hold coffee and tea accouterments and a little shelf for mugs to make the little "coffee corner" more useful.






So I am glad to have that summer project done.




In a future post I will show another fun project we've been doing... raising a monarch caterpillar!  The photo above has a little sneak peak-- in the windowsill is the milkweed that the little creature was eating.  It went into it's chrysalis the other day, and when it emerges, I will show all the photos.

13 comments:

  1. Great post, Katie! The kitchen looks great. I love how you staged it for the photos (since I know a hard working kitchen like yours doesn't always look like magazine photos). There are several colors represented on the walls here so it is hard to get a true understanding of it but these all look great whatever it is! It just looks fresh and new. I'm sure it was fun to finish the design with the embellishments. Touch a bit of paint on that electrical cover by the clock to make it disappear,

    That monarch project is so excepting. Reminds me of your egg development one on high school. Looking forward to the transformation there too.

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    1. Ha, yeah, it definitely doesn't look like that most of the time. I took the photos right as I put it back together because I knew it would not stay that way. Also, no wide-angle shots... And I Just can't quite get a photo to show what the color really looks like, and it changes, of course.

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  2. Superb, Katie. Fresh and clear and breezy is great for a kitchen, I think. And I personally love "changing" colours. I don't go for change in general (I would never paint my kitchen in colours!), but differing light effects are good.

    You always have lovely photos (like an experienced blogger) and your accoutrements are beautiful: homey, elegant and
    practical all at once.

    umm, question: OSHA didn't not sign off on that magnetic cutlery strip?

    Looking forward to critter post.

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  3. And, by the way, I was working on some casting too, with dismal results in the first tries. In one of my classes we were to make gesso and paste casts. The first try was without told release. goes what? it didn't release. Thought that away. Try again, small, trial piece with release. Still no good. So I used ordinary plaster in plastic holds and that worked fine. I still would like to know how to do the others. They would be flexible and thin and light-weight, which is what I need for projects. More practice needed - later.

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  4. oops again... " Guess what?" not goes what

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  5. oops the third (proof read, maybe?)... "Throw that one away,"... not "Thought that away."

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  6. sigh, oops the fourth... " in plastic molds" (that was an auto correct that I didn't want)

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  7. Haha, autocorrect is so fun. I understood, though. With our plaster experiments we used playdough for molds. It actually worked pretty well, but we could only do very small things. I might actually make a big match of homemade playdough just for this. We tried modeling clay as well, but it really didn't work as well. We also tried some leaf casts, but the plaster was too thin and they broke. Now we have learned and will do better next time.

    And there has been no oversight on my magnetic knife strip, haha. It is safer than it looks (I think so anyway) because the knives are securely up off the counter. I love it!

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  8. Also, Sarah Marie, I am curious if your aversion to painting a kitchen in color is preference or philisophical? ;-)

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  9. HHmmm, preference, I think. I like white as a backdrop for the busy-ness of busy rooms, like kitchens. It might be related to my aversion to background noise, including music. When I want to listen to something, I listen purposefully. When I want to see something, I want to see it against neutrals, I guess, not bouncing off something else. At the same time, however, I love riots of color and patterns and textures. I usually have a little war over quiet elegance and glorious mishmash - the latter tends to win, but needs some stabilising.
    All that said, I think your kitchen is a great success, because it hits the elegance note quite right. Many people make lovely choices for colourful room walls, I just tend toward white.

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  10. Lovely kitchen, Katie! So glad it worked out well enough for you. :)

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