More upcycled furniture: I have transformed a dark brown hall table into a contemporary focal piece that looks good in any room, not just the hall. This time I didn’t use Frenchic chalk paint, I used Annie Sloan paint instead, the hue is called Louis Blue. And I have lightly distressed the table. Stylised flower heads decorate the table top, I have used hand cut stencils to create them. The table is on display in my studio.
Hall table Flowers
Acrylic primer, chalk paint, artists acrylics, acrylic varnish on wood. 2018.
76 x 38 x 73cm
Looking back: apart from painting vintage furniture, the mainstay of my Canadian art studio in the 1990s was fabric design. I dyed T-shirts and cotton tops by hand and decorated the garments using stamps, stencils, foam rollers, metal tipped applicator bottles… It was fortunate that my supplier had her shop in the same village where I used to live, in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, British Columbia. If I ever ran out of something, I just had to walk up the road to Sheryl at Opulence Silks and Dyes Ltd. Gallery and stock up.
T-shirt Band.
Stamps carved in Speedball Speedy-Cut,
cotton fabric, Procion fabric dye, Setacolor fabric paint. 1997.
I don’t just upcycle furniture, I’ve started upcycling garments too. I learned how to dye and paint fabric in my studio for functional art in Canada, back in the 1990s. Here you see the back panel of a dress in burgundy red, printed using handcut stamps and embellished with hand embroidery (still a bit shaky). My next goal: freehand machine embroidery.
Leslie St Art Trail, Blairgowrie, 1-9 September: part of Perthshire Open Studios 2018. Local artists decorate business windows, plus treasure trails and exhibition on local 19th century artists, the Blairgowrie Boys. Here is my window at Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
