Sunday Showcase: When Life Gives You Lemons..

I have heard it said that when "life gives you lemons... make lemonade!" Well I have sort of used some poetic license and modified that particular cliche. I now say; "when life gives you lemons! paint a bunch!" (hehe get it? its a reference to a "bunch" of lemons and a "bunch" as in a great deal. Ahhh what can I say I'm an English major lol) So after a not so fun week and a bunch of drama I decided that the best way to alleviate the frustrations of the week was to do one of my favorite things, aside from blogging and DIY, I decided to paint. But what should I paint? That's always the hardest question that I face. I have a bunch of unfinished canvas to prove it. I was flipping through Ballard Designs and came across this great print!

I have this thing for lemons. When we first started dating Justin bought me 24 fake decorative lemons for my dining room. (That's a lot of lemons.) I love the dose of color that they have and how clean and refreshing they are! But alas this beauty on the right was 249.00 for 2 prints. Yowza. I definitely can't afford that! But! I do have this great untouched 7 pack of canvas in the closet in my office that I got at Michael's for 5.99... hmmmm.... are you thinking.. what I'm thinking?

Yes! We'll just make similar ones ourselves! 

I already had all of the paint. Liquitex is a bit more expensive but it's worth it because it gives you much better pigment and mixes well with other colors. I only keep the primary colors like blue, red, yellow, black, white, and a Sienna Brown, on hand so most of my colors I create myself. Which can be kind of hard but it really makes it so much more worth it. 

I set up shop in my living room, right in front of HGTV to watch a little Design Star action. (I like Leslie!) That's my cool Urban Outfitters tapestry that I paint on because... I don't have any of those colors anywhere else in my house so.... ya know.

The BD design above had blue backgrounds, which I liked. It also has whole lemons and cut lemons. Like the whole not the half. So I modified the design but first I had to paint the background a light blue color...

I decided to sketch out where I wanted my lemons to go so that it would be cleaner, I had only one shot to get it right.

This is the dining room wall before.... I've had those wrought iron barn stars up there for at least 3 years. I like them but... they needed a change of scenery. 

Here's what the new pictures look like from a distance! (Ignore the table I was washing the shower curtain and didn't want it to get all wrinkly lol)What do you think? Better? Worse? Everything in my living room/dining room area is black and white on the walls so this feels like a lot of color to me. Is it too much?

Up close:

It's certainly a simplified version of the BD prints but my house is small so smaller scale works out okay. And besides I didn't pay anything for my little lemon paintings!

So what do you think? Should I keep these little guys or put the stars back up? Hmmmm...

Christina's Adventures

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