Sunday, March 18, 2012

Restoration Hardware Inspired Stencil Art

I have signs & letters all over my house; you
can pretty much read the walls in every room.
I figured, why should my new studio be any different?  

I was excited when I saw these Zinc Letters at Restoration Hardware
a few months back. Well, that is until I saw the $16 price tag FOR EACH LETTER! 
That's $416 + shipping! All I can say is...  NO WAY, NO HOW,
but thank you for the inspiration!


Imagine my delight when I found these beauties a few weeks later at Michaels
and in the $1 bin, no less! They aren't quite as big, but they are
metal and they are stencils and at only $26 they are mine!  


Trying to be budget conscious, I only purchased enough letters to spell 
"INSPIRE", which I hung on my pegboard over my old work space.  
The more I thought about it, the more I kicked myself for not buying 
the whole alphabet.  The following week I broke down & headed 
back to Michaels for the rest of them. Duh. I know. Don't say it.

I didn't have a frame big enough for all the letters and I didn't want
 to spend any more money, so I opted to use my work space pegboard
 to display them and get a new piece of pegboard for my tools. The
stencils look cool on the pegboard and using it saved me having to figure
out how to hang them in a frame and still be able to use them.  Besides,
I'm not going to be able to use the pegboard for my tools until
I'm done refurbishing the cabinets for my work space.

I spruced the stencils up a bit by spray painting them black and
grunged them up really good with some steel wool.  They were originally
brown, but so is my pegboard, and we can't have that! I cut some of my
vintage looking scrapbook paper and stuck it on the back with scotch tape,
in case I actually want to use the stencils.  Wash 'em up, re-stick
the tape, and they're back to being artwork.


 
Here's the finished project; after my hubby cut my 
pegboard down to just the right size! The star used to be a night
light cover until the bracket broke off.  I knew I'd find a use for it. 


Here's what the whole corner looks like after adding some cool decor.
Don't mind the unfinished drywall; the painting can't be done soon enough.
The nest/candle holders came from Label Shopper, the artist mannequin
hand came from Michaels, the calendar blocks came from
Hobby Lobby and the rest is from local junk shops.





With these new additions, I'm starting to warm up to the new studio
space. I can't wait to get the walls painted. I'd say some shade of brown 
for sure.  Are you surprised?  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The work space is next on the agenda.
Can you say vintage 1950s metal cabinets?

I can say its a pain to scrape off two
coats of shelf paper that have been there since the '50s.

Then there's that gorgeous 1970s yellow paint...
but that is a whole other story.  Till next time!

--Karen--






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