Love, Spray Paint and Stealing Your In-Law's Art

If you follow me on Instagram, you might be familiar with how head over heels in #love I am with my new office. For those of you who don’t know, my husband recently built himself a new office (oh you bet your booty there will be a blog post about that one), and I got to take over his old abode and make it my own. Before this office actually became mine, I would often day dream about what vibe I wanted it to give off, and I knew one thing for sure: there had to be pink. In honor of Valentine’s Day last week, and because, well… who doesn’t love love, I am gonna break down the creation of the Pink Focal Point in my workplace that was, quite obviously, DIY.

Most of the projects that I do tend to be spur of the moment. Who am I kidding? Most things that I do in life are spur of the moment. In fact, I could probably be in the running for the most impulsive person in the history of ever. I’m thinking about painting a bathroom? Color will be picked and it will be painted by the end of the week. I want to paint a chandelier? Let’s go rent some scaffolding, shall we? I want a big, beautiful focal piece for my office (which, for the record, didn’t even exist until a year and a half later)? Let’s just see what we can do with an old oil painting on a lovely afternoon.

This is the only "before picture I could find of the oil painting. There it is.. all tucked away and ready to try to sell at rummage!

It was the afternoon of our neighborhood rummage sale, to be exact. We live in a very large neighborhood, and every year there is a designated weekend for rummage sales for anyone that wants to participate. On the off chance that I actually get my act together on any given year, I usually stand to make a pretty penny on some of our stuff, so I like to participate when I can. Last year, it was the last day, and as shoppers were dwindling, I just kept staring at this giant oil painting that my mother and father in-law had given me to try to sell a couple years prior (to no avail). It was an OLD oil painting, and at first glance, I actually thought it might be worth something. Unfortunately, after much digging and googling, I had no such luck. So there I am, getting ready to pack up my folding tables and call it a day, and the ole’ gears start grinding.

The Project

I always loved the frame on the painting [a bit gold obsessed here], and so I went over to the workbench to see what I had to work with. The three cans of spray paint in the colors red, white and gold were calling out to me, so I put some gloves on [super out of character for me to prep like that, so kudos to me on that one], grabbed a couple of paint brushes and the old oil painting, headed over to the grass and removed the painting from the frame.

What happened next is difficult to describe because, to be totally honest, I had no plan whatsoever. I didn’t know much besides the fact that red and white made pink, and pink looked good with gold. I went to town and started spraying that bad boy. After a few sprays, I would wipe with the paint brush, and I continued like that until… well, until I ran out of red and white spray paint. Spray, wipe... spray, wipe... spray, wipe. The color that I ended up with tickled me pink [oh I see what you did there]. It was really pretty with that gold frame. I did feel that it needed a little bit extra, so I gently sprayed a few light sprays of the gold and used a smaller paint brush to write the word “love” in the relatively thick product. Finally, just for the sake of cohesiveness, I sprayed the frame the same color as the gold accents that I had added.

The Details

Supplies:

Old oil painting (because who doesn’t have one of those laying around)

Canvas (for those of you who don’t have oil paintings lying around)

Spray Paint

Paint brush or two

Honestly, get creative! There truly was not a method to my madness for this one, but I knew that if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I could just start over! That’s the beauty of low budget, spur of the moment projects. You kind of can’t mess them up… and who doesn’t love that?

I would like to add a little apology, directed at my wonderful in-laws, to the end of this post. It occurred to me as I was writing this that I don’t believe I ever actually informed them of what became of their oil painting. so… SURPRISE (insert blonde girl shrugging emoji here)…?! Thanks for both the contribution to my office, and some blog content as well.