It was time for a bedroom refresh… The turquoise feature wall (read chimney breast) needed updating due to a change in bed linens and their warm grey no longer complemented the blue-green paint tones. I was given free rein to choose a replacement bedspread and create a new art piece above the bed. That didn’t quite work out (see below), so this was the final(ish) outcome:
The initial brief
‘You choose.’
The actual brief
‘No, that doesn’t work.’
In fairness, it didn’t. I’d chosen an almost fluorescent pink bed sheet (billed as fuchsia in colour) to be the new bed cover and I was going to complement it with a pink concoction of an art piece, drawing in the colours of the bed linens and the paint colour of the rest of the walls. I had started on the canvas which was going to be a 3D bas-relief painted and gilded swirl and the modelling paste was drying nicely. That got scuppered when a different bedspread was chosen which had a very geometric pattern, a more muted colour palette and was not going to work with the original artwork design.
So, not wanting to waste the canvas when my plans changed, I discovered the filler had adhered marvellously well to the canvas and would not chip off. For the next design, I did not need the canvas so I stripped it off entirely and used the frame to hold a piece of white-faced MDF board instead.
The bedroom artwork
Taking inspiration from the newly chosen bedspread, I measured up, worked out the dimensions (which fitted a treat) and cut triangles from different thicknesses of MDF using my laser cutter (1mm-4mm). I painted them with carefully mixed colours of acrylic paint, including the use of the wall colour of the rest of the room as the background. I intended to have some dimension to the piece and randomly placed the different heights and colours, trying to get some variation as I went. Once I’d decided on placement, I worked out which edges would be visible and painted them with metallic gold paint before replacing them and glueing them down.
This is the new bedspread (from Dunelm). A much less in-your-face colour scheme than my original high-contrast pink on grey. I spent more time on the paint mixing than B&Q did… Consequently, the artwork matches the bedspread and bed linens better than the wall – hence a probable need to repaint the feature wall.
Finished or not?
A cautionary tale: when matching a paint colour to a fabric, don’t rely on a best guess, or indeed a comparison to the in-store swatches. I made the mistake of taking in the pillowcase to B&Q, matching with a Dulux ready-mix (Urban Slate), finding there wasn’t a pot of that to purchase and going to the Valspar mix desk. The very helpful assistant said ‘I’ve found a close match’ and we went with it. It turned out to be a cool grey, not a warm grey, and I’m not convinced I can live with it. However, it will be another £21 and four hours of work to repaint the chimney breast so maybe it won’t grate so much in a few months time… Next time I’ll get the Valspar swatches and bring them home to compare in the same light. A rookie error I’m sure to repeat.
The final touch, I think, is to fetch it down and paint the sides of the frame the same metallic gold. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough left of the paint as that used for the triangle edges – it’s been discontinued. Since there is so little of the internal edges visible, I should get away with a close match. I can’t decide whether to edge the frame to hide the board edge and create a thin gold outline visible from the front, or just paint the edges. Any thoughts, dear reader?
If you’d like to commission a piece of art, I’d be pleased to discuss it with you – and I promise to pin down the brief a little more precisely!