Lansdowne Life

Vintage advertisement-inspired paintings

by Erin Heaton

This was a blank, boring and kind of ugly wall in the kitchen. Not a lot going on here and what was going on wasn’t good – draping wires and old nail holes.

I moved the phone, but I needed some large artwork to cover the large metal phone jack. Cheap large artwork, of course. Time to go shopping in the basement!

I came back from my basement shopping with these two much unloved paintings I got from a white elephant gift exchange. Pretty, no?

At least the frames were salvageable.

I removed the artwork (I hope the twins don’t mind), and look what I found!

I guess these were the backings that came with the frames originally, copyright 1962. I kind of love them! Definitely will be squirreling away for a future project.

Anyway, back to the project at hand. I gave the frames a quick coat of black paint.

I found an image I wanted to use here and adjusted it a little to match the dimensions of the frames. I wanted the two frames to function as one piece, so I planned to halve the image.

I love the font used on the “Choice Groceries, Coffees” line! And the “&c.” part too. Makes me want to start using that abbreviation.

I printed the oversized image in sections and pieced it together.

Then I flipped it over and scribbled pencil on the backs of the words.

Next I cut a large piece of watercolor paper into two pieces to match the dimensions of the frames (10″ x 20″).

Because I wanted to minimize the amount of image I would lose down the middle behind the edges of the frame, I overlapped my two pieces of watercolor paper slightly and taped them to the table. I then centered my image on the watercolor paper and taped that to the table.

Then I traced the words, pressing firmly so the graphite from the back of the page would transfer to the watercolor paper. This was kind of tedious, but simple to do.

After that, I colored in the outlines with an art marker.
Next, I mixed up some acrylic paint really thin, almost watercolor like. I used Phalo blue and just the teensiest bit of black craft paint. I brushed it on very thinly in broad strokes. (This probably could have been done before I colored in the words, but I did a test beforehand to make sure the marker wouldn’t run once wet.)
Then I cut some cheap foamcore to the size of the frames for backing and used some Mod Podge to adhere the paper to the foamcore. (I was a little uncertain if it would hold down the thick watercolor paper, which was sort of curling from the paint, but it seems to be holding OK.)
After the Mod Podge was dry, I put them in the frames. And this may be where this project started to devolve. The first one fit pretty snugly and was so lightweight, I decided I didn’t need to use anything to hold it in the frame. The second one, didn’t fit quite as well.
I scrounged up some glazing points out of my toolbox, but the oak frames were pretty hard and this project had gone on for one too many naptimes. So I pulled out the packing tape. (Yes, I was even too lazy to get the duct tape from the basement.)
I was so checked out of this project by the end, I used hot glue instead of nails to put on the picture hangers. And I didn’t even bother to give them a coat of sealer.
But they don’t look too bad, do they? And for less than $5, including the marker.

Comments

  1. Danielle says

    You are freaking amazing. When you run out of space to decorate your house…feel free to use mine.