Miraculously in my family's eyes, I have given up almost all magazine purchases these days (even going so far as to give up my old Marthas), but there are a couple I refuse to give up. One is Living Etc (for the record, the other is Uppercase). I find so much inspiration in that magazine. I came across an image I had dog-eared in a recent issue of Living Etc, these graphic, eye-catching new Caravan jugs, from Marks and Spencer.
What I love about this piece? It covers all the current trends of black and graphic, with a tiny bit of neon. I was pretty sure I could make something similar to this. So I gave it a try the other afternoon and thought I would share. It was surprisingly easy. Here's how to do it.
I bought two vases at the local GoodwillI and gave them two coats of matte black spray paint. (Just a note, the image in Living Etc looked matte black to me, but the image on the Marks and Spencer website looks glossy. I prefer the matte, either would work.)
I also drew out the basic shapes of what I wanted to paint on the vase with a fine point white chalk pencil. You can also use a regular pencil, as long as you can see the lines you make. I used the original piece in the magazine as inspiration, I mostly drew freehand shapes, flowers, and vines to fill in with paint. I used several shades of blue, green, red, and neon acrylic craft paint, along with some small detail brushes.
I started with the larger, basic shapes (the ground color) of all the things I'd sketched. To make the acrylic colors nice and bright, all the colors needed two coats, but the good news is the paint dries quickly.
Here's the first coat-
Here's the second coat-
I think what really makes this design pop is the brightness of the colors on the black, and the whole piece didn't start to look interesting until I added more colors and details-
And here is the large vase just after finishing-
The smaller one, which now lives in Emma's room-
My goal with this project was not creating museum pieces, but just getting creative and making something cheerful to enjoy flowers in. Relative quick projects like this are what keeps me inspired for the ones that take a little longer.
