One can’t help but notice the surroundings when a room has wood plank walls.  They can provide a rustic, warm appearance and most look better when the color is fading elegantly or has a nice distress to it. Of course, having wood panels can go horribly wrong but these images showcase how they can be magnificent as well.  Let’s take a look…

Seriously. I love everything about this space. I especially like how the rustic areas play off against the more formal elements, like the gold-framed portrait and the mirror.  Plus, the same look going into the ceiling?  Yes, please.  This was featured in the Spanish mag, Nuevo Estilo.

(above) A dark, distressed beauty of a background featured in the book Flowers for the Home and (below) a mix of color, size and direction, via Apartment Therapy, makes a great accent wall.

So cool, right?  It’s the Ace Hotel in Portland and Hotel Chic did a great feature on it.

(above) Great use of color!  I even feel uplifted just looking at it — imagine being there!  Same goes for the room below, as featured in Nuevo Estilo. Wonderful windows and light fixtures!

Coastal Living shares a beachside beauty photographed by Richard Leo Johnson. Love how it’s styled for the shoot, too!

Wood plank walls add so much great character — whether painted with lush, full coats or given a rough luxe feel with a more transparent stain or color.  Many even use reclaimed materials to create the wood paneled walls in their home.  Do you like the look?  Do tell!

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The Deets is a series that takes a product out on the market and provides fast details: What It Is, What It Does and Where to Get It. Today we talk about IdeaPaint, a product we touched upon back in 2009.  The company has grown leaps and bounds since then via their flexible, durable dry-erase paints — but let’s find out more!  Also, be sure to see the details on our beautiful Giveaway!

What It Is: IdeaPaint is a waterborne paint product that turns virtually anything you can paint into a dry-erase surface.  It can be applied to any smooth surface and works with all brands of dry-erase markers.  There are two product lines: CRE-8 is for larger installations and comes in eight (8) pre-mixed colors and HOME is for smaller projects.  The products help keep millions of worn out and unwanted whiteboards and blackboards out of landfills each year. They do suggest using a primer prior to painting – they have their own as well as a list of suggestions.  They also have a solvent-based PRO line in 5 colors for maximum durability in commercial settings.

What It Does: The high-quality paint can be used for interior applications and does not crack, peel or yellow. It comes with a 10-year guarantee.  Your handiwork can be erased easily and there are no seams. Their site has a great FAQ area.

The paints are great for artists, designers, students, teachers, parents and children.  You can use the paints to “transform a child’s bedroom or playroom into a place to explore and express their creativity” or use them in commercial offices to provide a space to keep track of appointments, lists and ideas.  It’s great for use in conference rooms and even for a family at home to keep up with each other.

CRE-8 Colors

The CRE-8 colors come in kits covering 50 square feet and are GreenGuard certified.

Where To Get It: The paints and cool related products are available for online purchase and they also have international distributors.  The kits vary from $29.99 to $199.50 and IdeaPaint advises that the products cover in one coat.

Children’s Centers (this one is Little Sprouts)

Fun Artistry (click the pics to enlarge)

Extras: IdeaPaint has a How-To area on their site so you can see the process with both videos and downloadable sheets.  They also have a blog where they post about projects and contests and a great YouTube channel with cool videos.  You can also find the company on Facebook and Twitter.

Surfaces include entire walls, table tops, columns and even doors!

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I love helping to spread the word on wonderful products such as this one.  Now obviously, you can buy dry-erase boards anywhere but I think that using IdeaPaint in a client’s environment (or your own) can make for inspired ideas since you can customize the use of it!

G  I  V  E  A  W  A  Y

One lucky Reader will receive a 20 square foot kit of IdeaPaint HOME, ideal for small and medium-sized surfaces!  It’s valued at $74.98 and you can use the kit to create message boards on a wall, tabletop, door — even the fridge!  For your chance to win, please leave a comment on this post letting us know what you think of IdeaPaint and your creative plans for the product — you know we all love to read inspired ideas!  The Giveaway is open to everyone and one Winner will be chosen at random from the comments.  Deadline: Midnight on Sunday, November 20th, 2011.  Good Luck!

All Images Courtesy of IdeaPaint

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Recycled Paint

We had a fantastic Giveaway by Metro Wallworks during our Deets post on their innovative eco-friendly product, Recycled Paint.  Readers were asked to comment about their creative plans for the material and one was picked via Random to receive five quarts of paint to start their own faux kit.  Without further ado, the Winner is…

MICHELLE LOPEZ!

Michelle says, “I am a relative newcomer to the decorative painting world, and thanks to the internet and BLOGS (yes, I’m blog obsessed!) I am able to learn from some of the most incredible teachers in the business without ever leaving home.  Currently, I specialize in painted furniture, patinated mirrors and stenciled/faux finished walls, but I will paint almost anything!”  Michelle had just bought a stencil and planned to use the Ice Blue and Stony Gray Recycled Paint colors to create a beautiful focal wall for her bedroom.  It does sound amazing — keep us posted, Michelle!

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I did want to say “Thank You!” to all who left a wonderful comment on the post and also to Ayn Riggs of Recycled Paint for the wonderful Giveaway.  There will be more opportunities to win products and other great giveaways so be on the lookout, dear Readers — have a great day!

The Deets is a series that takes a product out on the market and provides fast details: What It Is, What It Does and Where to Get It. Today we talk about the newly released Recycled Paint by California’s Metro Wallworks.  Recycled Paint is quite unlike any other paint because it IS the other paints.  What does this mean?  Let’s find out!  Also, be sure to see the details on our Giveaway!

What It Is: Recycled Paint is unused latex paint collected from Hazardous Household Waste collection centers that is then sorted, filtered, scrubbed, tinted and remanufactured into high-quality interior and exterior latex paint.  It is comparable to top-quality new paint sold by national manufacturers. It is available in 15 pre-mixed colors and carries the Green Seal stamp of approval. The sheen for all the paints is flat except for Whipped White which is also available in Semi-Gloss.  Custom colors and other sheens are available for orders of over 100 gallons.

Recycled Paint Color Chart. These colors are readily available in one-gallon or 5-gallon containers.

What It Does: This high-quality latex paint that can be used for interior and exterior applications for any paint project.  Using Recycled Paint qualifies for LEED credits because the paint contains over 80% post-consumer content material.

In fact, to make 10 gallons of new paint takes about 1000 kWh — the equivalent of running a home for a month.

In California alone, people dispose of 5 – 7 million gallons of paint every year and the energy used to make that disposed paint would run 40,000 homes for a year!

“Our mission is to increase awareness and thus consumer demand for recycled paint, just like environmentalists did with paper, glass and plastic.  We purposely choose a very bold “recycled” on the label and kept it generic so that resellers can apply their logo in place of ours but keep the branding going.  We just want to sell a lot of paint in our neck of the woods and be a catalyst for other retailers to take this on as well,” Ayn explains.  Please note the website has a great FAQ area as well.

Where To Get It: Recycled Paint is available through Metro Wallworks but they will be announcing more distributors and locations soon. The cost? $16.95 per gallon and $65 for a 5-gallon bucket.  The 5-gallon ends up being $13 per gallon.  Seriously — you can’t beat that.

I do love their tagline "Some Things are Better with a Past". Brilliant.

Extra Tip: Ayn Riggs, owner of Metro Wallworks, added an area to the website called Decorative Artists 4 Recycled Paint.  It’s an area for studios and artists across the country to share finish recipes using recycled paint. The contributing studios are promoted on the site and visitors receive practical advice and great ideas.  Win-win!  BTW, you can find the company on Facebook and on Twitter.

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Now obviously, you can buy paint anywhere but I think that using a product such as Recycled Paint goes toward the greater good, is cost effective and clients will always appreciate an eco-forward studio.  Helping to spread the word on wonderful ideas and products such as this one is one of the joys of writing this blog!

G I V E A W A Y

One lucky Reader will receive 5 quarts in any colors you’d like to get you going on your own personal faux kit!  You can use it to create a Decorative Artists that Care finish or use it as the base of a simple job and then blast out to your clients what your studio is up to — it’s all up to you!  For your chance to win, please leave a comment on this post letting us know what you think of Recycled Paint and your creative plans for the product — you know we all love to read inspired ideas!  The Giveaway is open to everyone and one Winner will be chosen at random from the comments.  Deadline: Friday, July 22, 2011.  Good Luck!

The quick story is that Annie Sloan is a decorative painter who is also an author that helped elevate and popularize many beautiful techniques.  The long story is that she has been in the industry for over 40 years, her books have sold in the millions, they are available in eleven languages, she creates phenomenal products and oh, sparked a painted furniture revolution.

Annie Sloan

We’ve written about one of her books before as well as her popular Chalk Paint line.  Today, we spend time with the fun-loving woman behind the business.  “I was in art school for 7 years and then in a band for 2 and then I was a journalist for a year before deciding I wanted to paint paint paint. The band was pretty exciting and we did a lot of very cool things – we made a film in Berlin and performed with Roxy Music among others.  David Bowie used to love us and Mick Jagger came to see us perform.  But this is all a LONG time ago. My youngest Hugo is a singer and will be touring with his solo project, Chad Valley, this summer in the States.”  Intrigued?  Let’s learn more…

What are some of the best designed spaces you’ve seen in your travels?

I like organic growth very much so I do love the randomness of an English village or a Mediterranean town, with higgledy piggledy lanes and big and large houses pushed together on top of each other.  We also visited Seville a few years back and went to the Alcázar, the Moorish eleventh century palace.  That is one of the most relaxing and stunning places I’ve ever seen with a mix of Muslim and Christian design that is both breathtaking and inspiring.   It was great to see a culture that allowed both to flourish.

Where do you see decorative painting heading in the future?

I think it will become more integrated into the rest of interior decoration – there will be more interior decoration shops, vintage shops, more recycling, upcycling and repurposing.  Modern Country will be a new look – colours will be lighter and brighter and the French look will continue to be popular.  There will also be a lot more DIY.

Who are some of your inspirations?

Duncan Grant and the rest of the Bloomsbury group at the Charleston farmhouse in Sussex in the south  of England – a stroke of genius I think!  David Hicks, English decorator who was big in the 1960/70s – the ‘haute couleur’ of home décor!  Coco Chanel, too – simple classic sensitive style. No fuss chateau chic!

List five (5) hobbies that sound fun.

Gardening, orienteering,  singing, canoeing and  playing a musical instrument.

What one existing book or movie title describes your life?

Eyes Wide Shut.  Not the film itself, just love the title as it sort of describes how we go through life thinking we know what’s going on but….  Also, Sense and Sensibility would be how I hope I have lived my life…ha!

One of the sensibly beautiful techniques she teaches in her books.

Which artist would you like to commission to create a work of art for your home?

O goodness what a delight!  It would have to be David Hockney.

Any books on the design or art industry that you recommend for us to read?

Probably Charleston – a Bloomsbury House and Garden by Quentin Bell and Virginia Nicholson.  It is something well-known to British readers but not so well known to the US.

What’s the best piece of professional advice you have received?

There are enough things against you in life so make certain you stay friends with everyone in the industry. We need to work together not against each other.

What photo or picture really moves you?

So many pieces but the last piece I really was inspired by deeply was in the Picasso Museum in Paris – he worked with pink and browns yellow and purples – difficult weird colours and made them look splendid. He apparently found colour very difficult so it is inspiring how he worked first with neutrals then he worked through his blue and pink periods then with a mix of colours. I love his JOY of expression, too.

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I think Annie has a definite joy in expression as well — and you know I love the advice to work together, not against each other.  Please do take a moment to check out her informative website to learn more about her company, product and books.  She also has a Facebook page and a Twitter stream.  Did you find out something new about this industry icon?  I think her five chosen hobbies sounded pretty cool and I loved her suggestions…  Have a great weekend, dear Readers!

Used to be that I thought mud was only good for this…

However, it wasn’t until recently that I heard of mud stenciling.  Mud stencils are an “environmentally-friendly street art” according to artist Jesse Graves of Mud Stencils.  For the eco-friendly graffiti artists who are serious about their world and care about the imprint they leave, this solves it all.  They can make their point by expressing their message — and then it all washes away easily, earth returning to earth.  Love.

Some of the smaller works by Jesse Graves.

Mr. Graves was kind enough to give a good working recipe.  A quick how-to time lapse video showing how to mud stencil is provided by the Keep A Breast Foundation, who has a “non-toxic revolution” teaching young people how to prevent and detect breast cancer.  Of course, if mud just isn’t your thing, you can always go green by being a guerrilla gardener and trying the moss variation…

Via Treehugger

…or the fascinating Reverse Graffiti, which creates designs by pressure washing and cleaning through a stencil.

Who’d have thought a dirty wall would be a blank canvas to some?  Genius.  You know what’s interesting, too?  A recent event in Wisconsin involved a protest and mud stenciling.  The police did not deem the messages as graffiti since they could be washed away.  That’s quite an advantage for art activists.  Rock on!

I hope everyone enjoyed their Memorial Day Weekend! I’m still struggling with a bout of food poisoning and can barely get a post out.  I may give myself time to recuperate — apparently, my family says it’s something I’m not good at, can you imagine?    In the meantime, I leave you with one of my favorite hotels that we’ve worked on, Sundy House.  It has both gorgeous gardens and beautiful decorative painting at every turn.  Click on the link to see more…

Sundy House Hotel - a brief glimpse into the beauty...