Hello, spring! Would you like to come to live at my house?
These past few weeks, I'm a bit ground down by all this waiting around for spring to show her pretty face. So I recently decided to take the direct approach. I invited that sweet season into my life with a splashy pop of hand-drawn flowers on my red kitchen cupboard.
My inspiration began with a project for my art class. Lately, I've been emphasizing simple drawing activities and last week's theme was flowers and leaves. Once my darling students all settled down into their work, I took advantage of the rare opportunity to join them and make some art of my own.
I sketched out the simple flower shapes with a Sharpie, and later at home, added the touches of spunky water colors.
Only after the fact did I realize that I had unintentionally featured Pantone's notorious 2014 Color of the Year, Wild Orchid in my work. Since I am not typically concerned about staying on the cutting edge of design trends, that coincidence made me laugh.
And then I laughed even more when I discovered this article, which explains that given the design world's lukewarm response to this sassy shade of purple-pink, Pantone has slyly elected to give Wild Orchid the boot. Seems the color-crazed powers that be have decided that Colors of the Year are shoes too big to be filled, and have downsized to a Color of the Season format instead. So Wild Orchid has been kicked to the curb, nine months ahead of schedule. It's New Coke all over again and I'm amused that my little moment of design trendiness came to such a screeching and sudden halt.
Anyway, once the paint dried, I slipped my artwork into a simple picture frame and propped it up on the red shelf in my kitchen. The cheerful flowers looked sweet among the white dishes but maybe a little lost. I was looking for a bit more ka-pow.
So I did the only logical thing one can do when in search of more ka-pow. I logged on to Pinterest and searched for paper garlands. Mmhmmm. That's where the mother lode of ka-pow surely lives.
After scrolling through the multiple examples of circles, tassels, and fluffy tissue paper pom-poms, I finally struck gold. A geometric garland. So my style and super easy to make. This may not be the most time-consuming or artistic garland I have ever constructed but I love the way the crisp lines and sharp points of the colorful triangles play off the rounded curves of the flower petals.
All in all, I'd say that my investment in this efficient and economical project has been an effective investment. The past few days have been surprisingly and delightfully warm (ish) and (mostly) sunny.
Yay, spring! You've come at last.
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Drawing is contagious - if you're catching the bug, try these projects for more ideas:
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For more stories about late winter and early spring, try these:
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