Decorating With Class

Using Corbels to Display Artwork

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for inexpensive ways to give your home a fresh, new look all by your little lonesome!

Using Corbels to Display Artwork

I am a traditional decorator who loves the look of fine architectural ornamentation and strive to come up with interesting ways to decorate my home.

We all have paintings or artwork on our walls and typically we do the standard display where we mount them directly to the wall.

But why not give a little twist to how we display art? Instead of hanging them on a nail, try adding more architectural detail to the wall at the same time by mounting a corbel, then simply resting the painting on top?

Need a great source for inexpensive yet elegant corbels? Try wishihadthat.com and invitinghome.com  There are many styles to choose from in so many sizes. You will find a corbel for every need!

New Glass Bead Gel; An Exciting New Medium for Stenciling

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for inexpensive ways to give your home a fresh, new look all by your little lonesome!

New Glass Bead Gel; An Exciting New Medium for Stenciling

After seeing an article in PWC (Paint and Wallpaper Contractor) magazine about how faux finish artists are now using Golden's new Glass Bead Gel, I decided to place my order at dickblick.com for this awesome new medium. See the article and check out the gorgeous finishes!

Golden's description of it's product is as follows:Glass Bead Gel

A coarse textured medium with a Heavy Body viscosity that holds peaks. Made with genuine glass beads, its unique visual effect – like that of condensation on cold glass – is best seen in thin films that allow the mono-layer of glass beads to be illuminated on a light colored ground. Glass Bead Gel can appear very similar to Coarse Pumice Gel or Clear Granular Gel when mixed with enough paint to hide the appearance of the glass beads.

The cool thing about gel mediums is that they are a heavy, translucent (when dry) paste that you can tint any color you choose with acrylic paints or universal tints. They are perfect for use instead of joint compound to create raised designs on stretched canvas.

Where joint compound would eventually crack since the canvas is free to move, heavy bodied gel mediums stop that from happening since the product has some "give" to it and tends to move with the canvas instead of staying stationary.

I've begun using gel mediums in my fine art paintings to create raised designs, which means you can do the same for your own artwork, using

raised plaster stencils or your own hand created art. I'm excited to try to the bead gel because of the reflective qualities they mention. Now how cool would it be to create a glimmering design on my powder room walls with real beads?....my brain is spinning!

Eliminate the need for picture frames with Gallery Canvases

Visit the VictoriaLarsen.com website for Ornamental Plaster Molds, Raised Plaster and Painting Stencils and scads of ideas, techniques and inspiration.

Eliminate the need for picture frames with gallery canvases

I love to paint and it's something I've been doing since I was 12 years old. Recently, the itch to paint has totally overcome me and I dug out my brushes and started a new painting of aspen trees.

Finding and investing in frames to hang my paintings in has always been a real headache and displaying the simple painted canvas on the wall didn't give a "finished" look.

The answer is "gallery wrapped" canvases.

These are art canvases where the canvas itself is stapled on the back of the frame instead of on the sides as was the norm in years past.

With this painting, I was able to take the background and even branches right over the side of the canvas. Who needs a frame when the art is continued to every edge?

Now, when you paint a painting, you can bring your background all the way around the sides of the canvas. What a novel idea and why didn't someone think of this decades ago!

Now, you can do your artwork and display it with pride without a frame.

This type of display works fabulously in today's popular contemporary decorating scheme as well because it keeps the look very simple and modern.

For those of you who are not artists, but would love to do something fun with a canvas like this, take your child's artwork and use modge podge (a craft product used for adhering and sealing designs to a surface) to glue it to the center of a canvas you have painted a coordinating color to your wall color.

Or try painting the entire canvas jet black then stand back the throw brilliant colors of acrylic paints with a paint brush for some dramatic and colorful art on your walls. Who needs to be an artist? Not you!

Find gallery wrapped canvases on sale right now at dickblick.com

How to Paint a Glass Light Fixture

A question I received recently needs to be addressed! We all have them.... plain, ugly glass coverings over ceiling light fixtures. Painting is the answer but how do you do it safely? Those things can get HOT!