I have been working towards Up-Cycled Danishly for over two years.
That is, painting furniture and doing seascapes for the walls.
This open studio I have achieved it the look I was after… It is not quite a fabulous as I hoped due to lack of space, so everything is a bit crammed, but mission accomplished!
The idea was to up-cycle furniture in an antique Danish peasant style, as inspired by my Danish grandmother, and combine the furniture with seascapes. A look that reminds me of my childhood and one that I have always loved. I have a few inherited pieces of painted furniture so decided to add to the collection. My rule was to take solid pieces of furniture and improve them, rather than just make them look different. They were to look old and as though they were meant to be that way.
Bizarrely the best brush I found for painting the motif details was a Japanese sumie brush, designed for painting on rice paper not wood. But it worked.
It has been a huge amount of work. Painting furniture is a slow business.Also bulky! My house is now beginning to be rather, um, full! Time to let go and sell a few pieces to create space to keep painting.
In order to set the room up I have turned my painting studio aka the garage into a dump. Anything that doesn’t go with the look has been put in there. OMG, total mess! But hey ho, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do, and being a finisher/completer type (so a human resources friend once told me) Up-cycled Danishly it is.
Essentially the look is striped upholstery and rugs, roses and other flowers, hearts and birds as motifs, colour schemes blues, greens reds …
Carnwath, the nearest village to me, prides itself on being the village in Scotland furthest from the sea, which to my mind says nowhere in Scotland is very far from the sea! But oh to now transport the work to an old farmhouse on the coast with lots of space to see the pieces in interior design vignettes as opposed to squashed together. In the meantime here is is in South Lanarkshire – Up-cycled Danishly.
I hope you like it. All work is for sale.
Up-cycled Danishly
Next weekend … 28-29 October
My house …
Coffee and Danish biscuits and a warm welcome …
Berry Knowe Cottage, Westsidewood, Carnwath, South Lanarkshire. ML11 8LJ
Phone me for directions – Kirsten 07711 903537
Or by appointment.