Creative Retreat #2 - 2018 Day One Furniture Painting

I hosted another great "Getting Stitched on the Farm" Creative Retreat this past weekend. This weekend's class featured one day of Furniture Painting - inspired by the Bloomsbury Table project in my new book Crafting A Patterned Home. 

Each student brought their own small piece of furniture painted in a base coat. The day was spent figuring out how they want to decorate their table and then doing it. I supplied many colors of latex paint. 

Here are their projects before they were attacked with pattern and color. 

Here the students are cutting paper, making sketches and figuring out how to work with their individual pieces of furniture. 

Jan looks to be in intense concentration. 

Now I will share photos from each person's project as the day progressed. 

Stephanie's project was a navy blue wooden tray. You can see her original sketches and how the design progressed over the day. We used hair dryers to speed the drying. 

This is Stephanie's tray at the end of the day. She has further plans to add lines and shading to the flowers and decorate the sides of the tray with stripes and polka dots. 

Cheryl brought a sweet little side table. She designed a water lily motif. She lives on a lake and is painting a room with a mural of undersea designs. She used sponges to create the texture. 

Here is the side of Cheryl's table with Jan poking her face through. Doesn't Jan look like she is having a blast? 

The finished top. She took the table home and will be coating it with some polyurethane to seal it. 

Gail's project was a colorful bench for her granddaughters. Gail is an author and has a hand-dyeing business called the The Kangaroo Dyer. I love how her design is reminiscent of the mottled colors that her yarn is dyed in. And it is bright and cheerful like Gail. 

Gail plans to add some glitter and sparkly bits which I can only imagine will make the bench a favorite place for her granddaughters to sit when they visit. Someone in the class named it "The Sisters Bench."  

Jan who came the furthest - all the way from West Virginia. She has an antique store and also sells painted furniture. She brought a cute little side table. Here are her process photos. Her design was inspired by a rug she saw at a hotel. In order to fit the motif onto the oddly shaped table, we cut a pattern to fit it. She has more work to do on it when she gets home including outlining the shapes and adding more dots and spots. 

We enjoyed a gorgeous lunch cooked by friend Cynthia. 

The tablecloth is made from one of my fabric designs. You can purchase a tablecloth made by the folks at Roostery (a division of Spoonflower) here. The fabric design is available in my Spoonflower shop here. You can purchase the design printed on 26 different fabrics, 2 types of wallpaper and gift wrap.  

It was a great day of sharing ideas and stories. I love hosting these retreats because even though each student comes knowing none of the others, by the end of the day they are all friends. For me, it is so rewarding to see the projects and each person's confidence develop as the day goes on. And meeting fellow creative spirits who are brave enough to come to our farm is one of the best parts of each year here at our farm - at least for me (maybe not my family :) ).