Thrifted Oil Paintings Gallery Wall and A Basket: ORC Week Two

Week two of my master bedroom one room challenge {ORC} found me scrambling to finish something to be able to share with you! But that’s actually one of the reasons I signed up for this challenge – there always seems to be things that get in the way of acting on the ideas I have had for our bedroom for awhile now. Birthday dinners, out-of-town trips, guests {all in the same weekend!} – none of it matters when the decorating gauntlet has been thrown down!

Since four of these thrift store paintings have been sitting on our bedroom floor for months {a-hem}, I figured that was a good place to start. I laid them out on the floor as a way to start composing a gallery wall around the two large florals and the two water landscapes and then walked around the house looking for other things to fill in above and below them.

I found one more landscape and a couple sweet round florals, but still had empty spaces. Since I didn’t want to make a special trip to a thrift store just to buy more paintings {this was supposed to be a way to use the paintings I already had – I don’t need more!}, I gathered a few items from my craft stash: three gold keys hung with a piece of jute on one of my vintage-jewerly thumbtacks and a small wood carving that I painted, glued to burlap and then attached to an old frame.

I kinda like how it turned out, even though I originally thought that all the paintings needed to be either florals or landscapes and that I shouldn’t mix them. But I didn’t have enough of either and I’m thinking it’s okay that the thing they have in common is that they’re all oil paintings – right?

Although now that I’m looking at it in this photo {which makes the space from the center painting on either side look uneven, but it’s the same width – I measured! – and is lopsided because I was standing to the side trying to get the most light in this dim room} I’m wondering if the wood carving should be painted a dark gold to coordinate with the round frames and keys more? Or would it blend too much into the burlap then?

Want to know the irony here? This didn’t take very long to do! I think I spent 20 minutes hunting for things in my house, 10 minutes doing the ‘crafty’ stuff {painting and gluing}, and maybe 10 minutes to hang them. Less than an hour. Sheesh – why have I been living with them on the floor all this time?

Another thing on my to-do list (see a full list at the bottom of the post) was to find a basket to fit on the bottom of the antique sewing machine that I am using for my side table. It’s always bugged me that you could see the outlet and all the cords hanging from the light and my phone charger.

We made a quick stop at a Portland thrift store on our way through over the weekend and I grabbed this basket for $3.99 as soon as I saw it! I didn’t even measure, ’cause it’s a great size and if it didn’t fit, I could always use it somewhere else. When we got home I did a little happy dance when I saw it fit perfectly {how often does that happen, really?}, but realized at the same time that the white color did NOT look good.

That’s nothing that a bit of brown spray paint can’t fix, though.

The brown color blends much nicer with the wood and iron of the sewing cabinet, don’t you think? But then I saw that I could still see some of the outlet, so I added a vintage wool throw with coral stripes. And the bonus from that? It’s another pop of the coral color I want to introduce – sometimes fun things just happen.

We’re just gonna ignore the empty phone jack on the right, okay? You’re not supposed to know that the phone is now there just for looks – we got rid of our home phone service a few years ago!

Phone jack…what phone jack?

Master Bedroom To-Do List:

1. Add a fun plate wall over the bed in shades of white, green, and coral.
2. Repaint lamp bases.
3. Add interesting texture to lamp shades or stencil them.
4. Make a decorative pillow with a graphic coral fabric for the bed.
5. Create an art wall with the original art we’ve collected through the years at thrift stores (remember when Brian made this funny video about his thrifted ‘bad art’ collection?)
6. Make or buy a new duvet.
7. Find a basket to fit under the antique sewing machine/nightstand.
8. Add a coral pillow to the chair.
9. Edit the dresser to be less cluttery.
10. Purchase bamboo blinds? Or attempt to clean roman shades?
11. Paint or just remove lamp in corner {I don’t really use it}.
12. Rehang the mirror on our door.
13. Replace the dusty, years-old dried flowers from the backyard with something –anything – else.

So week two recap: 2 down, 11 to go. I better get busy!