Sarita’s Story
“My inspiration for this piece was my good friend Antionette, who asked me if I want this old showcase!! And off course my answer was YES. I immediately fell in love with her. And so she got the name of “Ouma” LOL. And off course there is Nadine, she inspired me to paint, thus far, almost everything in my house…..
I also decided that this will be a project to engage a few people in my work, by playing a game of guessing with my FB friends…and I was amazed by the feedback I had. They kept me going as I had a few off days during the project. I never knew that it would end up being such a huge job of cleaning her up before I could paint her.
The journey started off to dress her up with brand new “make up” and a “dress”. The “make up” represents the paint, and the “dress” represents the fabric I used to cover the glass panels with.
I started off by shopping for the right fabric, I knew it had to be some vintage roses as she is very old and of course some stripes. With my fabric in my bag to match the right colours, I went shopping. Since I was familiar with Tjhoko paint and have used it before on furniture, I knew I will use Tjhoko as my paint to go. I ended up buying only Olivia’s Pale as I already had the other colours at home.
My first mission at hand was to strip this old lady from all the old varnish, as she looked like an old elephant. I know you don’t have to strip paint from an object with Tjhoko, but it was really bad and I wanted an even finish, so I went through the trouble of doing just that.
Next I decoupage the fabric to the glass.
Then the real fun began…
My vision was to do a blending technique. Not for the faint hearted, as it is rather difficult to do, but I pushed through and did it. She was supposed to have a blend of Reddish Mellow, Olivia’s Pale, Comfort Blue, Sweetness and Tinkie’s Treat, but she ended up looking like a christmas tree, so I painted over the colours and ended up blending with Comfort Blue and Olivia’s pale.
I painted the small roses, that are on the corners and on the hardware, in Sweetness, aged them with a mixture of Sheriff’s Stone and Comfort Blue, and ended up by adding some Am’s Rose Gold for a bit of flair. I also used the mixture of Sheriff’s Stone and Comfort Blue for the shading in the creases and feet. Next step was to highlight, I used some Reddish Mellow and Charm Silver for that.
And that is Ouma’s story in a nutshell…”