Blank canvas inspirations
Published 10:00 am Sunday, May 5, 2019
Karen Cole/American Press
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Inspirations come in many different forms and for various reasons. Karen Cole; mother, grandmother, and heck of a strong woman, has been crafting since she was in her 20’s. She crafted bows for her girls’ hair when they were young and currently loves to do floral arranging projects and wreaths among other things.
Recently she had inspiration to do a table arrangement for her dining room table. There was an “empty canvas on my dining table and it NEEDED something.” The arrangement she created came out beautiful and the following article was how she crafted everything to fill the blank canvas.
“Years ago, I was given two candelabras that housed tall candles at some point. The tallest candle measures about 24” in height, the second one is about 20” in height. So to change things up a bit, I thought it would be nice to put something other than candles on top of each.
“After brainstorming and searching on Pinterest, I found just what I was looking for… candelabras topped with flowers/greenery. The only problem was that I had only two tall candelabras and actually needed at least five to get the look I wanted.
“Since the ones I already had looked very similar to each other in color only, I thought it would be nice to purchase three more that looked different. So with that being said, I purchased three more candlesticks at a local craft store in a variety of sizes. The sizes ranged from about 14”, 9” and 5” in height.
“The only problem was, the new candlesticks I purchased were antiqued brown in color; the two I already had were cream colored. The only solution I could think of to remedy the problem was… paint them.
“I have a box of acrylic paints that I collected over time – unfortunately, none with the color of the original candelabra I was trying to match. So, I had to start mixing colors together to get the perfect match.. well almost perfect match. At first glance, the color appeared to be a creamy off-white shade. However, after mixing a combination of a few drops of brown paint into white paint to accomplish the creamy look, the color of the candelabras were not creamy off-white after all. They appeared to have a hint of green in the color. So, I started adding a few shades of green paint to the mix. First I added a few drops of lime green….when that didn’t do the trick I began adding more and more lime green mix. When the color still didn’t match, I then started adding a few drops of hunter green paint…then voila, the color finally matched.
“After spreading a few sheets of old newspaper on my glass top table, I started to paint the new candlesticks by using a small sponge paint brush. The look I wanted to achieve was somewhat of a distressed look. In order to achieve that look, I painted very short strokes of paint on each candlestick. Basically, the final finished look appeared distressed, which was just what I was trying to achieve. After the paint dried, the process began for decorating the toppers of each candlestick.
“At a local craft store, I purchased a couple of large flowers that were about 8”-9” in diameter and similar in color; a garland of wispy greenery, a bag of dark green Spanish moss, a large package of floral foam, and a spray of natural twig grapevine balls.
“The following steps were what I used to decorate each candlestick:
• Cut floral foam in a flat circle using the same diameter of each candlestick top.
• Using a hot glue gun, glue the foam on top of the candelabra.
• Cover the foam with dark green Spanish moss.
• Cover the Spanish moss with wispy greenery using floral pins to secure the greenery in place.
• Remove leaves from the purchased flowers and pull flower off of stem.
• Place the leaves of the flowers sparingly around the moss/greenery covered foam in a circular manner.
• Place flower on top of leaves and hot glue in place.
• On the candlesticks that do not have flowers, place a natural twig grapevine ball on top of the moss/greenery covered foam.
• Hot glue the twig grapevine ball in place.
“Once all of them were done, I placed a burlap table runner lengthwise on the table and placed the candlesticks on top. Any unused greenery was intertwined around some of the candlesticks to help fill in the open spaces. To add more texture to the look, I added a metal birdcage and filled it with the remaining greenery and twig grapevine balls. Finally, I had the look I was working towards…graceful, simple and elegant.”
So if you have a blank canvas that just NEEDS something, hopefully you have found inspiration from Ms. Karen and are able to make something for your home that reflects your style.
As always, happy crafting!
Creative Crafting with Kim prints on Sundays. If you would like to advertise your crafting business or sell leftover crafting supplies call the American Press Classified department at 337-494-4000 or email djean@americanpress.com. Deadline to place a display ad is Wednesday at 4pm and line ad deadline is Friday at 4pm. Feedback about this article can be sent to kwright@americanpress.com.
