Day Care Renderings

These are a few renderings I have just finished for work I will be doing in March. These murals will be two of many in the new Goddard School in Aurora. I am looking very forward to the work... it is going to be great fun. There are nine rooms in the school, each with a different animal as a theme. There will be an small mural outside each room (to include a topiary) and a large mural inside each room (near the reading area). In addition to these nine murals there will be a large entrance mural and a small mural at the end of a hallway. This is a huge job and I'm extremely excited to have the opportunity to work on one large project for a solid month.

Very Elaborate Stencil Pattern

This photograph is a detail photo of two walls in a powder room I recently painted. I hope to get better photos once the fixtures are all installed and the lighting is better.
I created this finish by lightly glazing the walls and then stenciling over the glaze with a mixture of two different metallics. I intentionally left some of the stenciling fairly light and I varied the amounts of gold and silver that I was using so the stencil work would look a bit more varied and antiqued. The pattern was one that I found online and turned into a stencil myself - this was remarkably difficult! Creating the stencil took more time than painting the room. Although, it was well worth it. I love how the finish turned out as do the designer and clients.

It has been far too long...

Since it has been almost a full year since I last posted on this blog there is much to say. I have been keeping up to date with another blog... the one which my husband and I started to chronicle my pregnancy and the life and times of our son, Charles Nash Vander Houwen. I found out I was pregnant early last year and immediately my priorities switched. This blog and my business took a back seat for 2008 but, now that Charlie is three months old, it is time to get back to my work. I did spend the early part of 2008 working on the Junior Symphony Guild Show house at the Phipps Tennis Pavilion. This and my work at Smith Income Tax kept me fairly busy through May by which time I was starting to show and beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable. So, for the rest of the year I took it easy just doing a few small jobs here and there keeping my feet firmly planted on the ground.

The pictures below are of the Phipps Tennis Pavilion project. The Tennis Pavilion (the first of it's kind west of the Mississippi - built in the early 1930s) is now used for weddings. I worked with Su Kim, a local designer, to transform and old, mistreated ladies dressing area and powder room into a room worthy of brides and their attendants. My designs for the walls were inspired by William Morris' interiors and tapestries of the 20s and 30s. What looks like wallpaper is, in fact, paint... the beautiful finish was well worth all the time it took to complete.