Painting for my sewing room!

Long story short: I'm in recovery mode right now. I got out of the hospital on Wednesday after having my gallbladder removed. Before going in the hospital, I stopped by one of my local Thrift stores. This one isn't open on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. However, what they do do is put out items that they believe, for whatever reason, won't sell out on the front curb. I've been badly in need of picture frames and snagged a couple for free. I also found this lovely hanging canvas of a giraffe that was meant for a nursery. I figured with a coat of paint, it might not look too shabby.


Today is the first day since surgery that I've felt "myself" again - and, really, the first time I've felt normal in probably a good month, to be honest. I mean, yeah, my incisions still hurt, but the rest of me feels normal. Trying not to stress it too much but, at the same time, unable to sit around and just be a couch potato, I decided to paint over the poor old giraffe and make him into something more appropriate for a sewing room.


Every idea I had involved a dress form so I decided to paint my good old dress form I got at the same thrift store for $5. (It doesn't have a stand but, eh, whatever. It's mostly just to pin and display anyway.) You can see it in the upper right most corner of the picture if you look closely. :-)


It's not a great painting but I'm pretty happy with it. I used an entire tube of gray paint, most of the way too peachy to be flesh tone, and a lot of the green to get this painted and get the giraffe completely covered.

Fixing up the kitchen

This week, I had a new tile kitchen floor installed - which is 1000%  better than what I had before.  Apparently, I had corkboard and vinyl stickers (yeah, I don't know either.)

However, once the floor was installed, the new baseboard didn't match at all and I could finally see the wall behind the fridge and oven...and it needed to be painted.  Badly.

What you see is the decades of paint this house has been through.  Pink in the 1950's.  The super bright yellow chartreuse right in the "seam" of the wall is from the 1960's.  The I'm not sure if it's a sunny lime or a not yet ripe lemon from the 1970's makes up the majority of the wall in the left side of the photo.  I should also point out, this was after I cleaned the wall.  It was even scarier before that.   This is what was hiding behind my fridge and oven.

So, I went to my home goods thrift store, the Community Forklift, which is just a few miles down the road from me.  I wasn't looking for exact matches to anything - I wanted to see what they had.  I knew I wanted a "sandy" color for the background, a terracota color for the bricks, and a glossy tardis blue for the new baseboard.   (More on that later)

I amazingly found all three for $2.50 at the thrift store.  I was shocked to find the glossy tardis blue but extremely happy.  I figured terracotta and sandy were fairly normal colors.  

I already had plastic wrap, blue tape, and some brushes so, really, all I needed was the paint.
First, I painted the tricolored wall with the sandy paint.

It looks splotchy in the photo because I had just finished putting on the second coat.  At this point, it already looked WAY WAY better than it did before.  I could have left it there but I wanted something cool and something that, when I sell my house in a couple of months, others will think is nice.  ...Meaning I couldn't paint in an elven door or a Tardis.   Although the wall is pretty well hidden when you glance at the kitchen, it's not when you are doing dishes at the sink.

The next day, I taped off the bricks - which was a LOT easier than I expected.

Since this is behind the fridge and the oven, I didn't care about perfection.  Not all the lines are exactly the same but they are all close.  The "bricks" are supposed to be the same size as the panel ones for consistencies sake - 7 1/2" by 2 1/2".  Once I got the horizontal lines up - which involved measuring every 2 1/2"- I then started on the vertical.  Once you have the first two rows done, it's just about copying those all the way down - no more measuring!   Pretty simple and then you paint!

I am a very messy painter.  Even if a little bit of the paint ends up outside of the edges, it's no big deal with this faux paint - they are supposed to be bricks!   Bricks sometimes have little notches or there are places where the mortar just didn't quite cover.  It's fine.

I waited two hours - I only did one coat- and then ripped all the tape off the wall much to my pup's amusement.

You can just see Abby's tail and back at the bottom of the photo.   Like I said, it's not perfect, but it's far less visually abrasive than the paint colors of the 3rd quarter of the 20th century was.  I'm pretty sure this will blend in with what is up on the walls now (and I can't take off because they put the cabinets over it) and won't jar anyone doing the dishes.  

Secret Santa Gift Basket

 I'm always finding cool baskets that would work really well as "purses" for various costuming events at the thrift store.  Since I already have...er...three? I like buying the ones I find now and giving them away as gifts.  For the secret santa this year, I gave the one above away.  Here's what it originally looked like.

Ummm...yeah.  The basket itself was fine.  Cute handle,  deep enough for a bunch of stuff like keys, cell phones, and emergency sewing kits,  but the lid....  I wanted to repaint it into something more historically appropriate.   I also wanted it to work somewhat with multiple eras since someone would be using it, hopefully, for everything from the Renn Faire to Victorian.  I bought some basic paint for 50 cents and just covered over the horrible snowman.   I made sure that the entire lid was thickly painted.  I then free painted the little fan in white once the black paint dried.  It's not the best painting by far but you can tell it's a fan and it's a vast improvement over the snowman, I think.

The original basket was only $1.90.  So, for under $3, I managed to make a fairly useful gift.  Of course, I put a brooch and a necklace in it too.   :-)

Green & Yellow & Courtesans

This is something I've been working on for a while but I think I should share my research.   Basically, it's well known that in various city states throughout Italy, there was some sort of sumptuary law declaring courtesans should wear a scarf or veil of yellow.  Also, there is the old poem "Marry in Green, Ashamed to be seen" with green being associated with taking a roll in the hay.   I was curious as to what truth there was behind these color associations - particularly in the early 1500's.   What I found is a bit surprising - to me at least.

Anea already has explained some of the sumptutary laws regarding prostitutes or courtesans being ordered to wear yellow scarves but here are a couple more sources.

[Tullia D’Aragona] was held in high esteem and respect. When, in 1546, Cosimo, Duke of Florence, ordered all prostitutes to wear a yellow veil or handkerchief as a public badge of their profession, Tullia appealed to the Duchess, a Spanish lady of high character, and received permission to dispense with this badge [sic]. (G. Biagi, “Un’ Etera Rmana” Nuova Antologia vol. iv, 1886, pp 655-711, S. Bongi, Rivista critica della Letteratura Italiana, 1886, IV, p 186) From Studies in the Psychology of SexBy Havelock Ellis
However, since many of the portaits I found of ladies with some sort of yellow scarf are before this date, I also found this footnote:

Starting in at least 1416 with the injunction that prostitutes and procurers should wear yellow scarves to identify themselves, sporadic laws throughout the 16th and 17th centuries also attempted to limit their wearing of silk, gold, silver, lace, and pearls.From Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, Volume 2 edited by Melissa Hope Ditmore
So there is some connection of yellow veils/scarves and courtesans - one that wasn't always followed based on the numerous complaints of the day. However, what about green? Green, it turns out, doesn't have a negative association in the 16th Century. Rather, it stands for chastity according to Lisa Jardine's book Worldly Goods (page 15). This could be seen two ways - the portraits I'm seeing particularly in the 1520's and 1530's of what I believe to be courtesans are all just playing a practical joke (very, very period. It was so common that several individuals lamented at the time that courtesans were dressed up as noblewomen or widows -even nuns- causing the actual noblewomen of Venice and Rome great distress)or it's just a coincidence that these ladies are wearing the same shade of green with a yellow scarf. I think it's the former rather than the latter.

Green also stood for one of the three cardinal virtues. But it could also mean love which makes a lot of sense in the context of it being worn by a courtesan. The idea of it being a symbol of love is re-enforced much later during the Baroque era.

With this in mind, here are some of the portraits I've been looking at.

The Magdalen, Bernardino Luini c 1520s
Mary Magdalen is easy to spot in any period painting as she is normally shown with a perfume jar, as in the painting above. She is also commonly accepted to have been a prostitute prior to admonishing her ways and following Christ - therefore, she is often painting wearing flashy to somewhat scandalous clothing for the time. Knowing that, I realized that the yellow scarf might be the yellow scarf of the courtesan. However, I didn't think about the green dress until I kept seeing this kelley green and a yellow scarf together in multiple paintings.

The Conversion of the Magdalene or An Allegory of Modesty and Vanity, oil on panel painting by Bernardo Luini, c. 1520
Again, Mary Magdalen is pretty easy to spot. She's wearing a dress more closely associated with southern Italy in this painting, however.

Giulio_Campi_-_The Chess Players c 1530
The lady, not having a bodice to her gown in the same kelley green as both the Mary Magdalen's, is most likely a courtesan. She is shown, surrounded by men, playing a game - very much what a courtesan would do. Her scarf is a harlequin of yellow and white - probably acceptable enough to pass for any law.

Bartolomeo Veneto, Portrait of a Lady in a Green Dress, 1530
Again, the yellow scarf with the same shade of green.

Innocenzo Francucci da Imola, Portrait of a Woman c1530s
This green is a bit lighter - however that may be due to age. Still, she has the yellow scarf about her shoulders.

Portrait of a Lady C 1530/1540
It looks like she has a light yellow scarf about her shoulders. Again, the bright green dress.

Of course, it is possible that this was simply a fashion statement - however, there are paintings of Mary Magdalen wearing a yellow scarf with a green dress, known laws at the time instructing courtesans to wear yellow scarves, and evidence that green meant love.

I'll keep a look out for more paintings from this era to see if I can find anything more solid - but I do believe that at least around the 1530's in most of Italy, there was something to green being worn by courtesans.

Lovely Early 17th Century Minature Recently on Ebay

From the seller:

A pair of early 17th century miniature portraits of a noble couple. Oil on tin, size 9,7 cm x 6,5 cm / 9,5 x 6,5 cm (3 3/4 x 2 1/2 in.)

From Me:

This didn't fit on my other blog but I thought it was important given how old the paintings are.

There is a lot of interesting tidbits with these paintings. Miniatures were the wallet sized pictures before the age of photography. There are a lot and all you need to do is a quick search to see ton. Painting on metal wasn't uncommon either - despite how weird it might look to us.

A few other late 16th/early 17th paintings that are oil on metal:

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O137343/the-virgin-mary-reliquary-unknown/

http://www.terminartors.com/artworkprofile/Aachen_Hans_von-Joking_Couple

http://www.terminartors.com/artworkprofile/Allori_Alessandro-Portrait_of_a_Woman

http://www.terminartors.com/artworkprofile/Albani_Francesco-Holy_Family_with_Angels

http://www.terminartors.com/artworkprofile/Elsheimer_Adam-Judith_Beheading_Holofernes

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82306/portrait-of-an-unknown-girl-portrait-miniature-unknown/

Based upon his ruff and her shawl/fall, my guess is late 1620's/early 1630's. The ruff he is wearing would be out of style but make sense with his suit of armor (think military uniform), whereas his bride would be wearing the latest fashion.

Altogether, a very lovely example from the Baroque time period.