There’s a first time for everything. Instead of being inspired by one Pinterest image for today’s “Pinspiration Monday,” I am combining two images to customize a fun and crafty centerpiece for our dining room table.
The first kick in the pants came when I saw these curvy, colorful wooden candlesticks. I really love color, but I actually hoped (in my head) to find a pair of plain raw wood pieces to adorn our table. I love the shapely lines but think our kitchen is pretty good on pops of color (what with our plate wall and newly painted cabinets).
Source: Casa Sugar
Source: Photobucket
As luck would have it, I found these two beauties at a local estate store for only $2. They fit my curvy criteria and were the raw wood I had been hoping for. I thought they looked quite lovely against the chocolate brown wall and, although their shape is fun and eye-catching, they don’t necessarily steal the show from the plate art.
But we weren’t done yet…You see, I also was inspired by the Pinterest images below of painted wood. The idea is to paint pops of saturated color on top of wood, but still leave the grain a bit of room to shine.
Source: Swoon
Source: Unknown…
So I decided to paint the candlesticks, but only partially. Where to begin though? Do I start halfway up the candlesticks and paint little colorful rings and leave it at that? Or maybe paint an entire half of the candlesticks? In the end, John suggested stripes on the flat base and I was sold.
For the colors, I went with the two trendy colors of the season – Mint and pale coral. I also decided to incorporate more of my metallic gold craft paint (as seen here and here). As you can see below, the gold is pretty subtle, but that allows the mint and coral to really shine.
I tried eyeballing my lines at first with a steady hand, but eventually caved and broke out the masking tape to ensure nice and straight edges.
While I adore the colors and the idea of stripes on the candlesticks, I did run into one painful issue…You may have already noticed, but my stripes look pretty wonky and fat towards the actual “stick” portion of my thrifted candle holders. When you see the stripes head-on, the part that runs into the elevated stick ends up giving the optical illusion of a curve when the lines are actually straight.
Here they are all finished on the table top – You can easily see that annoying optical illusion of bulbous stripes towards the center.
Although those lines look anything but straight, when seen from above, they really are pretty spot on.
Not sure just how much that optical illusion is going to bug me…I may lightly sand down the edges of the paint so that the ridges won’t show and just paint up the stick about halfway with new color to cover it up. I’d love your thoughts and opinions on whether I should keep it as is or experiment and tweak just a little bit more until just right.
Help!
UPDATE: It took a little thinking and problem solving, but I finally got these bad boys whipped into shape with the help of none other than spray paint – Check out the full details here.
