Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I Designed An Adirondack Chair For Kathy Peterson!

Here is my chair! I hope you like it as much as me and Asher do!

The unwelcoming bird
Asher likes it!

Another unwelcoming bird
Foxglove, one of my favorite flowers
A magnolia and that scary bird!



Spiders!

A few weeks ago, I got a very interesting email, inviting me to participate with 4 other stellar designers to design a chair for Kathy Peterson and the Cedar Store.
I was excited about the prospect and when my chair arrived, all ready to paint, I was even MORE excited! This chair is made of cypress and when my husband put it together, he was amazed at how well it was made. And it did not even need any sanding!

I thought about my design for several days ( I had so many good ideas!) and then a friend said, "you should paint what you love" That is always good advice. So of course it was going to be birds and flowers. I laid down an underpainting of red paint, on a sunny day when everyone else was building us a new deck... and then I sketched in my birds and flowers.
Here is the chair in progress:

I painted over the red with my favorite blue and left bits of it showing. On the arms, I painted two of my favorite birds... they look kind of mad, which I find funny, like my chair is saying don't sit here! Which means I will get to sit there, because I painted the birds and they don't fool me. I also added a couple of spiders, to make sure my chair is available when I want to sit in it. By the way, the birds are from an amazing Taiwanese photographer, Sushyue Liao, I paint using his photos as reference by permission, but if you don't want to find your own amazing photographer, you could find some bird and flower images to decoupage on to your chair. You could start by using the red underpainting, then glue on your images, then paint around them with your favorite color, leaving a bit of the red showing through.
Please stay tuned for the other designers chairs every tuesday for the next three weeks.


8/10 Kathy Cano-Murillo: http://thecraftychica.blogspot.com/

8/17 Julianna Hudgins: http://www.juliannaproductions.com/blog/

Here is Pat Sloan's chair from last week: http://patsloan.typepad.com/pat_sloans_corner/2010/07/im-a-design-my-adirondack-designer-.html


And here is the Cedar Store website where you can buy your own wonderful cypress chair to paint!
Thank you, Kathy, for giving me this amazing opportunity. I loved every minute of it!



22 comments:

pat sloan said...

OH MY I LOVE your chair!!! I know I am going to want ALL the chairs after I see them!

Mary said...

this chair is fabulous, fabulous, fabulous!!! can you tell i like it??? :)

Škorčica said...

Wow! - this chair is really something! I like it so much!

JudyCinNC said...

I love your chair !!! Reminds me of my favorite photography print by Michael L Smith called "The Mad Bluebird". I have this signed print in my quilt studio and some days I can certainly relate to it.

Kathy Peterson said...

Julie--every detail is just simply eye candy! Thanks so much for participating in my Design My Adirondack blog hop!

I hope one day to meet and greet that cute and colorful chair! She's really cute!

Thanks Kathy P.

Micki Wilde said...

Wonderful chair, what a joy to sit on something so pretty!!

Micki x

MotorCityMystic said...

Whoa! F A B U L O U S.

adrienne trafford said...

i can't even believe how yummy this is...if it had chocolate on it i'd eat it!!

Jonna said...

It's awesome. Love it. Maybe this weekend I will tackle my old adirondack's, they could sure use a face lift. First need to repair the arms where the pups altered them...:)

Mari Brown and Colourblob said...

Love it, the colours are just smashing!!! Just love the birds, the leaves, well, I love the whole chair : )

Elizabeth said...

What a wonderful canvas for your art. It is as beautiful as your paintings. super love it

Joji said...

Like it? I love it. It so represents you....I love your work.

Sandi Linn Andersen said...

Oh, this would look so lovely in my back yard!! There are plenty of birdies that would join me as I relax in it and listen to them sing. :-) Gorgeous!

elsie said...

that chair is magically delicious!!

Unknown said...

This is AWESOME! I wish it would be under my Christmas tree this year! :D

TheaMinPA said...

this is a fun project - love your birds and foxgloves! not so sure about the spiders, but they certainly make it 'all yours!'...

Butterfly Works said...

I love love love this chair. You did an amazing job...What a fun piece....

Julie Fillo said...

Thank you my friends! I loved doing it! Tomorrow a new chair from one of the other designers.

EileenHull said...

Talk about making the chair your own- you rocked that! Beautiful work Julie! Thanks for sharing :-)

Theresa Plas said...

Love it! So sweet! The birds are adorable and I love the little spider on the back:)

Loudlife said...

Julie! The first thing I noticed in your MLS listing was your chair! It's absolutely gorgeous and my favorite of all of them!

Pure Ella said...

I LOVE IT!
Your chair is spectacular. You should add that to your Etsy shop - no wait shipping costs would be out of this world ;)

By the way, I got a print from you a few weeks ago and I love looking at it everyday.
xoxo