Transform Your Art: Tips & Inspiration for our May Project

Welcome back to our Flipped Paintings Project! If you’re like us, you've been looking at that thrift store art section a liiiittle differently these days and are excited to dive deeper into transforming a few discarded goods into usable works of art for your (or some lucky gift-getters😉) home.

This week, we encourage you to explore new techniques and try one of these three tips to inspire your process:

1. Texture it up: Add texture by layering sand, brushstrokes, paper, or eggshells (🥚?) onto your painting.

2. Make it mixed media: Don’t let your work of art fall flat. Incorporate other found, discarded, or donated objects to give it dimension.

3. Play with themes: Consider giving your piece a theme or story that reflects your personal style or a message you want to convey.

Don't forget to document your progress and share your updates with the community. Head over to our project thread to post pictures, share your experiences, and gather feedback from fellow upcyclers.

Let’s get inspired

Texture it up:

Adding bold impasto strokes to your artwork or mixing sand into acrylics will certainly get you started, but there are so many fun ways to bring your paintings to life through texture. In this video by Mont Marte Art, you’ll learn a unique technique to create textures using egg shells and PVA glue. Ok, so it’s a bit wild but it had us wondering, what else could we be layering onto our artworks to give them some life?

Make it mixed media:

We turned to Pinterest for inspiration on this one. What could mixed media do for our new thrifted treasures? A couple of ideas we loved…

1. If this pin doesn’t make you want to chop up and reassemble your artwork we honestly just can’t relate. BRB, we’ll be out hunting a few pieces of art that can be sliced and diced into four new beauties.

    
   

   

   Source (Pin)

2. Honestly it never occurred to us but it totally makes sense that putting cake on basically anything would make it better. Bonus if that cake is textured and looks exactly like real funfetti cake. But for real, consider what embroidery, and fabric can do to give life to a lifeless canvas and please, if you make it a snack make sure you share it with us.

    
   

   

   HeatherRiosArte on Etsy

Play with themes:

Choose a clear theme or concept as the foundation of your project. This guiding idea will help you select materials and objects that align with your vision and create a cohesive piece. Whether you’re inspired by nature, a favorite color palette, a specific emotion, or a personal memory, having a defined theme will give your project direction and purpose, ensuring that all elements work harmoniously together.

Collect materials you already have, prioritizing found, discarded or donated objects. Here are some ideas:

• Old books

• Flowers, leaves, stones, feathers

• Cans cut into colorful shapes

• Photographs, slides

• Ephemera; letters, cards, clippings, ticket stubs menus

Ok so I have my theme, where do I start? Is what we were thinking. So we went digging and found this great article by Adelle, who breaks down some really cool ideas for how to dig into a theme including starting with a poem, creating word clouds and more! We won’t spoil it for you, Read on »

Diversions: A wow moment

A break from our regular programming to share something that absolutely blew our minds. We see… a lot of restoration projects at Peo Vee. But nothing quite like this one has crossed our feed.

Be wowed with us, check out this lamp restoration by @restoration.magic

From the community:

Paulina made some impressive compost bags turning trash into treasure. Give your words of encouragement (or smash like if you nab this idea) here »

Exploring ways to make the world a little less wasteful is our pleasure, and we’re so glad you’re doing it along with us. Cheers to our masterpieces of May! 🖼️

In this together,