Commona My House: Year of Change Challenge September Reveal {DIY Art}

The Year of Change Challenge just keeps getting better and better!!! Last month's was SO good! Did you check out our bookshelf styling projects?

This month, we are focusing on a piece of DIY art. Personally, I've been narrowing in on this for months. I have so many DIY art projects pinned on Pinterest that I could have painted several...or tried to perfect several!
I know this is something that intimidates many, but we are going to attempt to prove that anyone can create art for their home that they will love. In addition to the usual gang (Suburban Bitches, Commona My House, Life on Virginia Street and Rosa Beltran Designs) we are joined by Jen Allyson from The Project Girl!

Thanks for joining us this month, Jen!!!

To get started I began cruising through all of the DIY Art pins that I have had pinned for like a year. I also cruised through several of my favorite artists to sort of gather inspiration for color and content..abstract is pretty broad...so I wanted to narrow down what direction I wanted to go with "ABSTRACT"

Visit and Follow my DIY Art Inspiration Pinterest Board!

Follow Amy's board DIY Art Projects on Pinterest.

I decided that I'd have a few colors to work with but just "go" with what was happening.
I gathered all of my paint brushes as well as a small roller and some gauze.
Yup, gauze. After watching several professional painters who use various brushes, knives and other painter's tools....I noticed that many of them use gauze instead of rags when applying paint that they want to smudge. *see below. The gauze was a HUGE help in achieving a painterly texture without shelling out $$ for specific paint tools.

Start by 'priming' your canvas.
I took white paint on a brush and painted the canvas.
I then started adding lines and smudges of coral.

I thought about stopping above.

I thought I'd live with it for a day, but then thought, "I'm going for it" and kept at it.

This experiment was all about trying to layer and use different techniques.

This sponge roller was really great. I added a bit too much of the coral color, so I then rolled over the canvas with some white paint. I loved how the roller skipped and added random marks and texture.

Yes. There is the gauze.I dipped the gauze in white paint, dabbed it on my drop cloth and lightly skimmed my canvas, slowly blending my pink clouds.

(You can see I was experimenting with adding blues....I liked the coral abstract so much, that I didn't add the blues at all).

Do you see how textural the gauze gets things?!

At this point, deciding that things were going to stay sort of monochromatic, achieving a textural design was important to me. The gauze really worked well. Again, dipping in paint, dabbing on drop cloth, swiping gently, so that I wasn't WIPING, but more like pushing a thick amount of paint around the canvas and playing with what happens.

If I had a painter's knife, that would give the same look, but with more control. The gauze is unpredictable, but I like that. Sometimes you have to just keep going to see what happens.

I really could have stopped with the above.
I loved how it was so textural.
I could have waited a few days and then decided whether I was going to continue to paint another layer or leave it at this stage...but for YOU, dear reader, I pushed through to the final phase...I wanted to add gold foil. I love gold foil, but didn't want to 1. Spend that amount on an experiment before I worked out the kinks and I thought that liquid gold foil would work just as well. (In retrospect, the liquid gold was great, but I may go back in with gold foil (sizing) to get more 3 dimensional texture and flare).