Oil Painting Upholstery! Why not?

New ideas and applications fascinate me these days. When I went down to St Louis to take a Wood Icing® workshop from owner Rose Wilde, I saw a terrific chair in her art studio. She has a number of artists who consign work in her store. One was using oil painting canvases as upholstery. I loved the look and waited for the right pieces to show up! They eventually did....

 

Two upholstery Queen Anne style chairs and two still life oil paintings that all appealed to me.

 

My talented new employee Mary Lou Killebrew and I decided this was a project we should undertake Thursday morning. And by the end of business Friday, the work was complete!

 

 

                           What do you think? Unusual accent chairs for someone to enjoy!

How did we do it? Fortunately the beading on the chair back upholstery was simply glued on, so we removed that and washed down and rinsed all the wood with dish soap and water. Mary Lou painted the wood with Chalk Paint® decorative paint by Annie Sloan in Chateau Grey whish is a wonderful sage green. I spritzed the upholster on the back and seat with water and painted those with Arles, which worked nicely with the gold yellow color in the vases of the still life paintings. Everything received two coats. We followed this with two coats of Annie Sloan's soft clear wax on the painted wood.

Next, I removed the paintings from their frames and stretchers. I traced the upholstered area onto tracing paper, then centered it over the paintings and cut around it with about an inch margin. I then also cut a couple layers of batting to plump up the back upholstery so the canvases would not get creased. Laying the batting over the upholstery, I worked with a staple gun around the area, tucking under the edges of the painting as I went.

 I found yards of edging that complemented the paintings at Hobby Lobby in the closeout section for $4.  I must admit I was happy there were two of us to apply this around the edge of the paintings. We used a two part, five minute set up epoxy. We learned as we went that it was best to let the epoxy set for about 2-3 minutes before we applied it to our material so it did not soak in or drip...Things went much faster when we had that worked out.

We think this is a very sharp look and fun project that we imagine will catch on! Was a fun and rewarding project!