Supersize Painting for Paper Sculpture Leaves

For the past year, I’ve been working on many large items for my upcoming art installation. The exhibit, Paper Works, will be held at the Mansion at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland, Sept. 8 through Oct. 31. For the show, I am working on the largest piece I have ever done. There are lots of furry critters, birds and all sorts of surprises within the exhibit.

One of the pieces I am making is a large wreath for the front door of my “Charming Victorian Country Garden Retreat.” It is going to be a grapevine wreath with a variety of pretty flowers and leaves and a beautiful bow — all made out of paper. I am making all the pieces separately before I start attaching them to the wreath.

Since I will need to make a lot of leaves, I wanted to mix up a large amount of watercolor paints at one time. The only paint trays I had were these small watercolor trays with individual cups with lids. I really like these trays, but since I need a lot of paint, someone suggested I could try canning jars.

I used the jars a few months ago to mix up the paints I needed for my paper sculpture dog, Rusty, and it really worked out well. The other nice thing about using canning jars is that it is so easy to mix paints. I add various colors to the jars, put the lid on tightly, and give it a good shake. Open it up and test the out the color and decide whether it’s good to go or it needs another mix.

I use watercolor and gouache paints, so it takes more paint than I am used to using for my smaller paper sculptures — and big brushes too! It was fun mixing up the colors and slathering watery paints onto large sheets of papers.

To show you the final product, here are some of the leaves I’ve been painting up in my studio. Hopefully I will have enough leaves already, but if not, I can easily make more. I still have paint left over to make sure they will be the same shades of greens.

Welcome Home With a Beautiful Grapevine Wreath

I was thinking about the different type of welcoming signs that people use around their homes. Perhaps it is a welcome mat on a doorstep or a decorative flag hanging near their house that says, “Welcome Friends.” But, one of the things I think is most common is a wreath that hangs on the door.

So many homes have wreaths — floral wreaths, themed wreaths, a different wreath for the different holidays — wreaths made out of all sorts of materials like grapevines, wood, spring flowers, summer flowers, mums for the fall, gourds, pumpkins. All signs signaling, “Welcome to Our Home.”

Thinking about wreaths also reminded me of the time my mom had a grapevine wreath with flowers on it hanging on her outside porch wall. A little bird decided to make a nest on the wreath. You could stand inside her kitchen and watch from the window as mama bird built her nest. After the eggs hatched, mama bird would make many trips throughout the day to feed her little ones. Soon the little ones were old enough to fly on their own and make a new home of their own. 

I used to have a beautiful large grapevine wreath like that on the side of my house for years. It was gorgeous, with large cranberry and white mums. A little “nest” filled with plastic eggs completed the wreath.

Keeping both of those wreaths in mind, I created this paper sculpture “grapevine” wreath using only paper and paint. Peach-colored tulips, pink, red, and white peonies, leaves and ferns decorate the wreath. There is even a little nest of light blue eggs. A pretty yellow butterfly stops by for a visit.

Here’s a close-up and some photos of the finished wreath, which is framed inside a custom, hexagon wood frame.