Hand Painted Furniture

Our home is our personal space, our own personal sanctuary that we retire to after a grueling day at work. In order to lend warmth to our home and to give it a look that speaks "us", we all resort to interior decorating it in a style that reflects our personality. As furniture forms an important part of any home decoration, one of the ways adopted by people these days to lend familiarity to their interiors is to paint the furniture with their own hands, the way they want, the way that is so "them". So if you too are thinking of taking up a furniture painting job yourself, here are some innovative ideas that you can use...

The Plain Jane!
If you are someone who has never touched a painting brush in their life before, one of the easy ideas is to paint the whole furniture piece in one single color. White, cream, light blue, any of the pastel shades - use these light colors to enhance an old or new piece of furniture. A plain, cool, light paint look goes well with contemporary décor.

Going Arty?
Have some graphics on it. Furniture pieces in any youngster's bedroom will look great with some interesting graphics on them. The things that you will need to create graphics are - the art piece that you want to copy, transfer paper, pencil, painter's tape, water-based craft paint and water-based polycrylic.

Start with getting the art piece enlarged to the desired size. Next, keep the transfer paper on the furniture. Use painter's tape to secure the transfer paper. Now, put the art piece on the transfer paper and stick it with the painter's tape. Trace the graphics with the pencil on to the furniture. After that, use paints of any color that you want to draw the image and "fill in". When the paint is dry, apply two to three coats of water-based polycrylic. This simple technique is all it takes to get beautiful graphics on your furniture.

Easy Way out?
Use stencils to make drawings on it. With stencils, you can create a number of creative designs such as leaves, wines, alphabets, stripes, floral patterns, etc. on the furniture. When using this painting technique, always start with applying two coats of paint, only when it's completely dry that you should start painting with stencils. Also, make use of sponge brushes as the kind of stenciling effect they create is unmatchable.

Something Funky?
You can create your own funky painted designs and paint them on the furniture piece. For instance, paint the whole furniture piece in one color and then paint the borders in a contrasting color. Or suppose if you are painting a chair, paint the base in one color and the back in another contrasting color. After this, use an altogether different paint color to paint spirals or polka dots on it! Another idea for painting furniture is to only paint the legs of the furniture in various patterns such as rings or dots or stripes, keeping the rest plain!

A Touch of Tradition!
Folk art images simply look amazing on any furniture piece. Start with painting the furniture piece in a light, neutral color. Next, search the Internet for some folk images. It can be anything - people, fields, flowers, trees, etc. Sketch these images on to the furniture. It does not matter whether the images are in symmetry or of perfect size, as long as they are in shape. Next, paint these in the same colors as you find them in the original picture on the Internet. Folk art looks exceptionally good with traditional décor interiors.

These ideas are simple, easy to apply and even a beginner can carry them on to create some interesting designs on furniture. So go ahead and try these out, to give your old furniture a new life!