A la MacKenzie Childs inspired painting projects

Here are a few things I did to the style of MacKenzie Childs. If you are not familiar with them, take a peak at the link. Having seen the real things, I don't think mine comes even close to them, but they still look fine, at least from a distance ;).


It all actually started with some pumpkins. A small group of us wanted to paint fake pumpkins and we did have a design but ended up making them black and white.

From there it started escalating. We had this old pair of salt and pepper mills, had them for decades. I did clean them up well with TSP to get any grease out and then primed them before painting.

This is how they started out

Base coat done. Hardest part was to get
even number of stripes and squares.

This is the ugly part

I think I'm done.

Next came couple of flower pots. I actually fished these out off our pond. Cleaned them well first before sealing. I did the sealing both outside and inside. Hopefully when I water the plant the moisture will stay out of the paint.

I've had these lamp bases for about 10 years. I was planning on doing a Zostovo style flowers on them and did the base coating for it, but just was not inspired and besides it is a difficult style to paint. So I ended up base coating them again and redoing both of them.

Ready for Zostovo painting . . . nah . . 

What to do with the bottom

All done, I added some marigold and gold to the white squares.
Now just to get them rewired and new shades.

I think the shade could have been a touch bigger.

But I did make an optical illusion. Due to the gold inside
the shade and the gold on the white parts, it looks like
the base is lit from inside.

This time I think I went a bit nuts. Hattifant has a free pattern for Triskele Paper Globes. I must have had some extra time in my hands since I made a MacKenzie Childs style paper globe. It was not hard to make just needed some measuring.

A friend of mine got a lantern and painted that in this style. Of course I wanted to make one too, but a bit different than hers. The lantern is some kind of hard plastic so I decided to seal it too, hoping that the paint would stay on easier. Just lots of little squares. I came to the conclusion that paint pens are they to go. Here's my version of it.