I started making decoupage paintings simply because I was bored. It was in the autumn of 2009. I had no job and all my friends were always busy with theirs, the school days were obviously over and I spent my days doing literally nothing at all (unless you’d consider lying in bed studying the dirt in the ceiling is doing something).
I had to cheer myself up and I’ve always loved craftwork, so I had quite a lot of things just lying around the house; paint, glue, clay.. To be quite honest I really suck at throwing things out so I did (and still do) have a bit of a junkyard in my room.
All of a sudden I got a memory flash from a long time ago, when I was maybe twelve years old: my older sister and her daughter gave away a pot to the family for Christmas. They had painted the pot and glued a napkin to it and I remembered how impressed I was when I saw it. I had never before seen anyone do that kind of thing and as a 20-year-old reminiscing about it I still hadn’t tried it myself! So I figured “Why the hell not?”
And there began my endless search for good-looking napkins.
The first decoupaging I did was on a small pot. It didn’t turn out that great, but I tried on a few more and gave them away to my mum (I don’t really have any plants to put in them anyway…). After a while I realized this was kind of fun, but I couldn’t find any more pots to alter. I did however find a big slab of wood which I brought home. I gave it a little bit of a clean and then smeared glue all over it. Then I added a few napkins and various paper cutouts. It actually turned out pretty nice as I recall and it opened my eyes to the whole turn-decoupage-into-paintings-thing.
My (other) older sister and her boyfriend had just moved into a new apartment and I thought maybe I could make them a nice painting to decorate their new home with. My sister loves violet, black and silver and is literally obsessed with butterflies, so I thought I should try to make something including all of that. It turned out like this:
‘Garden by Night’
made on a canvas size 30×30 cm, using two different kinds of napkins, violet and silver paint, petrol glitter, small plastic hearts and doves (originally for scrapbooking), a stencil with butterflies, black paper (for the tree) and, well, glue!
The first official painting I made.
My sister did actually like it (which I was afraid she wouldn’t!), but she thought it was a bit small to fill their wall alone. She wanted more. I made her more. I made a small collection of four similar paintings altogether. You can find them in my portfolio, within the ‘Moth’ category.
And that, my friends, is how it all started: Unemployment.
xLouise