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Decorate Your Wall with Your Own Circle Painting

Attention home stagers. Do you have a wall to fill with something that adds a layer of interest to a room without becoming a focal point?

Then I have a quick and easy art project thats perfect for you.

This could be the shortest tutorial in my series of DIY art for home staging.

Put paint on bowl rim. Invert bowl on canvas. And there you have a “modern masterpiece.”

A circle is a symbol of continuity and completion. It’s a comforting and at the same time, uplifting image. Sounds to me like something every staged home should have.

In Japanese ink painting, a hand-draw circle executed with one or two brush strokes takes discipline and focus. Similar paintings of a simple, isolated circle and of multiple circles have been done by well-known American and European artists as well.

If you would like to see samples of contemporary circle paintings, here  is a post by Nancy Marcus

Now you can add your name to the list of artists. We’ll cheat a little and do it the easy way.

Circle prints can be small, medium or even gigantic. This medium size print hangs in the home of designer Meredith Heron.

Russian painter Wassily Kandinskys circle painting from the early 20th century. Of course, it is handpainted, but you can see the appeal colorful concentric circles have.

 What You Need

• 1 large bowl
• Throwaway plastic cup
• Hot glue gun and glue stick
• Aluminum foil
• Small amount of craft paint or leftover house paint
• 1 primed canvas bigger than the circumference of the bowl

How to Do

Invert the bowl and glue the base of the cup to the base of the bowl. This will be a handle to make lifting the bowl off the printed canvas happen without any oops.

The plastic cup gives you a handle. As an alternative, you can fashion one out of duct tape.

Lay down a sheet of aluminum foil big enough to accommodate the inverted bowl. If you need to overlap two sheets of foil to make it big enough, place a few dabs of hot glue under the top layer of foil to keep the foil layers from shifting. 

Invert the bowl onto the foil. Outline the rim of the bowl with craft paint. If using house paint, use a plastic spoon to generously drizzle a line around the bowl’s rim.

I used gold paint. Black is common, but almost any color is fine, depending on your decor.

Heres where the discipline and focus come in handy. You have just one shot at this. No second guessing or slipping.

Have your blank canvas next to your foil and bowl. Look at your canvas and decide where you will make your imprint. Lift the bowl, carefully press the rim onto the canvas, and rotate the bowl a half turn to be sure you have distributed the paint in a circle.
  

Lift the bowl. You can wash the paint off immediately. Use a hair dryer to heat the glue to remove the disposable cup, being carefully not to burn your fingers on the hot metal bowl. Any glue residue you can remove with acetone (nail polish remover).

Let the canvas dry in a level position to prevent any runs (unless like some artists you want the look of paint runs). Sign your name -- or even a fictitious name -- near the bottom edge of the painting

Finally, hang your handsome new artwork on that blank wall.  

Theres hardly any mess with this method of painting. If you recycle a disposable bowl, you  can discard the bowl with the aluminum foil when youre done.

Your circle wont look like a mechanical rendering, and thats the point. You can make it more "active" by moving the bowl around a little, or even stamping multiple times.

Its almost impossible to create an ugly circle painting. I made these colorful prints by dipping two different size glasses in paint. Using glasses, you dont need a handle.

If you want more ideas to stage your own home the thrifty way, download my $4.99 eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar.

Should You Decorate with a Wall of Plates

Becca at Adventures in Decorating knows how to arrange plates. Do you?

White plates arranged on a grey wall with matching pillows and a pair of lamps -- thats a staging formula worth copying. Photo: Emily Arrison at Timeless Paper.

Another example of white plates beautifully arranged on a dark wall, from Nesting Game.

A grouping of three similar plates gets surrounded by a frame. Nest, Nesting, Nested.

This collection of metal trays by Jennifer Rizzo is unusual but certainly stage-worthy.

Lest you think I am endorsing white plates exclusively, heres BHGs style that shows restraint in its number of plates, if not the color choices.

• When arranging a grouping of pictures or plates, place your visually heavier, larger selections at the bottom or center of the arrangement. Work up and out from there.  
• Keep the plates close enough so they read as one design instead of a bunch of plates glued to the wall. How wide that space should be depends on the size and shape of the plates, but one to three inches is normal. 
• Use an odd number of items to make it more interesting and less formal. If your collection is a little too eclectic for staging, a formal pattern of placement can make it look less chaotic.
• To make a narrow room feel wider, place plates in a horizontal arrangement. If you want to emphasize high ceilings or a tall chimney breast over a mantel, make your arrangement more vertical.

  My bootleg plate hanger: Bend a paper clip so one loop sticks out.  Hot glue the other end to the  back of a plate, and cover with a square of felt hot glued onto it.

• An easy way to make your own plate hanger is to hot glue a paper clip to the back and use a push pin in the wall. Unless the plate is heavy, this works every time.  But many decorators like these disc plate hangers from Amazon.
• Find a way to coordinate your plates. Choose one style, or one material, or one color palette, a specific theme, or identically sized plates.
• To make the plate arrangement more special, don’t repeat the same elements in another part of the room. You’ll avoid the matchy-matchy, out-of-a-kit look.
• For a savvy post about using plates as art, decorator with attitude, Joe Davis, writes from experience. His page is filled with eye candy, some valuable for staging ideas and some not. You be the judge.