DIY Mid-Century Art

As I mentioned in my posts about my living room gallery wall and inexpensive bathroom art, I’m a big fan of DIY art. This is mostly because I’m cheap, not because I’m an amazing artist (awesome snowman painting I made when I was 7 years old notwithstanding):

With the caveat that my artistic skills pretty much peaked more than 20 years ago, I thought I would share an easy DIY art project that I made way back when for our apartment kitchen.

I really struggle with art in the kitchen, because so much of what’s out there just feels so kitschy or corny. I wanted something that would fit with our retro kitchen aesthetic (pro tip: when you have an old kitchen, pretend you intentionally created a “retro” vibe). Because I am a predictable and trendy blogger, I’ve loved cathrineholm dishware for a long time:

How is this a fix to my art problem? Well I realized that if I liked actual cathrineholm dishware so much, I might also like pictures and drawings of cathrineholm dishware.

Yup. So then I went out and bought all these adorable prints.

No wait, this is a DIY art project. So this is the part where I decided, “I can totally create something adorable myself!” I grabbed a canvas from Michaels and some paint I already had on hand, and got to work.

First I painted the whole canvas dark gray, because I thought that would make for some nice contrast against our light blue kitchen walls. I decided that I wanted to paint a single pitcher, to keep things as doable as possible for non-artist me. I found a picture of a pitcher that I liked, printed and cut it out, and then traced it onto the canvas. That’s how little I trusted myself to freehand this thing. Then I painted the pitcher white, added some black stripes along the top, and then added the signature cathrineholm lotus pattern in orange along the bottom. Lastly, I painted the edges of the canvas black to give it a little more polish.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly where to put it in our new house — but in the meantime, it’s hanging out on the buffet:

Okay so I probably shouldn’t go opening my own Etsy shop to start selling these. But I think it was worth the $6 canvas to bring some mid-century-inspired art into the kitchen. And since it was so inexpensive, I won’t feel bad if it turns out there really isn’t a long term place for it in our new home.

So…what cathrineholm piece would you paint?

(Sharing at AKA Design, Tip Me Tuesday, Two Uses Tuesday, Whimsy Wednesday, Think and Make Thursday, Remodelaholic, and Link Party Palooza)