I Tried "Folk Painting" (on a thrifted trunk!)

Good morning. Sitting on that was not a good idea, that was dumb, very dumb. Good morning. Okay, I have been a very busy bee. As some of you know, Dragon Con is coming up. I leave in a couple days. Do I have everything finished? What do you think? Needless to say, I have been con crunching. In fact, you should see my abs from the amount of con crunching I've been doing. We're taking a break this week. I feel like this video has been a long time coming. If you've never seen like folk painting, I don't know if that's officially what it's called. There was a historic trend of people painting their furniture, chests, and doors, and walls, and I've always wanted to try it. And I think I haven't solely because I knew that my soul would be enraptured and consumed and that my whole house would turn into Rapunzel's tower from Tangled. So I've been kind of putting it off. The other month, I was at the thrift store and I found this for $10.99. Let me show you. Come on now. Look at this. Been a lot of f***ing knickknacks in this bad boy. I felt like it had the exact arch motif that I've seen on my copious Pinterest saves of folk painted chests. The inside is lined, very nice. It's definitely not old, probably 90s or early 2000s made to look old. So I don't feel bad about completely destroying it. Is this hand painted? Wait, hold up. Oh wow, I think it is. Okay, I take that back. I do feel a little bad, but not enough to stop me from doing it. I want to try my hand at folk painting. As you're watching this, it is September. As the pumpkin mug foretells in my household, I have deemed it Halloween. I want to do an autumny motif. So I think the plan, get dressed, sketch out the colors, general design that I want, home improvement store to get paint. Make sure this is all clean and ready to accept the paint. We just have a nice cozy day of painting. Girls will say they needed this and it's just transforming a $10 thrift store item into a whimsical storage container. What am I doing with my legs? So let's get dressed. Conveniently, the sponsor of this video is going to help me with that, shall we? Hi, in case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of in my pirate era. And since this video is sponsored by Quince, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to pick out some delectably piratey outfits. Quince has so, so, so much to choose from. They focus on keeping things more affordable for you, but also super high quality by cutting out the middlemen and shipping right from the factory to you. They also have a huge focus on sustainability, which is great, especially with modern fashion. Let's make a couple piratey outfits. First up, you know I had to get these hobbity trousers. Then this silky top that I'm not even kidding you, feels like a cloud. I saw this more long line vest and I knew that I had to have it because it's so perfectly pirate. That is outfit number one, but let's go for something a little bit more dark. 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I don't know. There are a lot of modern inspirations. April Makes does a ton of folk painting and it's all beautiful. The Azrai, Azrai, I'm so sorry. They've been doing a lot of folk painting medieval makeovers on trunks and storage boxes. Just gonna do my best. In the middle arch, I think I want to do like a basket with autumn leaves coming out. And then I'm thinking webbets. Kind of want to make this a little special to my house in particular. A lot of these chests have horses that are kind of mirrored, so I'm going to do the same thing with the rabbits. And then on top, a little ode to my frogs. And for the color scheme, I'm going to go pick out some paint, see what speaks to me, but I'm thinking a very autumny scheme. And with that, to the Home Improvement Store. Morning. You ready to paint? I probably should have done this yesterday, but here we are. I've got my goodies. I have those three different paints, which are my kind of like base paints. A bunch of brushes, marking pencils for marking. Something I noticed this morning. Listen, I love overalls as much as the next girl, even though they constantly humble me. Why does it always look like you're wearing a diaper? Why do I look like that? What the f**k is that? This is how I imagine my body looks when I wear overalls. Enough faffing about, I need to put something underneath this so that I don't get paint all over my floor. Because we would not want that now, would we? Why is it so hot in here? It's only like 60 degrees out. I just want to wear cute fall outfits, why? Let's paint the base. While the base coat was drying, I saw myself as a very important business. I realized then that a change of position was required for these tiny details. A mollusk position was not doing it. I decided to paint these tiny teeny weeny little annoying details. I figured they would look weird if I just left them plain. Realized I'm over here without lighting a false scented candle. Like some kind of chump. That took way longer than I thought it was going to. Which I'm pretty sure if I had an action figure, that would be the catchphrase. I want to go ahead and do fun stuff. I'm kind of struggling with the color scheme of those. Truly, if my brain doesn't have an exact reference, it just is like... So I kind of have to just make it up as I go along. I think I want to make most everything like a nice yellowy cream color. A little bit more outlining in brown. Can't, usually I can like picture things, but I can't visualize this, which is kind of tough. But first things first, we do need to draw out what I want to do. Fancy marking pencil. Is this whimsy maxing? Or should I say whimsy maxing? I'm so sorry. Not very symmetrical, but that's kind of in line with folk painting, right? Right? Mix up a batch of cream paint. Oh, oh my god, oh boy. Quite treacherous. Caracatta ain't bad. Some more coral. I think that should be good. You know, this was supposed to be relaxing and for the most part it is, but I cannot stop thinking about everything else I need to be doing for Dragon Con. Once I had the base slapped down on the front, I moved to the top and my little frog motif. And listen, you know it wouldn't be me if I didn't make these frogs caked up. I'm going to see what it looks like if I outline it in this darker brown color. Make it look a little bit more folk art and less Hercules. Right now it looks very ancient Greece, but I think if we add a little bit of detail in here, it'll help. I do think I needed this. Feels good to like make art with my hands, you know? And after all, isn't that what folk art is? It's just like a celebration of human art. I think we all could do with that right now. I mean, you all know how I feel about our computer overlords. I have to believe the pendulum is going to swing in the other direction though. I think that human made art is going to become a craving and it's going to have like a resurgence. I think that's kind of why these folk painted furniture are having their moment on the internet right now because people are just so starved for whimsy, yes, but also just like hand painted something that you look at and you have the definite feeling of a human touched this. It's only going to get more needed, which is good. I mean, not good that we're in this situation to begin with. I think it's good news for artists. I would, I would hope the more people realize, oh wait, actually I don't like this crap that these computers are puking out. You know what I'm saying? What also made us do the push to do the coffee shop now because we're just so tired of the internet right now. Having an in-person space where people can feel art around them and a space that is so heavily themed. I think people are going to crave atmosphere like that one guy from Spongebob. Atmosphere! An update on that, by the way, uh, it's very slow going but the roastery part, which is downstairs, is like 95% there. Still get it inspected by the health department before we start selling bags. It's been so rewarding because Nick is just, has been working his butt off. Long days helping our contractor, sourcing all the equipment, doing all his research, and it's been really, really fun to see it all start to come together and him getting really excited about it. But with that being almost done, that means that soon our contractor can move upstairs into the actual coffee shop and start working there. We do have to hire an architect first to do some plans because everything has to be zoned and approved before work can start just to make sure everything is ADA compliant and we have our seating figured out where plumbing and stuff is going to go. But yeah, hopefully soon, but not too soon. Okay, I'm realizing that I'm pretty sure right after fall it's going to be all hands on deck. I don't know how much work outside of that I'm going to be able to do so it's good that I'm getting my fall stuff done now. I'll just say that. And uh, it's all good stuff. Nerve-wracking, but good stuff. I'm gonna keep outlining this because I foresee this is gonna take a little bit of time. I realized this was looking quite plain, so I decided to just add more and more and more and more. I cannot tell you how cathartic this was for the tiny little maximalist that lives in my brain. I then repeated the whole outlining process on the top, including the sweet, sweet bums. I didn't want to leave the sides plain, so I just kind of wung it. But for as messy as this is, I actually ended up really liking it. There was something just a little bit off, so I wanted to add a yellow wash to the details to kind of tie it in a little bit more. I think we're about done. Let's take a look at the final product. Side quest completed. Okay, quickest wrap-up of all time because I need to pack for Dragon Con because I leave tonight. Overall, I do think it's quite lovely. It makes me smile when I look at it. I don't know that I got the folk painting look quite down. The sides are very folk painting. Like, that looks similar to my inspiration photos. I think what's throwing me off, the color that I used and, like, that outline. I don't know, there's something just, I guess, a little too cartoony about it, maybe? I don't know. It's hard because I think all folk painting stuff looks different across different cultures and time periods, so there isn't, like, one definitive way to do something, which is freeing in a way, I think, because you can kind of do whatever you want. I think the important part is that I like looking at it and this is going to go really well in my Hobbit room for blanket storage. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Whether or not I think it looks like my Pinterest boards doesn't really matter. I think that it was really fun. It was a nice way to calm me down from all the stress I've been feeling. Hopefully, it was a nice cozy break for you as well. Hopefully, you had your snack, you had your cat or dog on your lap. Give them the good scritches from me, please. You should probably spray this with just a clear coat to make sure that when it scrapes against something or bumps it, it's not going to fall off because I did get the cheapest paint I could. Also, about that, this size, a quart, way too much paint. Holy hecking hell did I overestimate how much paint I was going to use. I could have absolutely gotten away with just sample size of these three colors and save myself some money. So if you are like me and this is something that you've always wanted to do, even if you think that you don't have the skills, listen, look at a lot of these folk paintings. They're not renaissance paintings. They are just an expression of creativity and art and culture. And I say you should freaking do it. We all need to go out and make stuff with our hands, even if you don't deem it worthy. I'm telling you right now, make bad art. Anyway, that's my spiel. I need, I really need to, I really need to edit this and then start packing. So once again, thank you so much, Quince, for sponsoring this video. Use the link in my description or this handy dandy QR code and that will get you free shipping and 365 day returns. Also, Halloween is officially started over on Patreon. To count to, Maxloween vlogs up of me making the costume and doing makeup transformations and photo shoot. Five dollars a month and I would absolutely love to have you. I'm also going to do a roastery tour and a logo reveal to Patreon first in September. Okay, all right. No, really? I gotta go. I love you whether you're new or old to this channel. If you're new here and you feel like sticking around, feel free to subscribe. I upload every other Friday. And we have fun here. And I will see you in my next video. Bye! How the hecky? What the hell? Oh, this is a disaster. I don't understand. But I don't want this color. So how do I take this out? Pretty mom!