Swan Studios Mural and Faux Finish Adventures: December 2019

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Friday, December 20, 2019

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Upstairs-Downstairs

This beautiful stairway centers in a home in SWFL.

Along with gorgeous foil faux finishes featured in a prior art blog

( https://swanstudiosinc.blogspot.com/2019/09/dreamy-and-glamorous.html )

The original railing showed the wood with just a clear protective coating. The home owner wanted something more stately. To change the railing out to metal would be costly. Instead, the golden wood areas have been painted to appear as oil rubbed bronze. The results are stunning and glamorous and much more suited to the owner’s taste and art collection.

The oil-rubbed bronze faux finish remains durable with a Gloss Urethane protection:

The same faux finish was painted on the outer rim of the entry way ceiling medallion. To add additional interest to the medallion, the center portion received a multi gold-tone faux finish :

Metallic Bronze Faux finish can be utilized just about anywhere. For example: lighting both outdoors:

and indoors:

and even for changing the finish on art sculptures:

or frames:

To make a GRAND statement, oil rubbed bronze faux painting creates a spectacular finish on entry doors:

Contact Swan Studio Inc to have your own metallic faux finish created for your home.

Be sure to follow us on your favorite social media:

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#oilrubbedbronze #metallicfauxfinish #metallicfauxpainting

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Blue Line Bears

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."- John 15:13

"For he is the minister of God to thee for good…..” Romans 13:4

Such powerful words given from the Almighty Creator. Such powerful words describing the very act of serving and protecting that our police officers do every day. They willingly leave their families to keep us safe. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul goes into details of their service and ordination of keeping peace and warns wrong doers. Sadly, today we know to well that sometimes evil fights those doing good and sometimes the ultimate sacrifice is given in the line of duty. For most, we’ll hear it on the news. We’ll be sad. Perhaps say a prayer for the fallen. Then what? What happens to the officer’s family? The life that was sacrificed was more than a peacekeeper. They had a spouse. They had parent’s and siblings. They had friends. And some had children. Children left behind wondering why someone took the most meaningful person in their lives.

Blue Line Bears sprung from the heart of a police officer’s young daughter. She has made it her mission to let those children or grandchildren left behind know that there are people who care deeply and remember the sacrifice their family has given. In a time that is often cynical to those in authority, Blue Line Bears shows that there are those who truly appreciate and respect those in uniform. With the help of her own family, Megan O’Grady, transforms the uniform of the fallen officer into a commemorative bear that is presented to the officer’s child. A personalized keepsake they can hug and hold.

Blue Line Bear creates these bears at no cost to the families of the officers. The coordination of the uniforms, shipping, and presentation are all paid for through donations. To date, 619 bears have been hand sewn and presented in 40 states and I in Canada.

The first Inaugural Fundraiser Gala, called The Bears and Badges Gala, was held over this past weekend at the Burroughs Home in Fort Myers, Fl.

Swan Studios Inc was humbled and honored to assist in raising funds for such an incredible cause.

Megan O'Grady, the remarkable young woman who started Blue Line Bears at the tender age of 14.

Megan's family have been so supportive of her endeavors and certainly are to be commended for raising such a caring person

The Bears and Badges Gala was to raise funds to hire an executive administer to assist in carrying on the service of the commemorative bears while Megan, now age 17, attends college

If you’d like to donate or to learn more about Blue Line Bears, visit:

https://bluelinebears.org/

You can also follow Blue Line Bears on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluelinebears/

and Twitter: https://twitter.com/bluelinebears

To all those who protect and serve, Thank you and may God bless and keep you.

“Blessed are the Peacemakers….” Matthew 5:9

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Whimsical Fantasy Mural

I recently had a request to create “something” for a picnic bench. Ah- a blank canvas. Joy!!! Seeing a chance to leave the norm of requests, I pounced on it. The first challenge was getting the surface to a paintable stage. The bench was made of extremely rough wood. With a bit of sanding, surface fill, more sanding, and priming it was eventually ready. Next up was to hone down a flurry of ideas. Often the ideas come so fast and furious it can take days to whittle them down into something that makes sense. In this case, perhaps making unreal sense is more like it. The mural piece is a whimsical fantasy of artistic joy. A combination of happy things- water, animals, art brushes, crayons, drawing paper, paint, paint spatter, bubbles, and candy. Makes sense, right? When completed the entire piece from top to sides received a coat of Sherwin Williams Anti-graffiti clear top- coat. The anti-graffiti coating is akin to painting with a liquid plastic. It repels everything- water, dirt and grime, paint, and even spray paint. (Thus, anti-graffiti). Here’s a tour around this extremely fun, definitely unique, one of a kind mural painted picnic bench:

The table top : A roll of painters butcher paper was the inspiration for the "peel back" revealing a boy and his dog swimming up from a watering hole.

A view pulling up, you can see the seat portion of the picnic bench. Have to admit, it's loads of fun when you swoosh and splatter paint around randomly: