Bringing the Outdoors in

We had only been together a short time, and I had been working on making his bachelor townhouse into our home. Everytime my husband would always say on his way to the bathroom with a magazine, " I'm going to find a tree ", so one day I decided to give him one. What started out as a joke, ended up as a project, to turn our bathroom into the great outdoors.

I was shopping at Goodwill one day and came across a fake ficus tree. My wheels started turning and I bought it. When I got it home I took the screws out that were holding the two interwined trunks together and separated them. I took the separted trees, and placed one on each side of the toilet. This time when my husband came home to find a tree, he really did. It actually looked nice, but the bathroom was white, so it also looked out of place. The next day I painted the bathroom blue including the ceiling. I thought it would make it look like the outdoors. Well it helped but I wasn't satisfied.

Being a crafter, I have a closet full of paints, and craft supplies. The next day my husband went to work and I started went to paint. I stated with the ceiling. I made a pallet with different colors of paint. I used shades of purples, blues and pinks. Using one color at a time. I would dip a slightly damp cloth into a color and make a thin streak about a foot long acroos the ceiling. Then I would take a dry paint brush and feather out to blend the paint. I would go to another color and do the same thing, sometimes slightly overlapping one color into the other. If it was to dark, or I messed up, I would just use my damp cloth to thin it out. I kept going till the whole bathroom was sky. My husband was impressed, but I felt it needed more.

The next day along the bottom of the walls, I painted water going up about six inches. I painted pompas grass going about half way up the wall. After that dried I painted in details, like butterflies, and dragonflies. Down in the water I added sea grass and some lily pads with frogs. When my husband came home that day, He was really impressed. I was still not satisfied.

A few day later after much pondering, I decided that since we see and use the bathroom upstairs mostly at night, I needed to make it more nightime friendly. I painted seagulls on the walls and when the paint dried, I went over them with glow in the dark paint. We only have a shower in that bathroom, so along with the walls, thats what we see from our bed when the door is open. The shower starts about 3 feet from the ceiling, a perfect place for a full moon.

I started with a white plastic plate. Taking tissue paper i would dip it in wad it dip in glue and apply it to the plate, making different layers. I painted it in different shades of white and grey. After it dried I applied several coats of glow in the dark painted. When it was completely dry, I stapled it to the wall, just below the ceiling in the 3 foot area above the shower.Then I hung a shower curtain with jumping dolphins.Everything looked great, but it did not quite fit in with the brown linoleum floor. I bought a can dark blue paint for vinyl and painted the floor.

That night as we layed in bed, we gazed at the bright full moon and the seagulls as they floated around it. It all started with a tree. Now I was done, or so I thought. Now the bedroom seemed so out of place. Guess I'll write about that next.