Colourful frames for vintage magazine ads
While on holiday in Nice last summer, I picked up these old 1920s-30s magazine adverts in the famous Cours Saleya market (Monday is antiques day FYI). They were between five and eight euros apiece and I immediately fell for the Art Deco lines and stylised graphics.
I had three wooden frames sitting in a box at home which I’d bought at the Pimlico car boot sale for around a fiver each last year but they were very dark and dull and, as you know, there is already far too much dark wood in our flat.
So, armed with sandpaper, a paint brush and a few sample pots of paint, I decided to give them a quick makeover.
I sanded each one down to create a clean surface for painting on. This doesn’t have to be too thorough, just enough to create a ‘key’ in the wood for the paint to stick to – but be sure to clean the dust off properly afterwards does so as not to end up with gritty blobs in your paint job (I know what you’re thinking, and yes ‘gritty blobs’ is an industry term). A little tip I learnt from an interior designer is to wipe the wood down with vinegar after sanding.
After that it was just a case of deciding on colours. Now, if there’s one thing I love more than cushions, it’s paint and our garage is full of match pots and testers and leftovers from other projects (I recently discovered a stash of Farrow & Ball in the cupboard under the sink in our bathroom which must be left over from the previous owners – result!). In the end I went for these:
Night Fever (grey) from Crown, Great Fire (orange) from Graham & Brown, and Wild Water 1 (blue) from Dulux. Here are the results:
A simple update but the colours really help set the prints off. What do you think? As you can see, I’ve positioned them on the wall above the bed, a space that was previously entirely blank so as far as the bedroom is concerned, this is huge progress already. You might also have spotted that we’ve painted – no more sickly green. The walls are now a cool ‘Bleached Lichen’ (Dulux) a kind of dusty beige that acts as a calm backdrop for our eclectic furniture and wall art. In fact, I’m intending these three prints to form the start of a small gallery wall. I’ll let you know how it goes…
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The Cushion Correspondent 