By Melissa Moyles

Happy February! Valentines is only a few days away and I am LOVING this new art in my kitchen (see what I did there?).  For 8 years, I have had this hand me down HUGE flower painting in my kitchen. It is the perfect size for the wall but the colors never really matched. I have been seeing lots of influencers lately using joint compound to create fun art so I figured, why not? The worst that could happen is I ruin a painting I dont really like anyways.

After quite a bit of muscle to take this thing down, I slapped on joint compound. The kind I bought starts out pink and dries white. Let me tell you, it definitely looks worse before it looks better. I wish I had some great advice on how to apply this but I just used a large putty knife and a heavy hand with the joint compound. I actually under estimated how much I would need and had to make an emergency run to Home Depot half way through my project. Thankfully it doesnt dry too quickly but learn from my mistake and buy the big $20 tub.

Next up was paint. At first, I thought I would just paint it white and call it a day. But you need to remember, this painting is HUGE! Like 3ft by 4ft huge. So I decided to be adventurous and try my first attempt at Ombre. Worst case, if it turned out awful I could always paint it white. One designer trick to making your home look cohesive, is to use the same paint colors from room to room. Well the adjacent room and wall is my faux mudroom in taupe and white so that seemed like a natural choice. I also had both colors in my garage so double win. I started with the full color on both ends and then used plastic cups to mix 2 lighter versions of the taupe. I started with the darkest and worked my way lighter but honestly I would recommend moving in the other direction. When I was done with all 4 colors they looked a bit too rectangular so I took a dry paint brush to blend the lines.