Do you remember that place holder I had hanging out on top of my right billy bookcase? No? Maybe this will jog your memory.

Yes, it is in fact a shoe box lid, and a blank canvas. I had planned on painting the shoebox lid [hey, it's the cheapest canvas you can get! Plus it comes with a free pair of shoes ..what?] but then after doing some cleaning under my bed I found a stash of blank canvases I’ve been hoarding for a while. After seeing the pile of blank canvases, which would usually overwhelm me to no end, I was surprisingly inspired.

I found a photograph of Jonathan Adler that I had torn out of an old 2007 Elle Decor issue, and had saved in my one of my inspiration sketchbooks. It looked like this:

And I knew EXACTLY what I wanted to paint. You know I have a thing for silhouettes, as well as animals so combining the two seemed like a no-brainer. Enter: Norbert, the giraffe silhouette. He is oh so adorable. Now I’m not going to do a step by step on how I painted him [it was basically a free hand sketch of his outline, then the perfect mix of blue paint to match my living room wall, followed by going over the silhouette with white paint to make it pop] but the photos really do all the talking.

It took me about an hour, and this project was 100% free. So double win! I already have big plans for my remaining canvases [and some that have already been used], so stay tuned!

PS: I definitely dropped a paintbrush soaked in blue paint on my white shorts which then fell to the light colored carpet leaving a nice trail of blue splotches the whole way. I FREAKED out, and immediately changed out of my shorts and ran them under cold water using Mrs. Meyer’s all purpose cleaner [directly] and it got it out of both my shorts and the carpet instantly. Craziness. Whoever said organic cleaning products were weaker, is a dirty liar. Literally…Get it?

cfs