The Oops in Art

I don’t know about you guys, but one of the things I love about art, and creativity in general, is how the magic unfolds! I rarely come out of any project–writing, photography, interior design– and think, that turned out exactly how I envisioned it. I usually have a loose direction going in and a lot of spontaneous trial and error going out. For example, after we finished painting SEVEN coats of Benjamin Moore’s Advance paint in Chantilly Lace on my office bookshelves (whew!), it was finally time to decorate. Hurray!

With the hunkering down that has come with COVID-19, I knew I couldn’t go out and about shopping for decor. Instead, I enjoyed pulling trinkets I already had from around the house. Baskets were a must, and I decided to try using the picnic basket I keep stored away on one of the tippity-top shelves of my pantry for one of them. While in the pantry, I noticed a few other pretty things… a kitchen scale, a florally crystal dish, and decided to give those a go, too. Loved them!

Also, my mom recently gave me a coat rack that I was going to eventually spray paint and put in our guest bedroom, but I thought to grab it from the garage and give it a whirl in my office for added interest and depth. As it turns out, I ended up loving the look of that, too! But I think the biggest “oops-turned-art” experience I had while decorating was when I haphazardly placed a stack of paperbacks, that I wasn’t quite sure where to put yet, backwards on one of the shelves. It was a messy and unintentional move that I ended up leaving and again, loving! Of course, in between these little wins, there was lots of tweaking and “nopes,” but I genuinely love the process of fixing what’s not working and doing a little dance inside to celebrate all the little surprise victories and “oopses” along the way.