I Can Buy Myself Flowers

One of my favorite things to do is of course thrifting. This is made even more exciting when I can combine thrifting with my love and obsession with crafting.

One day I was scrolling through Facebook and came upon a post from a group that I am in, and inspiration struck! The group is called “Maximalist Design and Decor”. As you can tell from the title, in this group, users post home decor that they consider to be maximalist. As I was scrolling I found a post by a user in which she bought an old frame and painted over the top, sort of creating almost a graffiti or defacing style for the painting.

Here was the post! (Apologies, I can’t credit the original artist, I lost the post in the sea of Facebook posts!) It of course is inspired by Miley Cyrus’ new song, Flowers. This song is rumored to be about her ex-husband. It’s a song all about being an independent person and taking care of her own needs. I love the song and the message. I love the push for feminism that I see in the song and strength you can hear her express through the lyrics. It’s an inspiring song, even for someone like me in a happy and healthy relationship, lol.

My favorite part of the painting above is the look of the painting being “defaced” by the lyrics of the song. To me it’s almost like a statement of re-writing traditional roles by showing yourself love and care.

As soon as I saw that painting, I KNEW I had to make my own.

I got thrifting quite a bit with some of my besties and knew that eventually I would find the perfect piece of art I could use as the base for my I Can Buy Myself Flowers painting.

FINALLY, it happened. I found a painting. It was perfect! It had an ornate gold frame, a single bouquet of flowers in a vase, and the matting of the painting included a green layer that is one of my favorite colors. It was truly meant to be.

I got started by cleaning the glass and the frame to make sure everything was clean and ready to go. I forgot to take a before picture before I got started, but here is the painting shortly after I got started.

I knew that I wanted to paint on the outside of the glass, really giving that defacing style look to the painting. After purchasing the frame, I decided that I wanted some of the petals of the flowers to reach through the glass and look a bit more three-dimensional. The photo above is after I excitedly got started painting some of the petals on the outside of the glass.

It was only then, after I painted the petals that I realized I wanted the petals to actually look to be sort of wilting off of the painting and should be in front of the letters.

I used masking tape to map out where the letters would line up in the painting. I didn’t measure anything so it’s not super exact, but here is where I was after placing the tape and adding the first layer of paint to the letters.

This was definitely a nerve-wracking process as I usually sketch out any lettering I do before painting it, but for this one, I decided I just needed to start! I thought that even if it didn’t turn out perfectly, it would just enhance the more graffiti-style look I was going for. OR I could scrape/wash off the paint and start all over again if I really needed to. I took a flat paint brush and used that to make sure that the widths of all elements of the letters would be consistent throughout the painting.

Despite my anxiety, I was surprised when the lettering turned out exactly how I had imagined ?? I loved the start of it, and continued with another layer of green paint over the lettering.

Before the paint had a chance to dry all of the way, I pulled the tape off. This is so that none of the paint sticks to the tape and comes up with it as it is pulled away.

From there, I went back over the petals again to have them placed on top of the lettering.

And I was done!

Ultimately, I LOVED how this turned out. It truly is one of my favorite DIYs I have finished to date! This gorgeous painting will be going up on a gallery wall in my apartment (when that is finally done, lol). I think it will be the perfect addition to tie together all the floral elements and the bold, more structured lettering will tie into some of the more masculine decor we have in our apartment.

I’m glad that by thrifting, this painting is once again loved again and will be cherished for years to come! I can’t wait to continue with these projects in the future and see what is next!