How to paint a Strawberry Floorcloth

I was thrilled to guest post for Beverly @ Green Gracie Home last week with this project! It was my first time guest posting, and Bev made it fun & painless! Go check out her fabulous silver-leafed dresser today – and tell her I sent you!

Now with summer in full swing, consider painting a floorcloth for your outdoor rooms, patios, and pool areas. You’re only limited by the size of linoleum.

Floorcloths are wonderful pops of color for kitchens, baths – even patios. They’re typically painted on heavy duty canvas, but I’ve been using linoleum remnants for quite a few years.

You know, the left-over pieces that are rolled up in your garage or basement – or in my case, my barn. Ugh.

First you flip it over to the backside and prime it. I just used water-based Kilz. Any water-based primer will do. I like a couple of coats just to get a good seal. Then trace on your pattern. I chose overlapping strawberries just to get the size & dimension I wanted.

Basecoat the entire area with red acrylic paint. I used Ceramcoat’s Tomato Spice.

Sorry for the shadows. Photography is definitely not my forte.

Basecoat the strawberry leaves with dark green. Then shade the berries with dark red.

I shaded underneath the leaves, ‘behind’ the top strawberry and on the bottom. Wherever you add shading, it causes it to visually recede. So it appears the leaves have a shadow, there is a ‘top’ strawberry and there is a bit of curvature to the berries.

Then add highlights with white. Highlight creates the illusion of bring the area forward. If you highlight next to shading, as on the top berry, it further creates the illusion of separation.

With the same dark green as the leaves I added the ‘seeds’,curving outward on either side.

I highlighted the leaves & seeds with a light green. Same principle as using the white – highlight to accentuate curves or bring the area forward.
If you’re not great at blending paints, just topcoat your highlights and shading with the original basecoat. This will camouflage brush marks.

Then I took a small craft knife and scored all around the berries. It wouldn’t make a full cut by itself, so after scoring I used a larger utility knive to cut the full thickness.
And that’s it! You’ll want to seal it with a few coats of polyurethane for indoor use or spar urethane for outdoor area. I used urethane since I knew it was going on my mother’s patio area – right next to her strawberry planters!
Thanks so much to Bev again for allowing me to share this project with you. If you’d like to make this or another pattern, feel free to contact me. I’ll provide you with the pattern & the paint colors.
I actually videotaped this (which explains the poor lighting) but I haven’t figured out Windows Movie Maker yet! I got Hubs to edit it down; now I just have to do the voice-overs.
I’m trying to make videos of most of my painting projects. I think it’ll be clearer to see how easy my projects are – at least, I’m hoping. So, I’ll learn to edit videos and you can learn to paint! Deal?

 

Colleen