‘Faux’ Painted Niche in Bathroom

This is the last stop on my “Art Gallery” tour. I think. I just may have forgotten a project or two. Which I attribute to being incredibly busy, or the numerous projects I’ve painted in this house. It’s definitely not due to my age.

Just so you know.

Before I show you how easy it is to paint a ‘faux’ niche on your wall, I want to give you little back story on how I met my ‘patron saints’, aka the homeowners.

About 16 years ago I was a floral designer working in a large craft store. It’s like Michael’s, but California-based. Part of my job was to do the displays for the store and make silk flower arrangements for purchase. But a huge part of my job was helping people with weddings.

I won’t tell you how much I was paid, but let’s just say it was substantially under the current minimum wage standard. I digress, as usual.

One day a lovely woman came in looking for ideas for her daughter’s upcoming wedding reception. We struck up a conversation and she followed me all over the store while I grabbed some lame (not lame as in sad – lame as in lam-ay) fabric, tulle, strands of ivy and, if memory serves, silk calla lilies.

Long story short {almost} we hit it off. Really well. I think I was just starting to paint at this time, but again, the memory-thing. When it came time to order fresh flowers for the bride, Gayle asked me to make the bridal bouquet. Since I had been a florist years earlier, I willingly obliged – partly because I really liked Gayle and partly because I took any job to supplement my meager craft store wages.

I believe I did some other floral work, but I’d have to ask Gayle. Again – busy, busy, busy. Not an age-related deficit.

Just so you know.

Fast forward a few months and Gayle comes into the store telling me about the new house they’re building and how she’d like me to paint a mural in the dining room. Which I did. Eventually.

Before I got to the dining room I painted the tile mural in the kitchen and the powder room. I think. Well, it doesn’t really matter when I painted what, does it?

Somewhere along the line Gayle wanted something painted for her walk-in shower that would work with her white sculpture. She has one of the newer LED shower heads that colors your bathroom any color you like!

It was during my stage of experimenting with joint compound.

A la the dragonfly in the vanity area.

Each ‘brick’ of the faux niche is raised about 1/8 – 1/4”. I cut stencils out of mylar for the ‘bricks’ and the fan detail.

But I was a little tentative about using joint compound for the fan, so it’s just painted with three colors – the basecoat, shading, and highlights.

Every place I wanted dimension I first added shading, then highlighted right next to it.

Thanks so much for joining me this week for my little “Art Gallery” tour. This house truly shows a variety of ways to use paint for decorative purposes.