Saltbox houses

Usually, if I paint one of something, I like to do several, tis easier to get in the groove of it that way. Yesterday, you might say the theme was "there's no place like home".

This is a full size ironing board. This is the first one I have ever painted on. I keep a supply of them on hand at the store, mainly for display purposes. I keep them in the back, and if a piece of furniture sells, I can grab one of the ironing boards and fill in with it till I get something else to fill in the hole.

If I get extra, I do sell them as is. I've always admired painted ones when I see them, but I just never attempted one myself. Then I got this one. It sits fine in the folded up position you see here, but if you try  to set it up as if you were going to iron on it, it doesn't sit right. It leans.

Yep, that was the one to paint on. I liked painting on it, I may sneak some out of my stash now!

Since I was painting a saltbox house on it, I decided to to put houses on some other things as well.

The one on the left is a barrel stave. The other two are old fur stretcher boards (used by trappers to stretch pelts). Apparently I was also on a navy blue for a background kick!

I had planned to also paint saltbox houses on several pieces of slate. That didn't happen yet, but will. As yesterday wore on, I got a killer earache, and ended up on the sofa holding a warm compress on my ear while flipping channels between the new show Coal, and the old show Frasier. How's that for a combination! I just can't see Niles and Frasier in a coal mine. LOL

These houses are not done with a pattern. I did use a ruler when sketching out the big one on the ironing board, and I made a template for the windows so I could get them all reasonably spaced. But for the smaller houses in the second picture, I just use chalk, and sketch them out. I paint right over the chalk marks, and simply wipe off any chalk that shows once the paint is dry.

That means the windows are not perfectly aligned, and that's ok with me. That gives them more of the primitive look, and you can tell they are handpainted.

In my workshop, "mass produced" means 4 or 5 at a time!