Sprucing Up Your Household Items With Tole Painting Patterns

By Carol Hughes


Sprucing up your home need not be a costly and a pain in the neck enterprise. You need not hire fancy custom painters and high end interior designers to vamp up and beautify your space. You know the nifty alternative, DIY. You dont even have to be a talented or tolerable artist to deliver dazzling enhancements to your home, that is, as long as you have tole painting patterns.

If youve seen those beautiful decors on household wooden and tin objects, youre probably seeing and appreciating tole art. This folk craft has its provenance in Scandinavia, with adaptations in England, Russia, and Germany. It became most widely popular in America, however.

Patterns for this art form are available, and they may come in books or packets. This manual contains step by step instructions that enable one to imitate patterns and line drawings. A photograph of the final result is also embedded therein for reference. All kinds of templates are available, wherever you stand in your skills and abilities, from beginner to expert, so youll always find something to satisfy and challenge you.

Tole art is usually applied in three dimensional objects, more so than in flat canvas. You can paint on furniture like tables, chairs, toy boxes, and hope chests. Or else on containers like baskets, magazine holders, and cookie boxes. Kitchenware applications are also common, in china, coffee pots, utensils, canister, cups, and mugs. The craft can also be done on fabric, leather, and various thingamabobs like wastebaskets and tissue boxes.

The best thing about tole is that it can be done freehand, and let your hand move with your unfettered imagination. If you want it orthodox by all means, you may go by the usual patterns. These include Christmas themes like snowmen and Santa, flowers, birds, butterflies, bunnies, bears, swans, mallards, literally anything you can think of. The common denominator is that they are usually whimsical and nostalgic, but then again, it doenst really have to be so.

For the medium, acrylic is the most used, since it is inexpensive, long lasting, and quick drying. Oil paint is also popular among those who made the transition from fine art. Aside from tin and wood, other well adapted items for tole are papier mache, terra cotta, and even plastic surfaces.

There are essential elementary skills to be learned when you venture on this form of decorative painting. There is the priming, sanding, sealing, base coating, varnishing, and staining of the object. Methods you can go by are bronzing, gold leafing, stenciling, graining, faux finishing, and theorem painting. Outside of American tole, you may also adopt techniques from its associates, Russian lacquering, Rosemaling, kurbits, and japanning.

Because it is systematic and standardized, this form of decorative painting is easily teachable and learnable. Even without an inherent artistic talent, this is achievable by your average layman. That is, as long as he is willing and disciplined enough to practice.

With the designers that offer painting patterns and books, the grind is made easy for you. With only a little effort and practice, you get to embellish what used to be austere everyday objects and watch it come to life with your own artistic prowess. Just by playing and goofing around with colors, you are offered a leeway for creative self expression and satisfaction.




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