Wednesday 3 March 2010

Decorating bland asbestos panels with some easy artwork......

From the day these asbestos panels were put up on the terrace of my in-laws, my hands were itching to do something on them. To personalise the space, I wanted to decorate them myself and I took 2 days to complete this work and by this I mean that I just completed 1 panel out of the 6 panels. I was very eager to share this with all my readers. As a professional designer and a decorator, I am against the idea of spending a lot just because you want to beautify a space. I believe the real challenge is when you can decorate a given space with the least of expenses. With this whole idea in mind, I discussed with my father-in-law who was more interested than me to work out something for this space. After identifying that he was interested in something traditional and ethnic, I scouted around for some old calendars. To my surprise I found lovely calendars with motifs of Radha & Krishna. I decided to keep this as my theme and worked on a Decoupage technique with Oil medium. Here are a few pictures of the same.
Radha & Krishna sheltering themselves from the rain......

View of the individual panel measuring 61/2' x 41/2'


One finished panel. 5 more to go.
Fortunately, I found a few calendars with Radha & Krishna in different moods. I hope to finish all the panels as soon as possible and showcase them on my blog. Before I forget, I spent only Rs.250 to do this panel. I still have the paints and the rest of the materials left to finish 1 more panel. Eagerly wanting to do the next one....
Hope you enjoyed this post.................have a great day ahead !!!!!!

13 comments:

Unknown said...

This is awesome... :) the end result is stunning. maybe u could add how the unfinished (bare) asbestos sheet looked before the painting..

Anuradha Shankar said...

This is beautiful!! how did u do it??

Shashi Nayagam said...

Great idea! It looks beautiful.

Anonymous said...

This is awesome.. You've got some fantastic ideas...

One of my aunt has framed a pic of Radha & Krishna from her dads calendar... This thing is about 30 years old.. and is still amazing.. I'll post a pic someday.. Its her priced posession..

Vasudha Narasimhan said...

Hi all...
Thanks a lot for your comments....i appreciate that.

@ meanderer....the panel looked like normal flat asbestos sheet in grey....like the one you see adjacent to the finished panel.

Vasudha Narasimhan said...

@ anu...this is called a decoupage technique... i have used oil paints along with it...

Rekha said...

great post vasudha..

AJEYA RAO said...

Beautiful painting and a great thought to use up the space creatively, so you must be planning to paint the rest of the sheets too. :-)

While studying painitng, couple of years back, i had done the exact same miniature painitng in poster colour. This painintg reminded me of it and i am worried where i have mis placed it. :-(

Unknown said...

Super Vasudha! I linked it to one of my decoupage posts:)

Sharon

Anu said...

Hey Vasudha...when you say these are 6/4 panels...so did you enlarge the posters to that size and then do the decoupage..lemme know when you get a minute ...would appreciate it...:)

Loe your creativity..keep it coming...:)

Trishna said...

Wowww its beautiful!

raji said...

hi! i liked the way you have decorated that asbestos sheet.did u paint them yourself? by seeing the krishna and radha, i remembered the way i used a cloth piece painted with radha krishna to add a light to my living space wall by hanging it with just 4 push pins; and the wall really seemed transformed!

raji said...

hi this is beautiful!did u paint it urself?seeing this ,i recalled the way i transformed a blank wall in my living room with a cloth piece painted with radha krishna ,by just pinning up with 4 push pins !