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Today we’re back in the kitchen to show you how to create a lovely picture of flowers using more paint and vegetables. We’ll make cabbage roses from celery and romaine hearts. Doesn’t it sound romantic?

Here’s what you need:

Using a pencil, lightly draw a border a few inches inside the poster board outside edge so that your artwork will have some white space around it. Make the border equal on both sides, and slightly wider on the bottom than the top (see photo above).

Place blobs of each of your colors on your palette. Cut the bottom off the celery, about 4 inches from the bottom. You’re using the heart of celery for printing, so push the celery stalks out to make space between them. Slice the lettuce 2 to 3 inches from the bottom.

If you prefer, use a paper plate instead of a saran-wrapped dish.  I used more than one romaine heart to add some variety. They dont need to be fresh.

Step Three. Paint and Print.

Using the foam brush, generously cover the cut ends of the celery heart with paint. Place the lighter colors in the outside of the “bloom” and add a dab of the darkest color to the very center. Test what a print will look by pressing this painted end onto the plain paper. Print celery flowers at spaces all over the area inside your pencil lines. Do the same with the romaine.

You don’t need to wash or wipe your brush between colors. They will mix on your brush and on the cut celery and lettuce ends. If you find all the paints on your palette have been mixed into one color, add a small amount of fresh paints to your palette, and continue.

Press the lettuce heart firmly on the paper, but dont wiggle it.

You can crowd your blossoms tightly together, or not. I like to space them across the paper, reminiscent of old fashioned wood-blocked wall paper.

Step Four. Wait and Finish

Allow your print to dry thoroughly, probably overnight. Add your signature to the lower right corner, just inside the pencil line, and write the name of your picture in the lower left corner. Make sure you are signing on the bottom of the print (the one with the wider border). Carefully darken the pencil line if you like its position, and you want to create the illusion of a mat surrounding the rose prints. The best way to do this is to have a T-square, but a good ruler will do if you measure carefully so your corners are square. You can always erase and draw it again.

Place your picture in the frame and hang it. Using a 50-cent piece of poster board, a $1 piece of foamcore for backing, a poster frame that you can find for around two bucks at second hand stores, plus a few tablespoons of craft paints, you’ll have a large and lovely framed original!

It’s easy to make your home lovely in the eyes of buyers, easy when you know how. Learn how by downloading my $4.99 eBook DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar.

Sex and religion: a double whammy!

Home staging has been bashed for stripping a home of personality for the sake of a generic look. To this I say, “What’s wrong with generics if that’s what sells your home?”

There’s no accounting for taste. Or, as my grandfather would say, (rather than say “What the heck was that guy thinking?”)“De gustibus non est disputandum,” which translates from the Latin as, “In matters of taste, there is no logic.”

He loved Latin

You might want the art on your walls to be an expression of your taste, but it better not be too expressive.

One easy way to make your art more generic is to avoid the mistakes common to these subject areas: Sports, vulgarity, politics, religion, and (surprise!) peoples faces.

Sports loyalties are a big deal all over the globe. Some team rivalries are intense, so the safest route to a purchase offer is to keep your sports preferences a secret. Why alienate someone interested in buying your home? There are so many posters and paintings that are suitable for staging, ones that are easy to DIY or easy to buy, that hanging a NASCAR poster doesn’t make good sense. 

One exception might be vintage sports photos or similar archival images (not you in your high school basketball uniform). 

Vulgar is a word we dont hear that often. Instead we say, "sexually explicit," or even "politically incorrect."

Like obscenity, you know vulgar when you see it. Nudity is one of those controversial issues. Nude paintings have their place in art history, but to some people even Venus de Milo will be embarrassing. 

Always err on the side of caution whenever displaying artworks that include even vaguely sexually suggestive content. If you even think it might raise some eyebrows, then it probably will for some people. Remember that buyers often come from other cultures and other countries. We all have different sensibilities. 

Maybe you are the precinct chairman of the local GOP.

Maybe you worked on the Al Gore campaign. 

Let’s just say you have the posters or photos declaring your political passions. Even if you have a photo of you shaking hands with JFK, Ronald Reagan, or Martin Luther King, now’s the time to pack them into storage. Or cover them up with other, more benign, art for the time being. When your home is on the market is not the time to win votes, convert the undecided, or announce your political persuasions. Sorry.

I’m going to tread lightly here because I know how important faith is to people. It’s your call if you want to share your belief system with the art in your home when it’s for sale. Buyers will make decisions about the kind of person you are – to your benefit or not. My personal opinion is that the less the buyer knows about you, the seller, the better. It’s a factor of successful negotiating.

Buyers may not want to deal with someone they feel is either condemned forever, or else someone who would judge them negatively for their own personal religious beliefs. Spiritual beliefs run very deep, understandably so because along with our social mores, they form the core of value system and therefore our actions. 

Have you ever driven in traffic and suddenly become aware that the driver in the next car over is looking at you? Yeah, even our peripheral vision is attuned to full front faces. It must be hard-wired in our brains.

Faces command attention, so for this reason, I always suggest that if you are staging your home, you should avoid using artwork that includes faces.

Your job as stager is to keep people noticing the assets of your home, uninterruptedly.

People touring a home want to “own” a room as soon as they enter it, not enter and be confronted with the presence of a stranger. It’s subtle, but that’s what home staging is all about – subtleties.

   

Does this “rule” apply to pretty watercolor paintings of children playing at the beach? Or etchings of Classical Greek statues? No.  I’m referencing pictures like the examples shown here.

You’ll know when a face takes over a room.

Do not fear the generic. It keeps you out of land mine territory.

If making your home a house rather than a home bothers you, remember that it’s only temporary. "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis," means "Times change, and we change with them." [winking to Grandpa]

I hope your home staging efforts are making your home more beautiful and a pleasure to live in. For more encouragement, tips on cleaning, decluttering, furniture arrangement, window treatments, curb appeal, and everything else that makes a home attractive to buyers, download my $4.99 eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and for Top Dollar.  

A staged home depends on some seasonal touches to make it look loved and tended.

But when your home is for sale and the winter holidays approach, I know you have your hands full.

That’s why I wanted to share with you how easy it can be put together an outdoor arrangement that spans the seasons, one that greets Realtors and their clients with something festive. 

The secret’s in the formula.

It’s one you can apply to any floral arrangement when you want it to make a real statement at the front door or from the curb. 

Start with a large container. And the perfect one is the jumbo pot that housed a display of your summer flowers. Retire those annuals and remove any bulbs you want to save for next spring.

Leave the potting soil in the container, and leave any perennials that will winter over. A pot with personality is ideal, like a wine half barrel, a brass spittoon, a faux-finished plastic pot, or a lined wicker basket. Put it where it will give you the most curb appeal all winter. 

Paint your container if it needs refreshing or if you want to change it with the seasons. The same container can be black or brown in the fall for example, then gold or red in December, and maybe white for a fresh start in January. 

Lay on a couple of wreaths. This jump-start creates a base and adds importance to the arrangement. The wreaths could be real or artificial. Just lay them on the lip of the container or on the soil.

If you plan to locate the container on the porch or other protected area, you’ll have more leeway with what your wreaths are made from. Burlap, felt, fabric, or straw wreaths need shelter from the elements, but wreaths made from real or artificial greenery, tinsel, grapevines, twigs, plastic, or metal can handle any weather. 

I started the Christmas decoration with a tinsel wreath and a plastic Della Robbia wreath.  I let the vinca vine that was still growing in the pot peek out from the center, and I wired some pine cones onto the bottom wreath.

You need something tall to make your statement piece. It needn’t be weighty or fancy or expensive or rare. Branches are perfect. Professional decorators, florists and homestagers keep an arsenal of sticks, branches and poles to use this way.

If you have access to woodlands, take a hike and bring your pruners. You’re bound to find pretty limbs that are suitable au natural or spray painted. Craft stores and craft departments sell bamboo, willow, tall grasses, and twiggy stuff, all reasonably priced.

Insert your branches or sticks into the potting soil to anchor them firmly. If the branches are fresh and real, cut the stems at a sharp angle and poke them in so they can absorb moisture from the soil and stay fresh longer.

Your large items could also be a trellis, tuteur, obelisk or other garden construction. Even garden poles or a tomato cage inverted to make a pyramid can provide that structure your container garden needs. 

Heres a birds eye view of the bamboo garden stakes inserted into the soil to make a teepee.

    

While taking that walk in the woods or when pruning your own landscape shrubs, look for greenery that can fill in the center of the display. If real greenery isn’t available, use the faux stuff. Yes, real and fake can co-mingle!

You can begin the season with a potted mum, switch to ornamental kale around Thanksgiving time, and add silk poinsettias for Christmas. If you live in a mild climate, you have more options for incorporating plants like succulents, ferns, pansies, and potted bulbs like amaryllis and paperwhites.  

Finish your work of art with some smaller items that define the season. Look through your props for those that will withstand some months outside. These will be the details that put your display over the top. You can change these as the season progresses.

Pumpkins, gourds and other autumnal objects give your container the right spin that will take you through Thanksgiving. After that you can replace them with red bows, glittery ornaments and whatever else you discover when you dig into your holiday decorations. Come January, just remove the obvious holiday trinkets and go for a fresh, wintery look built around pinecones, and greenery, or whatever might be blooming in the more southern states. Add an ornamental birdhouse or some ceramic animals for some whimsy.

Another detail that adds drama is lighting. You can tuck a spotlight into the arrangement, or place one where it will illuminate the area at dusk. A string of lights is another possibility, wrapped around the sticks, wound around the container, or nestled in the foliage.

Many sticks are free!  After I gave these crepe myrtle branches  a coat of red paint they remind me of underwater coral formations.

When working on your container, place it on a bench or low table. You’ll do less bending and have a better view of what you’re creating.

If you’re selling your home and you’ve already decluttered as part of your homestaging, I don’t want to encourage you to stockpile decorating items.

But if you are a professional stager, a builder or real estate investor, I encourage you to schedule your décor purchases to save money. Buy decorating supplies on sale after the holidays. And look for marked down décor props during the year at places like Michaels, Target, Walmart, TJMaxx, Hobby Lobby, and home improvement centers.      

You can always spray paint ordinary decorations like wreaths, branches, leaves, pumpkins, lanterns, ornaments, bows, and even silk plants to match the season. Why not utilize silver gourds, red birdhouses and glitter-encrusted branches at Christmas, the same items that were part of your autumn arrangement?

Bows make a big difference. If you plan it right, just changing the bow to match the season and replacing a real plant with a faux plant will fast-track you to the new season.

Remember that selling your home means selling your location. Remind prospective buyers of what’s appealing about your locale. Include seashells and driftwood in your arrangement if you live by the sea, tropical flowers if you live in the South, or skis and sleds if you live where it snows.

The fall display began with a painted grapevine wreath and a foam wreath loosely wrapped with burlap. ? The sticks providing height are willow branches from Walmart.  The cost of about $6.50 was worth it because theyre versatile props. ? ? The pumpkin centerpiece could have just as easily been a potted mum, cluster of gourds, or a scarecrow. I dont like scary things for homestaging. ? About as scary as my homestaging gets is a scared cat. The silk flowers, another pumpkin and a gourd are all thats needed for this easy display. ??

Selling a home is stressful, but you can simplify some of your homestaging tasks by following advice like this and other tips in my homestaging $4.99 ebooks http://diyhomestagingtips.blogspot.com/p/ebooks.html.