Harlequin and Fleur de lis

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
                                                                                        Billy Wilder


A couple years ago at a flea market, I bought a really nice wooden bench that I thought would be perfect for a table on our screen porch.  It only cost $10.  What a deal!  When the time came to paint it, I decided I wanted a harlequin design with Fleur de lis.  Trust me when I say that painting a harlequin is not as easy as I thought it would be.  I found directions on how to design a harlequin at Silverspoon Murals.  Of course their directions are for a wall mural, but you can easily adapt it to whatever you need to paint.

Your biggest challenge will be to have all the diamonds equally spaced in length and width and have them all end up fitting into your space.  I used a ruler, yardstick and pencil.  Don't worry about how much you mark it up because your painting will cover all the pencil markings.  I then used Frogtape.  Double check and make sure the tape is on the correct side of your markings so you get the right colored paint in the right diamond.  Unfortunately, I painted this a couple of years ago, before I ever thought of starting a blog, so I don't have any photos to show you my process. 

For the Fleur de lis, I simply Googled Fleur de lis photos and when I found some I liked, I then printed them and made it the size I wanted.  Then using a really sharp exacto knife, I cut out my own stencil design.  I prefer freehand painting, so I don't usually stencil.  I was very particular on how I wanted the Fleur de lis to look, so after stenciling, I went back with a paintbrush and fixed up the edges.

I added one final touch and that was painting the underside a raspberry color.  There's just enough of it showing to look terrific with the other raspberry colors on the porch.

I'm thrilled with the way it turned out!