Hexagon Painted Wall Mural Tutorial | Tacoma Mural Artist

've been painting my living room slowly over the last year and a half.  The first thing I did was paint two of the walls white, then I painted my big chalkboard wall, but I still had one wall left.  It was still the boring, dingy beige that was there when we moved in.  I knew I wanted some kind of pattern or statement, but nothing too crazy because I already had a huge black wall.  When 

The Home Depot

 and 

ScotchBlue™ Painter’s Tape

 contacted me seeing if I'd be interested in doing a painting project in collaboration with them, I knew this was the perfect time to finally finish my living room!  I love how it turned out!  It's clean and neat, and a statement but not visually overwhelming.  I picked some muted, pastel 

Behr® paint

 colors so it wasn't too bold.  I'd already painted the door bright yellow so I wasn't sure if the muted colors would clash, but I love how the door stands out and is still in the same color family as the yellow hexagons.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

ScotchBlue™ Painter’s Tape

Behr® Premium Plus Ultra™ Paint

- I used: I used: Glacier Bay #500A-1, Citrus Hill #200B-4, Bee Pollen #390B-5, Chocolate Froth #720C-2, and Simple Silhouette #790B-5

Wooster®

 Pro 

brush

Scissors

Pencil

Cardboard

DIRECTIONS:

1. Decide on your pattern.  I used photoshop to mock up how I wanted my design to look on the wall and which colors would go in each hexagon.  This also helped determine how big I wanted to make my hexagon template.

2. Create your hexagon template.  It's pretty easy to make a hexagon, but you'll want to make sure it's pretty close to perfect so that your pattern doesn't get wonky.  I used

this super easy little tutorial

with a makeshift compass.  My hexagon ended up being 13 inches from tip to opposite tip (diameter of the original circle drawn). Cut the template out of some cardboard or other sturdy material to trace around.

3. Draw the outlines to the hexagons using a pencil.  Make sure your hexagons are level.  I leveled the first one and then outlined about 4 or 5 and checked the level again, just to make sure I wasn't getting off level.  In each hexagon I lightly wrote the color that would be painted inside.

4. Using your  

ScotchBlue™ Painter’s Tape

, outline the hexagons that aren't directly next to each other.  Since these hexagons are directly butting up against each other, you'll have to wait for the paint to dry so you can mask off the one next to it.  I masked as many hexagons as possible and painted the color that was written inside using my Behr paint.  Each hexagon got two coats of paint.

5.  Because I had to wait for each hexagon to dry before taping the one next to it, this project took a little longer, but I'm super happy with how it looks.  As soon as I painted the second coat on a hexagon I'd remove the tape and allow it to dry.  This project took three days to complete with the time required to wait for paint to dry.  I let the paint dry about 2 hours between coats, as recommended by 

Behr®

.

I have to say I was skeptical about how good the Edgelock tape would

really

be in comparison to the regular painters tape I usually use, but I was super happy with how precise my edges were.  I didn't have to fix any leaks and the edges were

so

sharp and clean.  I used the

Delicate Surface Painter's Tape

, but 

ScotchBlue™ Painter’s Tape

 has

a guide that can help pick

the right tape for your project surface.

I am proud to be a 3M, Behr®, and Wooster® - sponsored blogger, and, as part of my responsibilities, I get the opportunity to evaluate products. Opinions are my own and additional product used in the project were selected by me. Thanks for supporting those companies that keep Delightfully Tacky alive and kicking!

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five homemade christmas treats!

t's Christmas week!  That's totally a thing right?  Christmas week?  It's like how you get a whole week for your birthday, right?  Right.  Since I'm sure we'll all be indulging in a few seasonal treats this next week I thought I'd share some of my favorite holiday recipes from Christmases past.  Do you have a favorite holiday treat?  When I was a kid we used to get these Santa cookies every year from one of my grandparents' good friends.  Each year she'd make these big Santa sugar cookies and frosted them with some delicious frosting to look just like Santa.  I always loved opening the package from her and getting our yearly Santa cookie.  There's just nothing quite like a home baked goodie.  People say that they can taste the love baked in, which can sound silly, but sometimes I think it's true.  
Nowadays I'd say that my favorite holiday treats are boozy holiday beverages.  One of my favorites this year has been Mulled Cider with a splash of whiskey.  Hot Buttered Rum and Eggnog are also some great drinks and adding peppermint schnapps to hot cocoa is one of our holiday traditions!
Above: Homemade Eggnog


Peppermint Fudge


Christmas Cookies


 
Candy Cane Mug Hangers


Homemade Peppermint Schnapps

the molinaro family // university place family photographer

t's been funny living in the Tacoma area because there are quite a few friends from college who are from this area and have subsequently moved back after graduating.  Dan and I learned that Jeremy and Lauren had moved to Tacoma recently so it was a really fun session getting to catch up and learn what they were up to nowadays.  We weren't super good friends in college, Jeremy and I were in the same dorm freshman year, but it was a small school, so you were pretty familiar with everyone.  It was fun seeing these two as parents, and little Charlotte was a hoot!
When we had their Session Debut at their house, both Lauren and Jeremy's parents came over to see the images we made at their session and it was really fun!  I bring a tasty locally made dessert to all my Session Debuts, and Lauren's mom brought some champagne, so it really felt like a little Christmas celebration!  It's so fun to have parents at a family session debut, you can just see the pride in their eyes looking at their kids all grown up and becoming parents themselves.  Both parents ended up getting some prints too, which I loved!


 

WED // tropical kihei maui bridal inspiration

hen I found out we were going to Hawai'i, I got excited about wearing pretty summery dresses and as I was shopping around for some dresses to wear, I happened upon this one.  It was too fancy to be a casual sundress, but I thought it'd look perfect in Hawai'i and got the idea to pull together a fun little faux bridal photoshoot.  I wanted to have some tropical wedding photos in my portfolio because it's be pretty dang rad to travel to a tropical location to shoot a wedding.  Right where I did the shoot there are actually real weddings all the time!  I saw at least three weddings on the beach at the same spot where these shots were taken!  I can't blame people, It's so gorgeous, especially right at sunset.  We spent every sunset down at the beach with a drink in hand and watch the sun dip into the ocean.  
I wanted an ethereal and a little bit vintage vibe, but with a tropical twist.  I made the bouquet from $28 worth of flowers from Safeway and masking tape, the crown is one I made this summer and brought with me.   The dress is from ModCloth and I had it altered to fit me just right (and short girls, take note!  I didn't cut any length off, so I think it might be intended as a tea length, but it was the perfect length for my 5'1" frame when I was barefoot).  I knew I'd still have green hair, which didn't fit the look I was going for, so I took my black curly wig, added some curled extensions and it was perfect!  It's funny to think that the last time I was in Hawai'i this is what my real hair looked like!


 



 


The dress is actually a bit of a light tan/nude color, and I loved how it matched the sand and how it glowed when the evening sun filtered through it!  With my black hair matching the volcanic rocks and the dress matching the sand, I unintentionally matched my location pretty well!
Since the trip was kind of our anniversary vacation, it was fun to get all "brided up" again and feel fancy.  I think women should be able to get fancy more often, especially us grown up ladies.  I mean, you have prom or homecoming as a teen and then a wedding, but after that there aren't a ton of opportunities to get super fancy.  And I think sometimes we feel self centered or vain getting dolled up, but I say screw that.  You're allowed to feel pretty and get done up if it makes you feel awesome.  I have a friend in Tacoma who does amazing boudoir shoots and I love how it makes her clients feel like bombshells.   I think we sometimes need more glamour in our lives, and if your life isn't full of glamour naturally (which is where most of us exist, I imagine), you gotta make your own!
Something that I love about burlesque's influence on my life is that it's made me love wigs even more.  The other night I was going out to a show in Seattle with my burly-gals and I had zero time to make my hair do anything cute, so I just grabbed this wig, gave it a little twist into a side ponytail type thing, slapped on a Swarovski headband and I was ready to go!  The cheap wigs you get at the thrift store for Halloween aren't what you want, though.  Invest in one or two higher quality wigs and you're good to go!  The extensions I put in this one were a lot straighter than the curls of wig, so I just wet them down, put them in perm rods overnight until the hair was totally dry and voilà!  They perfectly matched the curl of the wig.  I'm eventually going back to black for my real hair color, so I think I might grab myself a redhead wig to keep me from wanting to dye my hair again!

 

how to create scrumptious food photos

ood photography is something that I've become more passionate about in the last couple years.  I'd even venture to say that it's quickly become one of my favorite branches of photography, and not just because I get to chow down on whatever I just shot.  I'd say that for me, food photography is more about food styling than the act of clicking the shutter.  Most of my food shoots are done in the same location with the same lighting set up, but it's the styling that makes them interesting.  Unlike portraits, you can really control food photography very precisely and you can usually take as much time as you need to get the right shot, as long as you aren't shooting something that will quickly melt.  There are a few basics to keep in mind when shooting food that will boost your food photos to the next level.

Unless you're experienced in shooting with off camera lighting set ups, I recommend shooting your food photos in daylight.  Food looks awful under ambient light at night, no matter how good it tastes, so do your best to shoot during daylight hours.  I even turn of all the lights in the kitchen when I'm shooting food so I don't get any weird light seeping in.  This can be inconvenient if you want to shoot a dinner meal that you'd usually make at night, but you're just not going to get good photos if you shoot them with the lighting that already exists in your house.

The top photos were shot indoors, at night, using the lights I had in my kitchen.  The bottom photos were shot during daytime using only natural light.  They have relatively similar styling, but the photos themselves are drastically different.

My set up is super basic.  I have a table right next to the window in our kitchen and I put a bounce card opposite from the window so I can bounce the sunlight back to the shadowed side of the food and fill in a bit where it might lose detail.  My bounce card is just a sheet of foam core board with the plain white on one side and the other side covered with foil.  This way I can choose how bright of a reflection I want.  Sometimes all I need is the white side, sometimes I want more light filled in and I'll use the foil side.

Do whatever you can to shoot with natural light.  I used to live in a house that was tiny and dark, so I'd shoot all my food on the front porch.  I probably looked like a crazy person to my neighbors, but it gave me way better photos than I would've achieved doing them indoors.

Depth of Field refers to how much of your photo is in focus and how much is blurred out.  If you're shooting with an iPhone or point and shoot, you probably won't have much choice as to what your DOF will be, but with a DSLR you'll have options.  I like to keep my DOF relatively shallow so that what I'm focusing on (the food, in this case) is in focus but the background is out of focus.  I typically play between f/1.4 and f/2.2 for my food photos depending on how many things I want in focus.  I use a 50mm f/1.4 lens for most of my food photos but occasionally I'll pull out my 90mm f/2.8 macro lens to get some fun detail shots.

A garnish can really take your food photography to another level.  A bowl of chili on it's own is okay, but if you put a dollop of sour cream on top, sprinkle some cheese and green onions, and add a dash of chili powder?  You just made that photo so much more interesting and, bonus, mouthwatering.  Basically what you're doing is creating visual interest.  A bowl of chili alone is very monochromatic.  It lacks interest, no matter how delicious your grandma's recipe is.  A cocktail alone is nice, but a cocktail with a garnish is better.  Think about color when you garnish, you want the garnish to give the food a pop, not blend in.  Some food isn't naturally photogenic and needs more help, so garnishing is a perfect way to give it a little umph.

The left photo would've been much better if I'd included a garnish on the soup.  The second photo shows a very similar looking soup, but the photo is so much more interesting because I garnished with some cheese, cilantro, and bacon!

A picture of spaghetti on a table alone is boring.  You want to create images with their own story, and food photography is no different.  Add a placemat that brings texture, but doesn't pull focus.  Artfully swirl the spaghetti on a fork.  Place a loaf of french bread in the background and cut a couple slices.  Pour a glass of wine and put it next to the plate.  You've just created a story and the photo is so much more interesting than the plain old plate of spaghetti you started with.  Let's take a hint from this awful photo from one of my first food posts... boring and unappetizing!

This isn't necessary, but it can produce some really interesting photos.  If you're the photographer this can be more difficult as you'll have to document the process with a tripod and self timer, but if you have a helper or can document as someone else creates the food it will make it easier.  Don't think that it's too hard to do on your own, I've done plenty of process shots on my own that have really enhanced a recipe post with just a tripod and self timer.

Process shots don't have to document the

actual

process either.  Determine what parts of the process are most photogenic and focus on getting shots of those.  I like to shoot pouring a cocktail from a shaker into the glass, but it can take a few shots to get all the elements right.  Don't forget to style your process shots too.  Create a scene that tells a story.  Because you're using still photos, you only get that one moment to tell a story.  In baking shots I'll usually have containers of my ingredients where they're measured out, even though I wouldn't do it that way if I was just baking normally.

This is easy to do by going to thrift stores and grabbing a few items that look good in photos.  Maybe have a couple forks with a cool etched design on the handles, get some plain white plates that will highlight the food, grab bowls that look interesting to shoot soups.  Even things like interesting cutting boards or napkins are great to have on hand to style your shoots.  Something I learned is using smaller plates when shooting food than you would normally use for eating.  A smaller plate is easier to fill and the proportions will look better on camera.  You don't need full sets of things, since most of your photos will be plated on only one or two plates, unless you're going for full tablescapes.

Like I said, I use the same location for all my shots, so in order to get some variety, I have some different backdrops that were super simple and easy to make.  I have a light wood table that I occasionally use, but I also put wood planks on top the table to create alternative looks.  One is a set of planks from our old fence, which gives a really nice rustic look.  The other is a set of planks that is whitewashed for a bright, clean, white background.  You could also use plywood, natural, painted, or aged/stained.

It takes just a little bit more thought and effort to take a food photo from boring to mouthwatering.  You don't need super fancy equipment to create delicious images.  It takes some practice to start figuring things out, but you'll start to learn what looks good and what works.  Practice makes perfect!  Keep on shooting!