Powder Room Archives - Leichsenring Studios

Hanging ’round the farm for inspiration

by Sharon Leichsenring· August 03, 2018· in Artwork, Dogs, Horses, Kitchen, Murals, Powder Room, Staircase·

It’s supposed to be the lazy days of summer, but time is flying here at my studio. I’ve got a darling little project that needs to be finished but this newsletter is not going to write itself waiting for me to finish it. So this month we’ll start with some progress shots. For sure I’ll be finished by next month. After visiting with my client, the initial direction to use her beautiful flowering gardens as inspiration. Then it changed as she thought the flowers and landscape could be minimal and a variety of farm animals take center stage. Here are the original sketches. I’m more than halfway done. Here’s one of the front panels and one side panel completed. I’ve been juggling deadlines to finish this, and you know I will. The farm theme also showed up in a painting I completed for Bella’s Café I (home of the best upscale comfort food in Connecticut) in New Haven. He’ll be hung as soon as Bellas’s reopens when the renovations are complete .Here’s the Rocking Rooster canvas I painted. Along with my dry sink, I’ll have more pictures of Bella’s next month. In keeping with completed […]
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Fit for a Queen, a Royal Powder Room Indeed!

by Sharon Leichsenring· April 04, 2018· in Dogs, Floral, Murals, Powder Room, Scrollwork, Trees, Video·

Sometimes, I simply need to pinch myself. A project is presented and I know how fortunate I am as an artist that the path has brought it to me. And what a challenge this would be. A small powder room, 58″ wide, 84″ long and 7 ½’ in height. Fill this space with images of one my client’s favorite places, the Gardens of Versailles. Challenge accepted. Here’s the white walls that I first saw. I drew scaled drawings suggesting different vistas, knowing I would have to seam them together. I started on the wall with the sink and toilet because it also had the one small window in the space. A stained glass window is being created to continue my vision and so as to keep the stained glass artist on schedule, this was the best place to start. I saved my palettes from the that area so that not only would he have the acrylic colors I was using but he could see the blending that took place for the best color accuracy. When it’s installed, I’ll share pictures. A few tricky areas getting behind the mirror and the sides of the toilet, but my world was […]
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The Glow of Gold

by Sharon Leichsenring· October 31, 2017· in Artisan Finish, Birds, Gold Leaf/Silver Leaf, Powder Room·

I’ve got to admit, this powder room is going to be a tough act to top! Simply put, I loved every part of it, from the planning to the last bird. Oh, the birds! But I’m rushing ahead of myself. My client, to whom I’m truly grateful for this painting experience, made the initial choice for the room. She had an inspiration picture that she had filed away several years ago, knowing this was her vision for this powder room. It showed a gold leafed wall with traditional chinoiserie painted on top of it. First, I made two gold leaf samples for her. One was very formal, and as close to perfect as the human hand can make it. The second, done on a brick red bole, the rich color that is behind the gold leaf and adds to his great depth of color, had some irregularities, leaving some of the seams about a sixteenth of an inch exposed here and there. Actually harder to do creating the irregularities, but well worth the effort. It gave a gentle sense of aging to the gold. Gold leaf is actually incredibly thin pieces of gold that are attached to a tacky sized […]
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Trending Tissue Finishes

by Sharon Leichsenring· October 04, 2017· in Artisan Finish, Headboards, Powder Room·

As much as painting murals is my favorite work, I have to admit that that every so often, I have an opportunity to create one of my favorite finishes, glazed tissue with raised stencils. And I love it! Hmmmm….you’re wondering. What exactly is that? It’s a dimensional, textured finish. It’s created by first troweling on a stencil in plaster, creating a raised, or embossed, image. Then the surface is covered with tissue paper. The creases and crevices found in the rolled tissue over the stencil is caught by the glaze that is applied as the final layer. Take a walk with me through a recent job. The biggest challenge was narrowing down several possibilities. All of them looked so pretty in the light coming through the shutter, but the test would be which would look best without the benefit of the added light. I’ll be showing you closeups of the winner’s choice in a moment, but this finish was a close contender. This is a plaster finish in the look of linen. I then troweled my favorite fern leaf stencil for an additional layer of depth. This was painted in a muted metallic gold paint and then washed with an […]
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Wrapping up 2016

by Sharon Leichsenring· January 02, 2017· in Childrens, Commercial Space, Floral, Murals, Powder Room, Staircase, Stairwell·

December seemed to absolutely fly by and I am hard pressed to pick just one single project to showcase. So without further ado… I finished the hallway for the mural a Tree Grows in Tarrytown, featured in December’s newsletter. (By the way, the remarkable Pat Marlin of Business Technology Solutions who created my spanking new website, has made it easy if you just want to revisit an older newsletter. They are listed in the tab “Projects” on my homepage at www.LeichsenringStudios.com). Continuing the theme of the staircase part of the mural, using elements of the home’s landscape, the hallway captures the gentle rolling hills in the property’s perimeter. There is a stone cottage that was a caretaker’s residence when the property adjoining was part of one of the former Rockefeller estates. Seems perfectly at home in the Sleepy Hollow attraction of this area. Take a look. I wrapped up a lucky little boy’s nursery. Elegant as always in design by Linda Brencher Interiors of Branford, CT, the sailing theme is educational as well as fun and colorful. So for my darling granddaughters, the perfect wardrobe for dress-up ! As much fun as they will have playing with it, the joy […]
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The Dragon’s Tail

by Sharon Leichsenring· September 06, 2016· in Mica, Powder Room, Textured Finishes, Video·

Since this project was conceived months ago, it’s been living in the crazy part of my psyche. Many are the times I would play back the proposal and wonder: what was I thinking? Surely, this was insane. Up until the actual moment of installation, I questioned the process and for a moment of terror thought this might not work. Wrong, oh so wrong. So to the beginning of the story. A tiny powder room, square footage wise, 6 feet by barely 4. But competing with a powerful piece of inspiration. This is the mirror with the dragon frame. I needed to design something that could hold its own against such drama. And I came up with the idea of a magnificent dragon’s tail, unfurling itself across the walls. And that’s when crazy entered the picture. I’m currently having a love affair with mica, adding it as a layer to plaster finishes, and I thought, this was the perfect solution. The raw mica comes in blocks, and one splits the sheets apart. I could cut the scales out of mica. They would come alive as light hit and reflected around the room. I started by drawing out the tail, numbering […]
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Amazing Mica

by Sharon Leichsenring· May 03, 2016· in Artisan Finish, Ceiling, Mica, Powder Room, Video·

I met the mineral mica several years ago. Mica infused plasters have been part of my portfolio for many years now. But recently, I got to rediscover Mica in a brand new way. Great big chunks of it! Glittering in amber, champagne, bronze pearl and gold tones. Let me show you my samples for this outrageously gorgeous powder room I just completed. The ceiling sample shimmers with layers of mineral. The wall finish has treasure pockets of mica buried in layers of mica infused plaster set on a metallic background. Here is a close-up of the ceiling with the perfect chandelier. Below is the finished room. I am so psyched about using mica more in the future. Love to know what you think about it. There was another addition to the studio this month. Some of my favorite murals have been made into scarves and women’s top on a new ecommerce site called Shopvida. You can visit my shop by clicking HERE (www.shopvida.com/collections/voices/Sharon-Leichsenring). If I’ve painted something for you and you would like me to add it to my collection-there are several types of scarves and tops-let me know which you prefer. Lastly, for several years in the […]
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This Magic Moment

by Sharon Leichsenring· February 02, 2016· in Birds, Gold Leaf/Silver Leaf, Murals, Powder Room, Property Brothers, Tropical·

So, I finished painting what I’m sure will remain one of my favorite dining room murals EVER! My client was a superb collaborator when it came to the design of this three walled mural (the fourth wall is a fireplace with a surround of classic wood panels and molding.) Studying her Pinterest inspiration board, a theme became clear: a landscape taking its cue from 19th century Zuber panoramic wallpapers, based on a tropical, Eden-like world. I’m going to get right to it. Here are the pictures. Once the palette was worked out, it was just wonderful to come to work each day, making this come alive. Somewhere along the way, the magic happened. The room has a mood as soon as you step into it. There is a peacefulness that borders on being ethereal. Below are my favorite trees. The solemn herons appear on each wall. I gave you a little background about this project in my January newsletter. I first painted a mural in this residence fifteen years ago. The owner’s four children (ages eight to three at the time) were incorporated into the painting. The figures were about one inch in height. Look at them now, […]
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Rooms with a View

by Sharon Leichsenring· December 03, 2015· in Clouds, Dining Room, Kitchen, Murals, Places, Powder Room, Staircase, Stairwell·

The 21st interior design celebration, Rooms with a View, took place in Southport recently. Conceived as a brilliant church fundraiser under the auspices of the famed Albert Hadley (designer for the Kennedy White House, the Rockefellers, Astors and Gettys to name a few notable clients), each year the show embraces traditional and cutting edge design. Each of the twelve invited designers is given a space of 5′ x 8′ to create a vignette. They have a week to”build” their room, which comes quite simply with three walls and wiring for electricity. Then, the magic is on display for the weekend. This year was personally exciting to yours truly because the design team, Tracy Dwyer and Patrick Briel, from Westport’s Parc Monceau had asked me to paint a floor cloth that would be used in their vignette, The.Diving.Room. Too cool for words, I assure you. First, take a look at the room’s view. My rippling water over sand design painted on a canvas floor cloth is easily seen through the Lucite coffee table. Here is another view of the room. Here is the rug by itself. If you’ve never been to Rooms with a View, plan to next year. I’ll […]
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A Tale of Two Projects

by Sharon Leichsenring· August 06, 2015· in Artwork, Floor, Powder Room·

One of the best parts of my schedule is the wide scope of work that comes my way. Here are two projects that illustrate my point. The first is an elegant and sophisticated powder room. My part in it was quite small, a painted floor cloth. The cloth, a mere 27″ x 3″, was the perfect solution for the space. More importantly, it provided a vehicle to tie the palette of the room together. Here’s a picture of the cloth, the wallpaper and the fabric trims for the window treatment. Kudos to Linda Brencher Interiors of Branford for t the design found in this lovely powder room. The Anna French wallpaper in a light apple green sets the perfect crispness for every detail. Take a look at the floor cloth. This powder room is a busy place, so the protective topcoat will keep it looking like new for years. Here’s the finished project. The nightstand refitted as a vanity base with a new marble top and vessel sink is brilliant. The second project called for an entirely different direction. My client commissioned me to create a 24″ by 36″ painted canvas as a birthday gift for her husband. The […]
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