HOW TO WASTE TIME PROPERLY

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When I’m not writing, and planning work projects, I like to paint and potter. You can waste hours and hours painting, and get a lot of thinking done at the same time. So it’s not such a waste. I sorted out a list as long as my arm, and hatched a few ideas, plans and schemes while standing with my nose to this wall. I even worked out what to give my 16 favourite friends for Christmas and where to shop for them. I’m so far with Christmas shopping after this wall, those gifts are as good as wrapped.

One of my favourite paints is the stuff I used on this wall. Worn Leather paint. It goes on one colour and as it dries, it shifts colour organically and becomes chalky and interesting. I used three colours, and enjoyed working the paint in and blending the lines between each colour, which you have to do while your brush is still quite wet. I think it works really well on bagged walls. Worn Leather is an Earthcote paint, from Paint&Place shops in S.A. It needs a coat or two of Earthcote Wall Wax as a sealing coat, once dry.

About the Christmas shopping. That’s not entirely true.

GOT A ROTHKO IN YOU?

– Mark Rothko

I often turn to this wonderful book, a gift from friends, for a colour boost.

The way Mark Rothko worked with colour is brilliant. Playing with colours, especially ones that aren’t necessarily complementary, completely amazes me. You can make unfriendly colours become close and intimate. Let baby pink marry olive green, vygie pink mate with dahlia yellow, brown to kiss purple. By pairing two unlikely colours, or colours that aren’t that easy to love, you’ll come up with the sexiest combinations.

Rothko style colour fields interpreted in Earthcote Worn Leather by artist Tracy Lynch. One of a series of feature wall installations at the Freeworld Design Centre.

This interpretation, a tribute to the colour blocking made famous by Rothko more than half a century ago, was done by Cape Town artist and decor celeb Tracy Lynch. Tracy was commissioned to produce a collection of these Earthcote installations in the offices of the Freeworld Design Centre in Cape Town. For Earthcote, the project demonstrated the alchemy of its Worn Leather product, a lime-based paint overcoated with wax. Working with this paint is like magic. The lime ‘burns’ through unevenly, resulting in an organic look that is completely unpredictable. Alchemy is the word, I think. You won’t know the outcome till the paint is completely dry. That’s the joy of it. Then you wax over it with Earthcote wall wax, and polish it up like you would a floor. The wax gives it an opacity and an agedness that feels artisanal.

Soft & misty: colour blocking achieved with 3 shades of Earthcote Worn Leather. For products and DIY instructions, go to the Paint&Place blog: http://www.mypaintandplace.wordpress.com. Photo: Antonia Steyn. Light design: Dokter & Misses

Shot on location at the Freeworld Design Centre, these misty, muted colour fields of cream, grey and pale blue were rendered in Worn Leather by Tracy Lynch. You’ll find instructions on the Paint&Place blog. For products and colour swatches, visit a Paint&Place paint shop.

HURRICANE SEASON AT THE RESERVE

Earthcote Worn Leather storm wall at The Reserve, Adderley Street, Cape Town

At The Reserve in Adderley Street, Cape Town, palm trees, pink tables, parrots, moneys and tropical storms all live together in a witty and wild interior.

How emotional and hurricane-like is this Earthcote Worn Leather ‘storm wall’?  This is another manipulated wall treatment from Earthcote this summer. I love the unruliness of the scratchy bits. The hurricane-like look happened when we painted diluted acrylic wall paint over Earthcote Worn Leather. The lime from the Worn Leather base coat kept burning through, bringing all this aesthetic mayhem to the surface.

To do one of your own: Brush on two coats of Earthcote Worn Leather ‘Gemsbok Tan’. Then using a roller, apply one or two coats of Midas Envirolite 220 in the same colour as ‘Gemsbok Tan’ – try ‘Bleached Wash Table’ from the Midas 300 colour palette, diluted 50:50 with water. The effect will be spontaneous and completely unpredictable. To protect the wall and give it a polished patina, finish it off with a layer or two of Earthcote Wall Wax, and buff it as you would as floor. For more detailed instructions and to see how this looks in an alternative colour, check out my instructions in one of my earlier posts this season: Storm Wall.

Midas Envirolite 220 Zero VOC Paint – ‘Bleached Wash Table’

What if you’d rather drink a tornado or hurricane, than paint one? Or if painting hurricanes makes you really thirsty? Find out how to shake up your own storm in a highball with recipes by Absolut Vodka, here.

PHOTO: Los Angeles Times

ARE WE NEARLY THERE?

At what point is it okay to send an old pair of shoes to the grave? Three years, five years, ten, maybe? Sitting in the coffee shop at gym, I can’t help noticing these fantastically buggered up impressions of my feet – which I think already had ten candles on their last birthday cake. The elastic is perished and the soles are worn to the quick. I’m never sentimental about clothes and things, but chucking these will be like, like losing a foot. I’m going to have to talk to my friend Sue Engels the shoemaker, who goes around the world making beautiful shoes and boots for people who take walking seriously. Sue has made shoes in the UK, in SA and New Zealand and now she tells me she’s on her way back to New Zealand in January. I’d better talk quickly.

'My Favourite Shoe' - Earthcote Worn Leather

Poking around Sue Engels’s workshop the other day, it occurred to me that if you’re a customer of hers, somewhere hanging on her studio wall you’ll find a last with your name on it. And if you don’t have one yet, go here: www.zasu.co.za   Once she’s set up in New Zealand, Sue will once again be shipping shoes to anywhere in the world. Yay for that.