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While you don’t have to be an artist or great with a paint brush to use our My Wonderful Walls wall stencils, sometimes having that extra talent sure shows in the murals our customers create. We recently corresponded with a customer, Mariette in and fell in love with not only the mural she created but her lovely spirit!
Mariette is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, author, painter, retired teacher and crafter. She wrote a book entitled, Visiting the Past, which talks about her immigration to Canada from Belgium with her parents and brother, subsequent return to Belgium and then finally their immigration to the United States of America. The family settled in the Detroit area and her book tells of the immigrant experience; both the funny and serious moments. One book reviewer stated, “The people she describes really come to life, and the anecdotes, poignant and hilarious, stick in your mind long after you put down the book. Most of all, it is an example of how one creative and resourceful woman made lemonade whenever life handed her lemons and how she moved on, never holding a grudge.” It must be this positivity that drew us immediately to Mariette.
She credits her parents, grandmother and the nuns at school for her love of life and crafts; hand knitting, machine knitting, crochet and painting. Mariette grew a successful business and website from creating pattern books for sale. She taught machine knitting for many years at seminars across Canada and the U.S. and her husband Roger, who passed away in 1997, would travel with her and sell her patterns. Now at 80 years old, Mariette decided to take her website down and concentrate on writing hand knitting and crochet patterns. But she needed a place to do that, a happy place. A room she had in the basement previously for storing cones of knitting yarn was the ideal spot. She had always intended to paint a mural on one wall, so it was painted sky blue.
Mariette’s original idea was to paint a mural of her grandmother’s garden in Belgium. Now since she has three great grandchildren, 2 girls and one boy, she thought it would be fun to paint a whimsical garden mural for them to enjoy. She often teaches her children and grandchildren about Belgium in her family room which is decorated with everything she brought when she came to America. So, it made sense to use a room just off the family room to show them her love for crafts.
Mariette searched online for help and came across My Wonderful Walls stencils and an idea was born. Being an experienced painter, Mariette didn’t have much trouble using our self-adhesive wall stencils to achieve her vision. She even kept one wall for the little ones with a white board where they can draw. The room is vividly colorful and happy and indeed is called, “Nana’s Happy Room”. Mariette has visitors from the neighborhood come to see her happy room. Her neighbor’s ten-year-old son even called it, “the coolest room I have ever seen”. Pretty good testimonial right there.
Mariette suggests taking great care with your brushes as she always does. When she is done with each color she places her brush in a little pail of lukewarm water with a few drops of shampoo. At the end of the day, she places a dab of shampoo in the palm of her hand and “swooshes” each brush around until no color remains. Each brush is treated this way, then rinsed, wiped with a towel and left to dry overnight with the brush end up. Smart advice for anyone looking to paint a lovely wall mural.
Whether you want a space to paint, to write, to sew or to do yoga we agree with Mariette that everyone needs a happy room. And you don’t have to be a great painter to create something for yourself or your family like this special room. Our self-adhesive wall stencils and wall decals make it easy to get your happy on! Let us know if we can help you create the room of your dreams.
