A Door, An Artist, Poppies & More

A “Poppy Door” Collaboration

After seeing a picture of a door on Pinterest one morning (see below), I felt prompted to contact a new friend and artist, Dana Jensen, and I showed her the door and simply said, “I can imagine you doing something like this”. Dana had been following my Facebook page for sometime, and I knew her family really well, but we had only met on the odd occasion, so it was a bit random to be sending her a message about a door. But she responded that she LOVED it, and asked about other things related to my market stalls, etc.

I’m not sure where the original image came from, but I found it on this web page HERE.

Time lapse of poppy door being painted:

Interestingly, Dana and her family were studying in the USA, and had just returned for the U.S. Summer holidays before heading back again in September. So anyway, that very morning in May, after getting my message about the door, she happened to go to a garage sale not far from where they were staying here in Brisbane, and came across a big solid vintage door! She took a picture of it, asked the couple how much they wanted for it, and showed me the picture the next day. I wondered if it would still be available by the Monday, and so I sent my husband around in his van to knock on the “door people’s” home.

Sure enough it was still there, he picked it up and now I had this HUGE door sitting in my workshop, ready for some creative inspiration.
Here it is after I had stripped and sanded back as much as I could – using a mask and protective gear of course as this very old paint most likely contained lead. I painted with a coat of some left over chalk paint I had laying around, then a couple of coats of Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint in Ironstone or Linen (I can’t remember which white I used now!)

And so we had a blank canvas ready for some art!

What to Paint?

Now to decide on WHAT to put on the door! We didn’t want to just copy the flower door we were inspired by, and Dana looked up several types of flowers on the internet to get ideas and gather inspiration, choosing ones that were interesting and had character. “A number of ones I picked, that stood out to me, were poppies – they were delicate and fragile and beautiful,” Dana said.

From the beginning of this project, we have both felt that this was more of an inspirational quest, so to speak, and not just purely coincidental that we happened upon a door the same day that we mentioned it. Being the spiritual kind of beings we are, we searched out the meaning of the poppy and found it had some significance (to us, anyway) in its meaning of death and resurrection, and remembrance, the 100 year anniversary of Anzac Day, Flanders fields – sacrifice, etc.

Dana also found out after she had painted the poppies, that the orange poppy is the state flower of California, and this is exactly where they’ve been living and studying. We can’t help but feel that even the door is a physical symbol of “open doors” and “restoration” that is taking place in her life.

So let the painting begin!

First, there was the sketching out … Dana used her acrylic art paints over my base of Milk Paint. We enjoyed beautiful music and lots of coffee and chatter in between!We used a GoPro action camera to capture the time lapse of Dana’s Painting.

And here are some pics of the finished door: We had the door up for sale for some time, before it was eventually purchased by a beautiful florist who was opening up her own space on the Gold Coast – how significant that this door again, would represent an “open door” and new beginnings for the new recipient.