Living with Art: Ding Dong Decorate

After 18 months of Living with Art projects, I have displayed or created art in a lot of unexpected places: My pantry doors, my laundry room light switch, even my bathroom trash can. By this point, my husband and I both eyeball everything that doesn’t qualify as art with some degree of suspicion, and that brings me to our doorbell cover, which is to say the casing that covers the bells or the electronic chimes or the small family of singing mice chained to a tiny radiator – whatever you have in place to alert you to the presence of outlanders.

Our doorbell casing is radiator-free, because we are virtuous that way.

It’s still a very bare, visually unappealing thing, though, even if it isn’t cruel to singing rodents.

For this week’s project, I removed the unsightly doorbell casing, sanded it, applied several coats of gesso (as is my wont), and started in with a rust-colored base, which I eventually set off with magenta and blue.

Since I more or less freak out whenever the doorbell rings unexpectedly, I decided to include some text, and just for grins, I used these self-adhesive stencils I found on clearance at the grocery store on an emergency 2am yarn run.

iknmlopqr is pretty much what I say every time I have to make an emergency 2am yarn run, but also when I’m home alone and a sales person rings the bell

Here is my finished casing, which may or may not reflect my feelings about being suddenly interrupted by a door-to-door solicitor.