My brick wall project:
 

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So, I have had my website for a few years now and have never done one blog... Mostly because I am always so busy, but also simply because I had never done so before... That meant I had to figure it out first and who has time for that!?! I always wanted to though because I enjoy looking at other photographers blogs to see how they do things and be inspired. So without further au due, I give you my very first blog!
 

 I had this vision in my head of an 'antique' sort of school room theme I wanted to try... I wanted to have an old brick wall with a wooden floor and an old antique school desk with educational props and antiques. After searching the internet I purchased my floor online and a beautiful desk via craigslist, but nothing fit my vision for the brick wall... Plus, I wanted my wall to have depth which I was worried a flat muslin or paper backdrop would lack... More research lead me to some internet gurus who had made some very realistic faux brick walls out of Styrofoam. Hmm, Styrofoam is very light and cheap... So, after convincing my husband that my plan would work and that it was gonna be worth it (or he just knows me well enough to know he might as well roll with it...) we set to work.
 

We purchased two sets of 4x8 Styrofoam sheets about 2 inches thick. First I marked the boards every 3 1/2 inches for the horizontal lines. Then I marked the long side every 4 inches for the vertical lines.
 

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We used a chalk line to put the grid on the boards and set to carving out the lines, skipping every other  4 inch mark in each row to create the brick pattern. Well, my husband carved while I followed him around with the vacuum... I know, many of you are thinking I could have avoided this if only I had taken the work outside... I can only say you must not live in Florida because despite the calendar saying its Fall, it is still miserable out there and I decided a little (ok a lot) of vacuuming was well worth staying in my living room... I also added some distress marks here and there with a wire brush to make the end result look old and worn.
 

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Next, I painted the entire board a light grey color with flat paint. I ended up using 2 quarts, but as this acted as my primer for the paint to follow it was well worth it.
 

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From here I started with my main color, a dark red. Because I had primed with the grey I was able to use very little paint when creating the colored bricks. I used a dish sponge to pat on the color, letting the sponge dry out some as I went so that some bricks would be darker than others.
 

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Now I needed to add other colors. I added a berry color to some, some burnt orange others, some purple and greys here and there,  and a little brown.
 

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To finish it off I brushed each brick with a VERY dry bush with a flat black paint. The hubby used two more foam panels to secure the wall together using double sided Velcro.(I plan to do something with the other side later! ;-)
 

Well, today I got to try it out with a great bunch of kids during the annual HEAT portrait days at the Homeschool Resource center! I LOVE how the pictures turned out and wish I could share one from each session, but as I stated above time is an issue. Ultimately, I chose the ones that best showed the theme and did not need much editing. Let me know what you think!
 

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