Whisper Painting

Whisper Painting by Suzy Eaton is a book designed to help you make artistic wall covering.  Think wallpaper made from household papers.

2 out of 10 stars.  For what it is, it’s unique.  It’s not like you can go to the bookstore and find an entire section on creating wall coverings on a big scale.  However, the actual walls are not livable.  You would not be able to clean them, paint them, or fix them once they were covered in this manner.  People who use wall coverings change them frequently.  These particular wall coverings are more permanent and not easily painted over.  Unless you want to live with it for a decade, don’t go there.  They’re also not washable.  My kids live in our house.  I wash the walls.

Here’s a brief summary of what’s included in the book.

Prep List

The first 20 pages cover the materials and art terms you’ll find in this book.

Projects

1. Metallic tissue paper wall (foil on paint on metallic paint)
2. Artist’s textured wall (found objects hammered into a wall and painted over, ugly)
3. Texture magic mantel (stamped paint on metallic glaze)
4. Canvas mural (like decoupaging a photo on a wall, ugly)
5. Music room (musical notes painted on wall, pretty)
6. Asian linen (asian script painted in black on wall)
7. Unfinished mural (partially painted mural, intentionally left undone)
8. Greek architecture (Greek column painted on wall along with architectural plans)
9. Metallic harlequin wall (diamonds painted on wall, ugly)
10. Aged stone wall (bricks painted on wall, pretty)
11. Torn vellum (vellum paper decoupaged on wall)
12. Watercolor decoupage (menus, food labels, recipe cards decoupaged on kitchen wall, beautiful)
13. Versatile textured wall (marbled paint on wall, ugly)
14. Rusty metal wall (metallic paint whitewashed over rust paint)
15. Faux leather travel room (stencil over rust paint with New York skyline)
16. Confetti wall (paper pieces decoupaged onto a wall)

Non-Wall Projects

1. Renaissance antiqued mirror (painted mirror)
2. Oriental sheer (stamped drapes)
3. Artichoke headboard (wood cutout painted headboard, ugly)
4. Ancestral armoire (whitewashed armoire)
5. Chocolate countertops (decoupaged and stamped counter top)
6. Damask table (metallic paint stamped table top)
7. Harlequin floor (diamonds painted on floor)

Of all of the projects, only two were pretty and I would never do these on any of my walls.  By far the majority of the projects were in tones of rust.  If you’re not a fan of the color rust you’ll hate the projects in this book. It’s not like these would easily translate into another color either because the idea is to look like aged clay.

2 out of 10 stars.  Impractical, unlivable, and not very attractive.

Reviewed by Jill.