I just made a whole bunch of stuff for a very nice lady who is going to create a beautiful Scented Garden bathroom with all the Scented Garden items she ordered. I made a vessel sink, toilet, towel bars, a tile mural, shower shelves, toilet paper holder and soap holder. They are just some of the decorated and painted bathroom fixtures we sell on the website, decoratedbathroom.com. All of these items will be featured in this post. Hopefully she will send me photos of her bathroom when she gets it done and that will make for an easy future blog post. I can just copy, add, and edit this one. Writing these blog posts is a lot of work. They are supposed to have about 1500 words in them to get indexed properly on google. Here goes. The Scented Garden design is one of the most popular ones that I do. It’s very versatile. It’s got a selection of flowers in every color of the rainbow. Which are lots of beautiful flowers including roses, tulips, poppies, daisies, morning glory, violets, chrysanthemums, iris and cornflowers. I usually add a hummingbird or two, a butterfly and a ladybug too. This design can be painted on any kind of sink, tiles, toilets and just about everything in between, and after 12 years in this business, I’ve put it on everything. The one thing I would like to do it on is a lamp, as well as a bunch of our other designs. The problem is, finding a good lamp to decorate. Not as easy as you might think. I really need to get them made, in ceramic. And, as I am writing this, always trying to get the word count up, I might ask the man who made the show shelves featured below in this post if he could do it. I want a simple shape, with a few holes for the wiring. Back to business…

36″ Square Painted Tile Mural

First up is the mural. It’s 36 x 36″ and is going to be installed beside the bathtub. I’ve made a bunch of murals in this design, in several different sizes. You can check out a gorgeous pair of them I did for a shower stall in a previous post, Scented Garden Flower Shower Mural. I shipped it to the United Kingdom, and I never saw a photo of it actually installed, but I bet it turned out pretty well. When I send the customer the mural, very well packed-up of course! Because the design runs over the edge of the tiles, it would be a total pain if one broke, so I make sure I pack them up triple-protected. I do make a scan or photocopy of each tile just in case, so it can be reproduced accurately. Doing murals are fun for me, a nice change from working in 3-D. This one features all the same flowers, tulips, mums, roses, poppies, you name it. I didn’t put any ladybugs on it, sometimes they look weird. I have to tuck them close to the flowers. They are as pretty as flowers are.

Scented Garden & Hummingbird Painted Vessel Sink

The customer on this project also inspired me to create this vessel sink. I’ve been meaning to do a nice vessel in this design for a long time. The thing I like the best about it is the emblem around the drain. I’ve been doing them on a few sinks in recent history and people do like them, and I do too! They seem to tie the flowers painted on a porcelain vessel sink together. Available on the website here, Scented Garden Painted Vessel Sink.

Front View Scented Garden Flower Vessel Sink

The sink is decorated all the way around, this is the front view. It’s got a hummingbird and a few butterflies and features pink, purple, green, yellow, red, ok you could probably name every one, flowers. I have been having some serious trouble with these sinks lately. I just got a freight shipment of eight of them, and so far 5 were cracked. That followed a regular shipment of four, which were all broken. The container must have been dropped or something. I used to get a few of them cracked, probably about half. I check everything over extremely carefully before I decorate them to make sure there are no cracks. I know from personal experience, too many times I got a design on there and then, when I opened the kiln, it was messed up. You can put a flower over a crack. A crack is a crack is a crack. I am sure many people installed cracked sinks and don’t know it until it’s too late. It takes a while for dirt to get into the crack and then it shows. I like to take a sharpie and scribble lines all over the sink, then I take rubbing alcohol and spray it on there, you end up with a colored liquid, and it goes right into the cracks and permanently stains them the color of the marker. Then I usually give them a pre-fire, one cycle in the kiln, to make sure no cracks. If there is an internal crack, not visible to the human eye, 1400 degrees has a way of making it apparent.

Scented Garden & Hummingbirds Painted Kohler Toilet

This is not the actual toilet I made for the customer. I made something almost the same, I included a few different flowers to coordinate better with the sink. Available on the website here, Scented Garden Painted Kohler Toilet.

Porcelain Towel Bars Painted with Flowers, Hummingbirds & Butterflies

Not the actual towel bars either, but I made something very similar. They are ceramic towel bars painted with the same flowers to match the design. Check out our complete selection of accessories on the website here, and check this page, Decorated Accessory Gallery to see them on the actual soap dispensers, etc.

Tile-in Shower Shelves Painted with Flowers & Hummingbirds

These are the shower shelves. They really are of the finest quality, and worthy of all the money the customer spent having me decorate them. I just got an email from her this morning, I sent a photo of them to her, she said:

Thank you for sending the pictures! Everything looks absolutely beautiful. I can’t wait to see them in person! I will definitely send you lots of pictures of the bathroom when it is finished! Thank you again for your amazing talent and all of your hard work!

That is one of the nicest things about this business, customers usually love what I make for them and often tell me. That’s what I appreciate the most. I also have another occupation besides doing the sinks, like so many people these days I need two jobs to make a living. The other job is graphic design, you can check out that website here, LynneSands.com. It’s so much easier than the sinks. If you see a mistake, you can fix it. With the sinks, I have to check, and re-check, and re=check again to make sure there is nothing wrong with the sink I start out with, and then the design I put on it. Once the ware has been fired in the kiln, it’s on there for the life of the fixture. You can’t get it off. Sometimes, if there is a little bubble or ‘bad-bit’ I can touch it up with some china paint. That is also amazing, just a touch of paint and the ‘bad-bit’ is gone. Thankfully!!!!!! I learned early on in this business that there is a ‘kiln-god’. I always pray on the items before I close the lid and hope for a good outcome. When I first started out I would feel so bad when I opened the kiln and something was wrong, it would bother me all day. Now, after 12 years, I just take it all in stride and hope I can rescue it with another firing. Most of the time I can but believe me when i say I’ve got a lot of reject sinks in the garage. Another problem is black marks in the glaze, so many sinks have them, including Kohler and other big brands, They are from stray foreign minerals in the glaze, or dirt that gets on them in the production process. Normally I check all of my sinks and I use them appropriately, so that I can stick a flower over the mark. They don’t affect the wear in any way, especially once they have another coating of glaze over them from the decal, which is finely ground-up glass pigments.

Toilet Paper Holder & Tile-in Soap Holder Painted with Flowers

That should do it. I am really looking forward to seeing some photos of the final product, a bathroom full of flowers. These are just some of the decorated and painted bathroom fixtures we sell on the website, decoratedbathroom.com. Please check it out and thanks for reading. – Lynne