Do you love color, sparkle, texture and pattern? 

Yes? Then you’re my kind of people. Welcome to my website! 

Whether you live in a huge mansion or a cozy 2 bedroom house, you deserve a home that reflects your personality.  

I’m Julie, and it’s been my mission since 1997 to create custom paint finishes for clients in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve always loved color and design. When I was a child, I won coloring contests. I started sewing all my own clothes in high school. In college, I earned a degree in Textiles and fell in love with silk screening on fabric. After college, I worked in the clothing industry for Jessica McClintock and Patagonia.

I was drawn to books, like Paint Magic, Recipes for Surfaces and Stenciling. I dreamed of taking time off work for a 2-week decorative painting class in a nearby college town. 

I thought about starting my own furniture painting company called “Alterniture” – get it? This was well before Annie Sloan came to our shores with her Chalk Paint. Of course, Annie Sloan’s book, Traditional Paints and Finishes, was an inspiration!

I began dabbling with cutting my own stencils and using them on fabric. (At the holidays my mom still pulls out the Christmas tree skirt I made with stenciled holly leaves. So 90s.) I like to joke that stencils were my “gateway drug” to decorative painting. 

After I quit my job at Patagonia and moved back to the Bay Area, I found an 8 week long decorative painting class. We focused on different techniques like stenciling, gilding, wood graining, marbelizing, and glazing. Our class project was painting a hallway to look like the Alhambra Palace in Spain.

The teacher, George Zaffle, introduced me to the Stencil Artisans League (SALI, now known as IDAL.org). I attended annual SALI conventions with renowned teachers and trade booths with amazing products. I joined the local chapter for monthly meetings to meet my tribe and hone my craft. As my confidence grew I began to teach at the annual conventions and then served as the organization’s president. 

In my career, I’ve worked in some beautiful homes and for some large tech companies: