Throughout the RV, there were these floral-themed decorative moulding accent pieces. Round rosettes were on all the blank panels of the cabinets, and longer roses and vines stretched across the cross-trim of the slide-out arches and blank wide panels on the cabinets.
I didn’t take any pictures of them while they were still on the cabinets because I wasn’t thinking of them as anything worth highlighting. But I did get this picture of my cat investigating the space with a rosette on the cabinet over his head:
I was originally going to leave them alone, even though floral is not really my style and didn’t match any of the other design elements I had in mind. Then, during the painting process, we discovered how difficult it was to strip paint from such detailed pieces with tiny little crevices.
I decided to try and remove them from the slide-out trim to better paint the trim and then reapply them after painting. When they removed easily, I tried to remove the round rosettes from the blank panels and the trim corners and they, too, removed easily. Since I was removing them, why not replace them entirely?
Then I remembered that I had already purchased some filament for a 3D printer for the purpose of printing bits and bobs that I might need. Originally, I was thinking of printing things like those baby-proof cabinet latches that help keep doors closed while the RV is in motion.
I can buy them, but they mostly come in white and I thought if I printed them myself, I could choose a color that matched my decor. Franklin has been 3D printing molds for silicone casting for a while now, so I asked him if he could come up with some kind of … thing to replace the rosettes?
He found this…
As soon as I saw it, I fell in love. Franklin took measurements from the existing rosettes and scaled it to match, and then set it to print in some black filament we had lying around. When it came out, I thought it was the cutest thing ever and I needed to have them in the Transit. But what color?
While designing the blog and website, I ended up putting a gradient filter on top of the background imagery that ranged from a deep navy blue to a dark royal purple. I use more purple than blue in the accents, but both colors are part of the color scheme.
When I started considering having 3D printed elements, I had to decide what color I would want those elements to be? Around the same time, but completely unrelated to any RV stuff, I became aware of a gorgeous 3D filament material that had a color-shifting “chameleon” look ranging, coincidentally, from dark blue to dark purple.
At some point, I put these two things together and made the decision to have any color accents be in the navy and purple range, to match the website, which meant that I could print items in this cool color-shifting filament!
This eye-catching color would probably stand out against all the light white, grey, and marble! So I bought some, not knowing what I would use it for eventually, but knowing that I would use it. Then along came this ornamental moulding problem and voilá! I had a solution! After the test print in black, we printed one in the color-shifting filament and…
Success!!! These little sleeping cats turned out so adorable and they really pop on the grey background. After painting the slide-out trim, I couldn’t wait to put them up and see how they looked! I was not disappointed.
I’ve been told that the cats on the little circular corner trim look like they’re sleeping in a cat bed and I think that’s just adorable.
The color of these cats shifts as you move around the pieces and also as the light changes and moves, such as turning on or off different lights, or the sun moving through the windows. It’s always a different color pattern, but always blue, black, and purple.
I have another slide-out arch in the bedroom that will take a cat on each corner and another blank panel in the bedroom cupboard. I’m not sure if I’ll put any on the bathroom cabinets yet, we’ll have to see how those work out. But I’m attempting to finish each room at a time so I’ll post pictures of the painting and decorating of those two rooms on their own.
Now I just need to come up with some kind of long ornamental moulding decoration to replace the roses and vines.
