Chintz Creative · Bailey Powers
Personalized watercolor paintings, lettered signs and painted party banners, each one designed around the person, the year and the story you send.
What Bailey makes
Chintz Creative is a small studio run by Bailey Powers. Every piece is painted or lettered by hand to order: custom watercolor paintings, hand lettering, and hand painted birthday banners.
01
Original watercolor pieces painted to order. Send the names, dates, places and small details that matter and they are gathered into one framed keepsake.
02
Names, quotes, verses and dates lettered by hand in brush script and classic serif styles, on paper, signs and paintings.
03
Custom birthday banners painted with the name, the age and the party colors. Made to hang at the celebration and keep afterwards.
Recent commission
For a 40th birthday, one sheet holds the things that make up a person: a monogram crest in a laurel wreath, the birth year, a hometown lettered in copper, a college pennant and mascot, faith, and the small symbols only family would recognize.
Every custom watercolor starts this way, from a list of details you send.
New watercolors, lettering and banners are added as they are finished. Current work is on Instagram.
How a commission works
The occasion, who it is for, what to include, the size, your budget and deadline.
Bailey replies with a price, timing and how the piece will come together.
Watercolor, lettering and banners are all painted by hand, one at a time.
Your piece is finished in time for the day, ready to frame, hang or wrap.
Questions
Fill out the commission intake form at chintzcreative.com/commission, or send a DM on Instagram to @powerspartyofsix. Include the occasion, who it is for, the details to paint, the size and your deadline. Bailey replies with a quote and timing before any painting starts.
Anything that tells the person's story: names, initials or a monogram crest, a birth year, a hometown, a school or team, faith symbols, pets, favorite places and objects. Each piece is designed around the details you send.
Yes. Chintz Creative paints custom birthday banners by hand with the name, age and party colors, for first birthdays through milestone 30th, 40th and 50th birthdays.
Yes. Hand lettering is available for wedding welcome signs, menus, seating charts, place cards, framed quotes, verses and gift pieces.
Custom watercolors start at $50 for a letter size (8.5 × 11 in) piece with five items, such as a year, a hometown, a mascot or a favorite flower. Each extra item is $5, up to two more. Larger pieces are $100 for 11 × 14, $150 for 16 × 20 and $200 for 18 × 24. Framing in wood, gold or black with a white mat is $25 to $75 depending on size. The keepsake board shows an estimate as you lay out your piece, and Bailey confirms the price before anything is charged.
Chintz was originally hand painted cotton from India's Coromandel Coast, so prized that France banned it in 1686 and England in 1720. The name reclaims that older meaning: bright, many colored and made by hand.
On chintz
Chintzy now means cheap, stingy, a little tatty. It did not start there. The history of the word is the reason this studio carries it.
1600s · the word
The name comes from the Hindi chīṁṭ, spotted or variegated, by way of the Sanskrit chitra, bright and many coloured. English borrowed the plural, chints, mistook it for a singular, and by the late eighteenth century was spelling it chintz.
1600 to 1800 · the craft
On the Coromandel Coast the cloth was drawn by hand with a kalam pen, painted with mordants and wax resists, then dyed in a fixed order and washed between every bath. Madder, indigo and chay root gave colours that would not fade.
1686 and 1720 · banned
European mills could not match it, so their governments outlawed it. France barred chintz imports in 1686. In 1720 Parliament forbade its use in apparel or "in or about any Bed, Chair, Cushion or other Household furniture."
Now · the challenge
The work here takes the word at its origin: bright, many coloured, drawn by hand, made slowly and meant to last. Chintz Creative is a small argument that the name is worth reclaiming, one painting at a time.
Commission a piece
The intake form takes about five minutes. It asks for everything Bailey needs to quote your piece, so there is no back and forth before she can start.