Whimsical home decor

Because my boys are out for the summer I don't have as much time to paint but here are two of my most recent items:

Before

After

I don't have a before picture of this one, it was a 1970's beige color.  It is not recommended for food but you could use it for jewelry or sewing notions, etc

Thanks for looking!!

 

Save the Date!

October 7-8th, 2017... I've been accepted into the Newport News Fall Festival of Folklife so please come see me!!  Here is a temporary link NN Fall Festival  I will update this link as they update their website.  I don't have my booth number yet but you all will be the first to know where to find me.

I will still be selling my fabric bowls but will have new items as well.  A new line I will be introducing is my whimsical hand-painted home decor.  Here is a sneak peek of my pink and black end table:

Before

After

A close-up of the base:

I am also working on a child's bench that I will have in the show so stay tuned I'll be posting pictures soon.

Small craft bazaar

Photos from the Winter Bazaar I was in last weekend:

I prefer making snowmen over santas

Debut of some of my altered paintbrushes

I love painting these doll chairs

My very whimsical one-of-a-kind painted doll chair

I'm now branching out and painting on other found objects as well

Another one of my painted chairs

More fabric baskets

A few Christmas coiled fabric baskets

One of my tables

Another table and I still couldn't get all of my stuff displayed

There wasn't a lot of room in the gymnasium at the school

Flashback

About a year ago I was asked to paint something for a silent auction for my parent's church.  I have a certain style that some may like and some may not but I love bright colors and whimsical designs so this is what I did:

Before (child's little hutch):

After (with my creative touch):

The back was not neglected either:

With the cabinet doors open:

Stay tuned to see my latest painted creations!

Jewels for the Wall

For Christmas I received a subscription to Quilting Arts Magazine.  I love this magazine because it combines quilting with other mediums (right up my alley!).  I started making art quilts about 1-2 years ago, embellishing with found objects and beads.  This magazine shows me how to create my own fabrics with dyes, stamps and silk screening.  An article in the December2014/January2015 issue entitled Jewels for the Wall by Natalya Aikens inspired my next creations.  She made mini art quilts, framed them and then painted the frames to match the colors in the quilts.  Mine, of course, looks nothing like hers but that's the beauty of art!  Every artist has their own talents and interpretations of their world.

This was my very first one:
I only used fabric, beads and paint.

And because I love owls this was my second one:
For this creation I used fabric (the owl), upholstery (the gray background and the blue branch) and puffy paint (little designs coming off the branches).  There are also beads sewn on the eyes.

My third one is my absolute favorite because it's not as tight or structured as the last two.  I call it Steampunk and Butterflies.
(again I used fabric, upholstery, beads, clock parts and other hardware)

(top part):

(bottom part):

This is the start of two new creations.  I will be embellishing with seashells, sea grass and of course more beadwork.  The horizontal frame will be the seashore and the vertical frame will have lighthouse fabric in it.

These and many more creations will be for sale in my booth at the Newport News Fall Festival of Folk Life first weekend in October, please come out and see me!

Wreck This Journal

I have seen this book in stores but instead of buying it I went home and put it on my Amazon Wish List and forgot about it.  Well this past Christmas my mom got it for me and it has been so much fun "wrecking" it!!  It is definitely for anyone that wants to be creative but doesn't know where to start.

Here is an example of what one of the pages looks like (not done yet):

So you kind of get the idea right?  Keri Smith wants you to experiment, be creative, use any tools necessary to create something unique and one of a kind.  The title page was boring until my pink and orange markers attacked it:

A few years ago I challenged myself to learn at least the first 25 digits in the number Pi. (You know 3.14159)  So when I read the page that asked me to "add your own page numbers" the one word that jumped out at me was numbers.  I immediately wanted to write as many digits of Pi that I could fit on the page:

This was one of the first pages I did "Draw fat lines then thin":

I wonder why I haven't done this page yet? I love to sew, maybe I'll do something with this tonight:

Another example of one of my finished pages:

This page says "Tear out. Crumple."  I wanted to experiment with wet watercolors, to "crumple" it up before the watercolors dried to see if I could get a cracked effect.  It didn't turn out quite how I expected but I taped the page back in to show the shrinkage of the page:

And I saved my favorite page for last.  It's called a "Stain log".  I've seen this done with lipsticks but I have a slight obsession with nail polish (and these aren't even all of my colors!) so I decided to log some of my colors:

My absolute favorite, that I wear on my toenails all the time, is the Petites Sapphire, third row first one.

I have a board on Pinterest called Wreck This Journal where you can see other peoples creativity (and I've added my pictures as well).

More Art Dolls!

Here is a glimpse of some of my new (and not so new) art dolls that I've been working on this summer:

And now a look at a few "dolls" from my Halloween collection (my favorite holiday)

All of these will be for sale plus many more (including my Christmas collection) at the Newport News Folk Festival the first weekend in October!

Whimsical Painting

Last year I painted two chairs for a silent auction that was held at Warwick Memorial United Methodist church.

This year I will be painting a little child's hutch (the same style) for this year's silent auction. 

After I took this photo (and took all the hinges off) I base coated it.  The silent auction isn't until  December so stay tuned for photo updates!

Creating more art dolls for the NN Fall Festival

I think about Halloween year round which is good because the Newport News Fall Festival is the first weekend in October and there will be lots of Halloween themed booths (by the way I received my official acceptance letter a few days ago).  So my latest creation will fit in with my Halloween themed art dolls.  Let me first show you the "before" photo:

 

From the photo you can't tell that the moon (and on the other side the sun) are both raised.  So I first needed to sand them down a bit.

After I sanded it it was still raised a bit so I covered it in a texture medium then painted it orange

I then painted a spider web on it, drilled four holes then reattached it with fun yarn.  Next was to create the rug for the cat.  For the rug I used the same technique as my fabric bowls then I added a decorative trim around the perimeter.

 

 

The fabric I used is black with candy corn on it but because the sun is shining on it it makes it look grayish.

 

And another "before" and "almost after" photo of one of my other art dolls:

 





 

(More on her later)