Passing On

This is a painting I did when my dad found out he was diagnosed with cancer. This hung in his house until the day I came to clean his house out after he passed. I actually had this in the back of my car for 2 months before deciding to bring it in my house. When Jacob saw it sitting in the corner he immediately wanted to put it in his room. I think my dad would be pleased to know his picture was hanging in his grandson's room.

Possibilities

I love the 3rd Saturday of every month! I realize that sounds like a female biological clock statement but NO, that's not what I'm referring to. The 3rd Saturday is Creative Fun Day at Jil's!!! This is when we get together and craft/brainstorm/create and any other creative endeavor that rears its head. Today there were several people there and I had a great time.

We made art bombs with acrylic paint and a few simple items that are normally combined during elementary science fair projects. This was way COOLER!! There were so many projects going on today. Book making, book mark making, word birds and upcycling t-shirts. It was definitely a day filled with possibilities.

 I worked on making prayer flags and I really enjoyed putting this together. There is something soothing about blessing something as you make it. I have a few more items I want to add before I decide what I should do with it.

And like my house, we had a chaperone during Creative Fun Day.

Paint Party

Last night my mom and mother-in-law came over and we had a paint party. My mom wanted some painted rocks and Elaine wanted to paint some pots for her sisters she will be visiting in a few days. I wasn't working on anything specific, I was the helper for the evening.

My mom really liked the penguin I painted a few weeks ago so this was first on her list. I helped with some of the detail items but she painted 90% of the rock. Yay! The other rock painting was to be a sweet bovine in a resting position. It was a bit more difficult and didn't turn out as well as the penguin BUT not bad for the first attempt.

MOO!!!

I think the pots turned out fairly well. Kind of like something that belongs in a cute boutique. I added the orange dots to the swirls because I thought it added a little depth to the pot.

It was a great night for togetherness and crafting! Happy crafting to you!

exPeriment

It never fails, anytime I try to do something remotely creative I seemed to always have a supervisor. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't stare at me with those accusing eyes. Oh well, gotta love him.

In one of my other blogs I have a post with several random, unfinished projects. Unfortunately, this isn't uncommon for me, but every once in a while I find an idea and can give these misfit crafts a fighting chance.  The marbling effect on the canvas was made using shaving cream and watercolor paints. It was super easy and Andrew loved helping with this. I sewed a large button onto one of the hearts and decided to use a zig zag stitch to attach the fabric. I'm not a great seamstress and I made this in a bit of a hurry so don't judge the slightly poor quality. :). Aside from having numerous unfinished projects, another fault of mine is not being able to leave well enough alone...

....so I took my bleach pen and printed some letters. This may have ruined an already sketchy project but I don't mind. I'm still in the experimental phase.

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ComPlete

I guess this continues the theme of paper, provisions or paint. Earlier in the month I had some patients cover wooden balls with colored tissue paper. This was a quick and easy activity which seemed to be enjoyed by the participants. Well, I usually can't seem to get anything accomplished in a timely manner and this wasn't really an exception. Today I decided to give the decoupage baubles a real purpose and they are now a cute bracelet. I personally don't wear bracelets but this will make a great item for the Ripples/Kindness Co-op initiative. More on that soon!

Pastry Time

There's a bakery in Weaverville, NC, the  Well Bread Bakery, and they have the best eclairs. The best part is they are the diameter of a small plate. As I was perusing one of my cookbooks I found a recipe for chocolate eclairs. The first statement under the recipe read something like this; eclairs are no more work than  iced cupcakes. Sounds easy enough doesn't it? The first step is to make the pastry dough, after it was allowed to set for an hour you pipe the dough onto a cookie sheet and bake.

Twenty minutes later out came these golden pastries. So far it's going well and been rather easy, onto making the custard filling. That was a bit tedious and it was taking a long time to cool so I placed it in the fridge and off to bed I went.

When I arrived home from work I assembled the eclairs and melted the chocolate for the glaze. Then we ate them!!! The pastry was tasty and the custard filling was really good. Obviously the size of my eclairs paled in comparison to the bakery's and they also lacked a little in the visually stimulating department. I will have to say this is one of those things where going to get them is better than knowing you can make them.

UnPredictable

A few weeks ago I traveled (a long way) to a book fair. I purchased several books with 1/2 of them relating to crafts and art. I've had a few days to look at the colorful pictures and painting techniques in some of my treasures and I decided to try one of the simple procedures and I'm rather fond of the way it looks.

The process for making fun string paintings is super easy and a lot of fun. This was made using acrylic paints I purchased from Michael's. I squirted small paint dots/blogs in different colors in a horizontal row. Once I had a line of paints almost the length of the paper. Hold the sting in both hand and pull until there is a small amount of tension. Gently roll the string through the paints until it's covered with paints. Then place the string on another piece of paper. Here is where the fun begins, you can let the string randomly fall or purposely design your painting. I chose to let it go wherever it wanted.

You could take this technique in so many directions. Place another piece of paper over your initial painting and you could have mirror images. I thought it would be kinda cool to take the string painting and see if anything visually jumped  out. For instance, in the first picture I see someone in the right hand lower corner dancing. Now I can paint in additional items and create an entire scene for the dancer.