Sunday, July 26, 2015

So, Sunday last week...

I have a friend who inherited her moms old wooden ironing board.   She collects snowmen, so she asked if I could paint a one on it.  Sure! She said she trusted me, but she gave me this:

Which is cute but is from someone elses blog or pinterest or somewhere, so of course, I didn't want to copy.  I decided to wing it and did this, instead.  I hope she likes it.

In the pic above you can see the magazine rack that another friend wants me to do 'something' with.  Thinking.....thinking... something will come to me.  Blog fodder for another day.













I am still working on the 'chest of labels'.  There are corners turning up that need to be re-glued, and trimming and a little filling in.  Working on it a little at a time.

A friend who is opening a new restaurant asked if I could work up a new logo for the diner, and I was able to do about a dozen; Half of them are what she asked for, half of them are what I think will print better for t-shirts, menus and other uses.  I will give it a couple days, look at them again and give her a few of the best ones. 

I also have been doing a couple design things for the All School Reunion next week.  What I did is a part of a bigger picture, so hopefully next week, I can snap a pic of it and show it next week.

I am still working on the trash can, but need time to just play with the chop saw.  Apparently using it in my hubby's garage is about as welcome as him coming in with muddy feet on my clean floors.  Who knew?  So, will wait until I have time to drag it out to the driveway and work on it.

Stay tuned!

Saturday July 18, 2015

So wine bottles on Friday.  Birch trees on Saturday.  Who knows what happens on Sunday!

While the Hubs is away, I have to play.  This time someone elses Hubby was away too!  Recipe for Trouble? (notice the Capital T?)  I think NOT! (Not like that has ever happened before...)(insert rolling eyes emoticon here)

Our cousin Marge, wants to surprise her hubby with a family tree, of sorts, on the den wall of their beautiful condo.  She called me asking if I could paint a tree on the wall for the hanging of all the family photos. SURE!

The wall she was looking to do is red. I suggested a white birch, as a black or brown tree would be too dark.  The trim in the room was white and she has black wrought iron accents in the room. She hadn't considered a birch tree before and loved the idea.  So thats exactly what we did. 

I didn't want to post before he saw it, (why? I don't know,  I am pretty sure he doesn't read my blog.  Or if he even knows I HAVE a blog, because I am pretty sure a 70ish year old guy, hip as he is, would fall asleep reading this blog, unless of course, it has something about Basketball or Golf on it. Sorry, Larry, you won't find that here. lol.)

Anyway, she texted me after it was done to say again how much she liked it.  When Larry got home, she texted and said he doesn't even want pics hung on it!  (She is going to fight that battle!)  But so glad they both are so happy with it.

 We considered putting leaves on it, but Marge liked the winter tree look, (and really, green leaves I think would have looked Christmas-y, and yellow ones would have added another color to the room), and since she is covering it with pictures anyway, she didn't feel it needed it.

 I posted the one below because neither of these pics show the wall color exactly.  It is nowhere near the purple-y color (notice all the bluish colors overall?) above,  nor the orangy color below (the tree is better recorded on the blue one though).   But the camera does its own thing sometimes.  The wall is actually a pretty, deep red.   Red is the hardest color for a camera, film or printing ink to record and reproduce.

So I told her she will have to invite me over when she gets the photos hung, (and trust me, she will get that done! Sorry Larry), and I will see if she would mind if I posted it here. 

Sundays coming!  Stay tuned!

Saturday July 18,2015

While Hubs is away... I have to play...

So what do you do with 100 to 125 empty wine bottles?  And an old footlocker?  Maybe I should start at the beginning of my story.

A lady at work who LOVES a good auction, bought 17 footlockers, (not old or expensive, but storage type kind that you might send your kid to college with).  When she was telling me about them, she called them chests.  She really didn't know what to do with all of them but when I told her that I might be interested in buying one from her, she brought one into work to give to me.

Fast forward a couple years, and this footlocker is still in our garage.  Long ago, I had taped off all the brass corners,and the lock on the front and primed it in white, because no matter WHAT I did with it, it would need white basecoat. 

Back up a year or so.  I had an idea to ask all my facebook friends to send me their wine labels for an art piece that was floating around in my head.  Voila!

I used a lot of them but not all of them.  Between my friend Christy and I, (lol, for not being BIG winers, we had kept bottles for YEARS, and she has hosted several parties, including those paint and wine parties, - she had LOTS!) we had a bunch of labels. Well, we spent five hours last night peeling labels off of bottles and decoupaging them onto said footlocker.  We quit after midnight, but we are still not done. 

We found that if you put the bottles in the oven at 250 for about 15 minutes, and using an oven mitt and a thin blade knife, it warms the glue and you can peel most, but not all, labels off, which we stuck to wax paper until we were ready for them.  Fact:  they must use different glue for back labels than front labels.  Those are harder to get off.  Just don't put bottles in water until cooled! 

Once we got a head start, Christy started gluing.  I had the leftovers from my art piece, and some brand new ones that I got at the Wine tasting event we went to for the last couple years.

There is still a lot of white showing, and we have about 20 more bottles to get the labels off of yet.  At this point, there are still corners curling up that need extra glue and some trimming that needs to be done, but what a cool storage place for more wine, possibly in front of the couch as a coffee table.  (Or should I say WINE table?)  And you can lock it up when the babysitter comes over! 

So now we have, oh, say, maybe a hundred clean nekkid wine bottles.  What should we do with those?  We are trying to devise a way to construct a chair for the Chair-ity Auction with them.  We have our thinkin caps on, and will probably have to ponder over a glass of Riesling. 

Stay tuned!

Monday July 13th, 2015

I have a lot of scraps after working on those wood samples.  My hubby was going to throw them away, so I had to show him what you could do with all those 'throw aways'.  This is about 3x5. and I have to find a way to finish off the edges, but I kinda like it!

 A couple other scrappy things... both less than 6x6 inches.

But this is a waste basket for my kitchen that I bought at the farmers market, in naked wood.  I am experimenting with some of the wood samples that I have... I definitely have plenty!  However, this thing is pretty heavy on its own.  Hubs says its going to be tornado proof, so if we have a tornado, we are both going to hold on to the wastebasket.   I am going to stain it first and then lay in some of this wood. Maybe in this design, maybe something else.  Or all 4 sides different.

Stay tuned!

Tuesday, the last day of June. :(

I can't believe its the last day of June already!  Slow down Summer! I guess its because your busier in the summer that it seems like it goes by so fast, and definitely faster than January!  We have been attending grad parties, and art festivals, (missed a couple because we couldn't fit it all in!) and doing the maintenance on the house that you can't do in winter, along with all the working, laundry, etc.

We finished the deck rail painting that didn't get done last year.  The front of the garage is now painted.  Its been ugly for a while.  Next, the side porch and the doors!  It feels like we have had three solid weeks of rain here, so not conducive to painting outdoors. 

Since last I wrote:

 This is as far as I have gotten with this... its glued at this point and not sure whether to lay another color in around it or not yet.  I haven't been thrilled with the choices yet, so maybe it will just stay like this.  I like the windmill look.

 Always on the lookout for natures beauty.  These bull thistles are beautiful but deadly.  Have you seen the THORNS these produce? 

Found some tile samples at the Habitat Restore, that I have been playing with to add another texture to these.  Love going to the Restore!  Did you know that donating things to the Restore helps with refurbishing Habitat homes for people needing homes?  And buying from there, raises money needed to do the same?  Win, win!

Fresh strawberry time here and this one was a bonus! and the pan of Strawberry muffins below were DEEE-LISH!  Double bonus!

 Love this mix of impatiens all over the yard this year.  They make me happy!  Hope it brightens your day too!  Stay  tuned!

Monday June 22, 2015

It was a wonderful Fathers Day but some of the fun is yet to happen.  The boys got The Hubs tickets to the baseball game so when our youngest gets home next week, Fathers Day will be somewhat prolonged. Hope anyone reading this also had a great day.

Well, letsee, since last I wrote:
My oar for the Arts Festival was doing fairly well in the auction (last I saw at about 4pm), the festival went until 6, so hopefully raised some money for the association.

I have been fascinated by barn quilts lately, and thought I would try my hand at some.  I am not overjoyed at my attempts, but maybe they will look better up on the barn. They both are 24x24.  We'll see...

The fun continues with all these sample wood pieces.  This is all recycled ~ the backing, the frame and design.

Layed these out but they aren't glued yet.

I have two paintings running around in my head, fermenting.... no wine before its time, ya know,
but the garage and dining room table are filled with wood pieces, so painting may have to wait til later.

Stay tuned!

Sunday June 14th, Flag Day, 2015

Happy Flag day!   My flag is flying on the front porch, is yours?

A lot has gone on since last I wrote:  

I think I told you about the piece that was chosen for our County Library's Summer art exhibition, so since I last wrote I attended an Artist Reception there.

I was trying to replicate the peonies in the garden, but decided the Lords artwork was much better. 

It always is.

 This is a little 3x3 canvas that made me happy.

 I went to a Detroit Tiger baseball game with some cousins and had a great time.  Being in the city, especially at night, gives me new sights to ruminate about... you just don't see things like the shot below where I live... that might be for future artistic ventures.

 This is an oar for the local Lake Art Festival. It should be auctioned off next week.

 This sketch was from my very first Sit and Sketch.  Our local art club arranged a night, (it turned out to be beautiful weather!) where we just parked our chairs and sketched for a couple hours and then did kind of a show and tell over dinner and drinks.  FUN!  Hope we have more of those!  I have never done anything like this before, and I think it might have given me the courage to do a Plein Aire event coming up.

 I helped a friend do a 12 foot tree in her living room.  She was thrilled with it! This isn't finished by the way, just as far up as I helped.  She had to get a taller ladder to finish the top, the next day.


The next few pics are from some recycled objects that would have ended up in the dumpster if I didn't snag them first.  These are outdated countertop and cabinetry samples, along with some cabinet doors that were irregular.  Too pretty to fill a landfill, dontcha think?  So although a chop saw scares the begeesus out of me, I faced my fears:

^ Marble countertop samples that I am going to make a table out of, eventually.  ^

These are wood color samples cut down to make designs on old cabinet doors:

So there you have it.  Its what I have been up to lately.  I suppose I better catch up on the drudgery items on my list, (read: laundry, bills, housework) - enough playing around!

Stay tuned!