An Artist's Exploration

So, as in my last post, I've been doing a lot more drawing, lately. I went a little crazy at Michael's, too, when I got a 25% coupon, and bought a whole bunch of different project materials! Everything I saw, I wanted to try. Good for the creative mind, bad for the wallet, haha. I got some more pearl beads and jewelry-making equipment, some clay for making beads and pendants, and some more canvas. These are all fairly new projects to me - things I never thought of doing before!
I haven't ventured to do the clay yet, since it's been so hot, and I hate running the oven for it. I have made some more pearl necklaces and put them up for sale, though!

white pearl

twist clasp

gray

 

 

pink

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, I continued to sketch, making excuses not to start my painting project, like, "I can't possibly paint without an easel" and, "If only I had some mineral spirits, because the tutorial I watched on oil painting said they are essential to good oil painting." Well, turns out my husband wanted to build me an easel and he found mineral spirits in our house somewhere, left from the previous owners! Okay, God, I get it - no more excuses.
 I searched through my photographs, trying to find a picture I could attempt copying and landed on this one:

As I began painting, I found creating the colors, picking the right brushes, feeling the brushstrokes and developing the right textures to be more fun than I anticipated! When I worked on the trees, I even heard Bob Ross's voice in my head saying "happy little trees," haha.

1/3 finished

2/3 finished!

 Now to wait for the paint to dry, so I can add the boats...its been 2 days so far, but can be 4 days or more, apparently, for oil paints. That's one thing the oil paint tutorial did not teach me! Stay tuned for the final product, which I've decided is going to be a gift, so long as it turns out nicely.
I urge you artists/crafters out there to explore your creativity, too! Don't just stick to one medium or style - maybe you'll discover a talent you never knew you had. :)

Crazy Busy Month Of June

I can't believe I haven't posted since the end of May! I will say June got pretty out of hand, somehow. I thought buying a house and planning a wedding consumed a lot of time. Apparently, the aftermath of both these events, combined with having an event every weekend, makes time go by even more quickly! On top of this, I have decided to go official with trying a craft business. This back pain isn't going anywhere anytime soon and having my own business, whether it is crafting or pet-sitting, will allow for me to break when my back needs me to lay down. Plus, I really enjoy crafting of all types, so it will give me a chance to explore things I haven't attempted before.
One thing I've been working on, especially, is sketching. I used to draw quite a bit in high school and was pretty good at it. Though, like any talent, it gets rusty if you don't use it for a while! After some fails (in my eyes, anyway), I came up with the start of my sealife alphabet.

My first letter: A for Anglerfish

My second letter: C for Cuttlefish

My third letter: O for Orca

Fourth letter: T for Turtle

Latest letter: W for Walrus

 

So, thinking about what I would do with these sketches to make them into something marketable, I considered doing greeting cards. Not really much market for alphabet greeting cards with sealife on it. Not that I've completely discounted it - it would be easy to re-sketch on nicer paper, add some color, and scan the image to use on greeting cards. Then, Michael's had a sale on canvas and paint...I've never painted on canvas before, so of course, I bought a few small canvases and some paint and brushes! I hope I can do with paint and canvas what I can do with a pencil or crayon, but I have been watching tutorials like this one to figure out the long and short of painting. I used to watch Bob Ross, painting his happy little trees, when I was younger and thought how I could never make such realistic-looking paintings. Now that I've done a lot in life that I thought I could and would never do, much less be decently good at it, I have a lot more confidence that I can create some happy little seaweed. Stay tuned for those adventures! In the meantime, you can check out my Etsy shop here and my Facebook page here! Thanks for reading!

 

Getting Settled And Making Keepsakes

Things are finally starting to wind down a little around here, as I got out of vacation mode around the end of last week and started doing more everyday things and wrapping up wedding stuff, like thank you cards and starting on wedding announcements to those who we could not invite and have no facebook to see the plethora of pictures that exploded on it from the minute the ceremony began!

I neglected, last post, to display another gift we gave out on our wedding day. Around the beginning of our wedding week, our DJ talked to us about doing an "anniversary dance," where all the married couples would get out on the floor, dance, and leave it as their anniversary year was called. The tradition for this was the newly-married couple would give the "winners" a gift. He suggested a bottle of champagne or sparkling cider, but noooo, I couldn't just do that. "Congrats on being married for longer than most marriages in the world. Here's a fizzy beverage." It just seemed too minimal. Not that I'm against minimalism - I'm usually all about simple, but when it comes to gifting, I generally like to put a lot of thought and soul into it, even if I have only a little idea of who is getting the gift.
So, I thought about who might get it. I had family coming out from the midwest, but only 2 were couples and one was younger. I had family coming from NJ, but I wasn't sure how long they had been married. Finally, I decided after wandering The Christmas Tree Shop for a bit, to create a New England-themed gift basket. Even if a couple from closer to home got it, I was sure it would be appreciated.
As soon as I walked into Christmas Tree Shop, I spent what seemed like 30-40 minutes in their small nautical/beach section. I snagged a medium-sized "lobster trap" for the basket and drooled over some home decor I decided against, until we put the stuff up we already have! I had already gotten a bottle of sparkling cider, so I grabbed a couple $1 flutes, deciding I would maybe put a design on them later. This is what I came up with:

I looked up nautical love quotes to write on them and found this one and this one to be the best and the cutest. Topped them off with the wedding date on the back and, making them more like trophies, wrote "Most Experienced" on the bottoms.
When I got to the food section, I really went all out with anything "New England-y." Saltwater taffy, cranberry preserves, and lobster bisque. I almost got canned clams, but the can said they were shipped from southeast Asia...at least the lobster bisque was American, but you can't expect to get the best of the best at Christmas Tree Shop, haha. I added some of these fun woven balls from Kohl's, to make sure the glass objects didn't move around too much, and a book I also found at Kohl's called "Old Age Ain't No Place For Sissies," and found that the lobster trap had to be wired shut, even though it had a magnetic clasp, just in case.

While not all married couples got on the floor, we had a good number of participants and the longest married were my husband's aunt and uncle, at 38 years!

When we got home the next day after the wedding, I decided to act on this pinspiration and take some of the petals from my bouquet and put them in glass ornament globes. The pin says to dry them first, but I was afraid they would crack and break trying to get them in the hole at the top. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that not drying them first is worse.

The night before we left on our honeymoon

 

The day we returned from our honeymoon, 5 days later

I am glad we had flowers from our head table still fresh-looking, because I was not impressed with the results. Lots of fun molds and ugly colors.

before drying

after drying

before drying

after drying

before drying

this one is still drying...

On the other hand, the dried petals from the head table flowers turned out nicely!

close-up of a portion of the head table flowers

  

So, I got some decent ornaments from the wedding day flowers - not from my bouquet, but that's okay. I also stripped up a program from the day and put that in a globe!

Then, I put sand we collected from the beaches during our honeymoon (after drying it) into 3 more globes.

Summerside PEI

Tignish PEI

Cavendish PEI

So, we should be all set for ornaments for a while, with the anchors from our wedding, too, haha.

Hopefully, by my next post, I will have experimented with more crafty things to show off. :)

Thanks for reading!

A Married Woman

Never would I have thought I would be calling someone my husband, but here I am and it feels awesome. :) This week is going to be rough, back from our honeymoon in PEI and him on the night shift at work, but it's only a week and we've made it through worse. Like me going to sea for 7 or 8 days at a time, with no communication to shore. Or him working 9-hour shifts, 7 days a week, for almost 2 months. Those were both during the time we lived 2 hours apart, which makes things difficult enough. No, I know this is supposed to be a lot easier - it just seems worse because we are now officially one and we have been spoiled with being able to see each other almost every day for the past year.
I figured I would take this opportunity to gush over all the projects I couldn't show yet before the wedding! I had so much fun making all of them and look forward to doing more, down the road.

The first is the favors. I knew my theme - nautical - and wanted to follow suit with it without going too beach-y. I can't recall what made me want to do corked bottle favors - quite possibly a compilation of pins on Pinterest, haha. I ordered prints of 4 of my favorite engagement photos and glued them on with gluesticks - surprisingly, they stayed on well, but some of the glass bottles were slightly bowed on the sides, so I had to use a stronger, industrial glue (I think called something-goo) on those. Tied a bow around the necks, with a little heart charm, reading "love", filled them with white pearl candy-coated chocolates from Oriental Trading, and they turned out pretty nicely!

 And, of course, Jon and I had to have our own jars of candies, haha. This just took a little silver sharpie on the glass and some more ribbon!

I probably had the most fun with the gifts I made. I had dabbled a lot in jewelry-making when I was young - it was actually most of what I did, while crafting, but it had been such a long time, I wasn't sure how they would turn out. I had already bought the girls earrings, but felt they were doing much more than I initially thought they would. They really went above and beyond - my hairstylers and our ceremony musician - that I wanted to add something to their gifts! I found these cute shell flowers at Michael's when I picked up the beads, toggle, and chain, and chose them to complete the necklaces. It was perfect, because each flower was a slightly different color - gray, white, and pink, just like the earrings I had gotten for them!

I also had so much fun making my own signature wire hanger that I decided to make one for each of my girls - my maid of honor, bridesmaid, and flower girl. I can't really explain how I do this - I just write the letters with the wire, from the picture in my head.

And after finding out there would be little to no flowers in the church for Mother's Day (they give flowers out, but don't display them), I realized I had yet one more project I wanted to take on before the big day...at less than 2 weeks to go, haha. So, I grabbed some fake flowers from Michael's, with the colors and flowers of our bouquets in my mind, and whipped these up in a few hours. Not bad, I thought, and the flowers didn't look fake from the distance most people were viewing them from!

My pride and joy was the parents' hankies, which I spent probably 4 hours a piece on, hand-sewing the ribbon along the edges, then embroidering their names and titles, along with the date and an anchor for good measure. :)

Now that I have no deadlines on my craft projects, I hope I will still finish them - that has always been my problem in the past. If I throw a few things up on Etsy or Artfire, maybe that will motivate me. It would be interesting to see how many of what sells, too. I have no idea what the market is for anything I've made or dream of making!
As always, hope you enjoyed reading - until next time!

A Very Exciting Week

So I get to know what it is to be a married woman in 6 days. Pretty crazy stuff! I've been focusing completely on wedding prep for the past 3 weeks, so most of the house stuff I've been doing is just regular cleaning. Still a lot of boxes - organized in the rooms the stuff they contain will most likely end up in - but still cardboard boxes, nonetheless. It will be good to at least get some stuff up on the walls before my sister and best friend come to visit, as they will probably not see it again for some time! However, the wedding stuff takes priority over house stuff. Not too much left to do - looking at my list, I just need to finish 3 of 4 parents gifts, my future husband's gift, and a couple decorations, if I have time. If not, the decorations aren't going to bother me too much.
I really want to share all the crafty things I've been doing for the wedding, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for any guests that may read this! So, in the meantime, I will share the gift I made for my fiance for Valentine's Day this year. I got the idea from this pin to transfer some of our engagement photos to some wooden hearts. The idea blossomed into making one bigger piece of wall art. Then, I decided to make my own mod podge using this recipe.
After mod-podging the picture picture-side-down onto the wood, I made sure it was dry, then gently rubbed the photo with a wet cloth to rub away all the paper. After that dried completely, I used my homemade mod podge to finish the look! I think it turned out well for my first attempt. Added some ribbon and painted hearts and letters, and voila!

As usual, thanks for reading!