Christmas Craft Fair

The Arts Centre is having their Christmas Craft Fair at the moment, which is up for a month.

This is my table.

My Dad made me this stand for my hand painted baubles.

What a nice Dad.

I've displayed some of my small paintings on these mini easels.

Mini easels! I love them.

Then we've got my miniature fireplaces which are getting a lot of interest.

None sold yet, but there's still time.

I've also put up a few of my paintings.

I don't know if anyone will buy them, but it makes my table very eye catching.

Before I got a chance to take these photos the little old lady got sold.

I hope she's gone to a good home.

Painting Bugs

I was looking through my photos to find something to paint and came across this image of a bee in lavender, taken on this visit to a local lavender field.

That photo reminded me of one I took in Nashville of this butterfly, so I painted that too.

I was surprised I got such a good shot of it.

Both are oil paintings on small canvas panels, smaller than A5.

This Week I...

Got my paint on.

Went to the Festive Gift Fair at the NEC in Birmingham.

Only one more week until I get the Christmas tunes out!

Had another stall at a craft fair.

And I updated my art website/online portfolio.

Check it out.

My G-ma's Bling

When my Grandma died in 2008 (aged 101 - good going!) I got some of her brooches.

They're some serious bling!

I love this little shiny-fest, but the pin on the back is broken, so I thought of an easy way to still wear it.

I pulled off the broken back with a pair of pliers.

Then using my trusty E6000 glue I stuck a ring blank to the back of the brooch.

And there we go. The fanciest ring in town.

Have any of you been doing any up-cycling recently?

New York painting

This new painting is based on a photograph that I took in New York during a night bus tour which took us from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back. So good.

Since I was in a moving vehicle the photo was a bit fuzzy, but that's why I thought it would be interesting to paint it.

I thought I was done with it but now looking at this photo of the painting, I'm not sure about that shadow man in the middle. I might fix that. I guess I could just call it abstract.

It is oil on canvas and measures 40x50 inches.

This Week I...

I had my first craft stall of the season with all my miniature fireplaces on display.

I helped out my Mum by being an additional adult for her class's walk to the woods.

We saw a squirrel and collected many leaves.

I got this thank you card which has a picture drawn by one of the children on it.

I got another thank you this week after a project I'd been working on at the arts centre with one of the local schools came to an end.

This definitely means I'm an adult now because only adults get given plants as thank you gifts.

This weekend was the art centre's festival which involved a fashion show of 1970s and 1980s clothes.

Here I am in the bridesmaids dress my Mum wore for her sister's wedding in 70s.

Behold, the miniature Christmas fireplace

Here are my finished miniature Christmas fireplaces!!

Since you can't really tell, the size of them is approximately 11cm wide, 9cm tall and 2.5cm deep.

That last one isn't approximate. I know that one fo sho.  

I love these candle sticks.

The white on white makes it a bit hard to see them, but I can assure you; they're pretty darn awesome.

Mini Christmas presents!

Feel free to imagine mini pairs of socks and mini boxes of chocolates.

It's really bits of cardboard wrapped up though.

Sophisticated fireplace.

All those green and gold bits were individually glued on. Thank you tweezers.

This one is my favourite.

Which one's yours?

Crafting - 70s style

At the Arts Centre we're gearing up for our 'Now That's What I Call A Recession' festival this weekend, which is 1970s/80s themed.

I've been putting together craft projects from this 70s book for the kids to do at the festival.

Paper lanterns.

Tissue paper flowers.

A spinny thing...

A dragon!

And my favourite; these finger puppets.

I probably spent longer on them than I should have, but I don't care.

The cat even has a tail on the back!

This week I...

...got a tooth pulled out!

 

As part of my dental treatment, not only do I have to have braces, but I also had to have a tooth removed to make room for the impacted tooth. Remember the x-ray? It was the last of my baby teeth. I guess that means I'm a proper adult now.

I figured I would write to the Tooth Fairy, just in case, even though that contradicts my last point about being  an adult.

But guess what guys?

It worked! Kerching.

This week I also finished reading Brad Paisley's book 'Diary of a Player'.

Parts of it were like walking through the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum.

And other parts were like like walking through Nashville. Specifically Hillsboro Village. Right up to the Pancake Pantry.

I started a painting.

What's it gonna be? What's it gonna be?

And I packaged up some Craft-Arty Kid products to be raffle prizes at upcoming craft fairs, the first of which is next week.

Did you guys have a good week?

Painting baubles

I've been continuing to increase my stocks ready for some up coming craft fairs, which includes painting some more baubles.

I started doing this one year at uni and sold a few at that time.

I even had some on sale at my local hair salon, and did a set of commissioned baubles.

Last January I bought a tube of silver baubles, which were on sale of course, ready to be painted this season. 

This time around I did a lot of snow covered fir trees.

The trees are really easy to paint using a small flat paintbrush.

I hope people like them and buy them!

Clothes peg photo holders

 A few weeks ago I finally got a film developed from a camera that we didn't realise still had a film in.

The film was about half way through so over the summer I used up the rest of the film on my birthday, at camp, and hanging out with my family.

We had no idea what was on the first half of the film so I was really looking forward to getting it developed.

It turns out the first photos (00 - 11 on the thumbnail sheet) are from my sisters' first trip to New York 8 years ago! They thought they'd broken the camera and/or lost the film.

It was a wonderful coincidence that I got these photos developed a week or two after coming back from our trip to New York.

So now I have some lovely photos printed, instead of stored on my computer, that I want to have on display.

I could just buy some more photo frames, but I don't want to do that. I'm more creative than that.

I had the idea to use clothes pegs to hold up a photo.

It's great because I can easily change the photo on display.

I had a couple of ideas of how to embellish the pegs.

First I simply wrote on them with who's in the photo and where and when it was taken.

Then I tried cutting out some decorative paper and sticking it to the pegs.

Pretty.

I also tried decorating the pegs according to the photo. So I cut out some grass from green card, since the photo was taken while we were camping, and stuck that to the pegs. 

I even got some thin wire which I attached to the pegs and added some little bees to fit with the outdoorsy theme.

I think adding balloons to the wire would look really great with a birthday photo.

Any other ideas?

Have any of you discovered some old photos you thought were gone forever?

This Week I...

I didn't do anything for Halloween this year, but feel free to go back and look at my costume from last year because I still think it's awesome.

On Saturday I went to see some fireworks with my friends.

It's kind of a tradition even though I hadn't been for the last 3 years because I'd always been away at uni.

Oooooooh!

Aaaaaaaah!

Then we went to Starbucks to warm up and discuss Christmas plans. Exciting!

I had their pancakes which gave me Pancake Pantry flashbacks.

It's not quite breakfast at midnight, but it's the kind of crazy thing 22 year olds get up to. Isn't that right Taylor?

And I watched the CMA Awards this week thanks to the youtuber that put the whole thing up!

Did any of you watch it? Which bits did you love?

I thought all of Miranda and Blake's acceptance speeches were wonderful, and the opening was hilarious.

Brad and Carrie are the best.