Latest fun crafty project

We live in a furnished apartment, and among the many things it came with, drink coasters was one of them. Ugly, boring, plastic drink coasters.  Money is a little tight, not bad but going out to buy pretty new coasters when we already had some ugly useful ones wasn't a priority. BUT buying supplies to MAKE my own coasters? Well, that's a different story ;-) I had way too much fun making these and photographing different drinks on the finished products!

I bought some regular white roughly 4x4" ceramic tiles from the home improvement store in my town and some craft self-adhesive cork backing.  To adhere the designs to the tile I used Mod Podge, which is a brand of craft glue I brought with me from the US. To seal it completely, I used a clear coat, waterproof spray sealer. 

 



This tile's design is my own. I had the drawing on a piece of tracing paper that I did for another mini painting. I had painted the old sketch and outlined in black ink for fun. It was the perfect size to make the first experiment coaster. 

These ones are made from a piece of decorative paper I kept from when someone gave me a bouquet of flowers.  The flowers were wrapped in the paper and I always keep pretty stuff like that for projects like this. I just traced the outline of the tile around the parts I liked, cut them out and glued them down to the tile.

The sticky-backed cork was the perfect backing for these guys.

                                              Great for holding a glass of vino...

 





Some water.....

                                          Tea or coffee...

Or some nice, warm sake!

Finally Finished.

For anyone still interested in these freakin daisies, I have finally finished. ;-) It really didn't take me too long to do the actual painting, which is why it is strange it took a year and a half to get it done. Well, now it's complete and we can all move on with our lives!

I can't honestly say this is my favorite painting I've ever done, it was really more of an experiment for me.  I'm usually very tight and detailed and I wanted this one to be a little more free.  

When I was doing the background, I had the flowers outlined in masking fluid so the background wouldn't wash into them.  When I decided to give the background a very spattery look, it started dripping into the flowers and I thought, "oh no!" But then I just decided to go with it.  I knew the spatter and drips would show through when I painted the flowers, and thought it might give it an interesting effect.

I'm also not thrilled with the composition. I don't know what it is...but either way, it was fun to paint and I love the colors of gerber daisies. I'm sure I'll be doing more in the future. 

Many things all at once!

I've made a little more progress on the daisies.  I finally finished the yellow one! 

Yes, it's been slow going on this painting, I think it's been in the works for about a year now. Or longer? I know it was started in Krakow last year before going home for the summer. Yikes. 

I'm taking an art class at the local art museum here in Edinburgh.  We're using an exhibit at the museum called "Witches and Wicked Bodies" as inspiration to make an artist's book full of fun, witchy artwork.  The final class is on Tuesday, and I will really be sad when it's over. It's been one of the most fun art classes I've ever taken. Here's a sneak peak on what I've been doing for that class:

I'm really loving all the fun creatures and familiars.  I'll do a separate post on this when it's finished. :)

Daisies Are Back...

I have finally gotten back to painting those daisies that I started I don't know how many months ago...I think last time we saw them, they looked like this:

Only the stems had been completely painted and a few bits of yellow on the top daisy. Well, now it looks like this:

Got a bit more done on the yellow daisy and started playing around with the orange one.  We just moved again and while I was waiting for a shipment of our stuff with my watercolors in it, I tried using watercolor pencils on the orange daisy. I didn't get too far and figured I'd just wait for my watercolors to show up. So now I will continue to work on these, and keep you updated on my progress :)

Also, over the summer, I also got a new paintbrush! 

I know, I know, you're so excited about it, too! Well, I told you I'm an art supply dork and stuff like this thrills me. I love this brush! It holds so much paint and water and it's ridiculously fun to splash paint around with it. So anyway, back to work!

Inspiration...

These roses grow right outside next to my apartment building and every time I walk past them, I notice just how beautiful they are. Some inspiration for future projects! 

These peach ones are actually in a park:

And this one is my favorite, I'm really excited to play with it:

Time to go get creative! 

The Barn Painting

I finished another commissioned painting about a month ago for my neighbor. (He's my best customer! haha). Sorry I haven't posted in a while, my Painter program where I edit my photos hasn't been working and I just got it fixed today (thank you, Fiance ;-) ) I don't like to post photos where you can see the background of where I photograph my work, it doesn't look too professional. :-/  So, here is the reference photo he gave me:

Here is my finished painting (watercolor and gouache on hot pressed smooth paper, 14"x20"):

Sorry for the poor quality photo. I took all these pictures with my phone and thought they came out fine.  Only when I uploaded them to my computer did I realize some were blurry, and by that time I had already given the painting to my neighbor. :-(  It looks much better in real life, I think. But anyway, here is how I got there:

I had first masked out all the trees and the moon with masking fluid and then painted the sky, using cobalt blue, ultramarine blue and permanent rose (I think those were the colors...). Once I was happy with the sky I started painting the background trees by basically scrubbing some shades of brown and purple into the background and blending it a little at the edge where trees meet sky. I removed some masking fluid to paint in the larger trees and started painting some of the darks in the barn. 

I started working more on the barn using burnt umber, burnt sienna, sepia and ultramarine blue. 

Putting the fence in using similar colors to the barn, burnt umber, sepia and ultramarine blue. 

Working more on the trees...

Pretty much finished with the trees and the fence behind the barn. 

Finished the trees and put all the snow on the branches, same for the fence and painted the snow on the ground (hard to see, I know, it's snow, but in person it looks better haha). All that was left was the shrubs and plants in front of the fence, and we're done!

And there again is the finished painting. 

Hope you like it!

Art Show!

Sorry to have been neglecting the blog again, this has been the most hectic month! First of all, my boyfriend and I got engaged! Yay! So I should say, my fiance... And then my fiance graduated from medical school 3 days later, YAY again! And family came, then we went on a crazy vacation. We were supposed to spend two weeks in Croatia. One week with his mom and sister and some friends, then a week just the two of us. Relaxing, unwinding, etc. Well the weather forecast for Croatia was nothing but rain for the whole time, so we decided to drive down to Greece where it would be sunny and hot. What an adventure driving through the Balkans. Then we came back to Krakow where all our friends were packing and leaving, then we went to Edinburgh to look for an apartment for ourselves, since that is where Fiance will be starting residency. Just got back last night. Whew! I have been working on some art and I honestly can't wait to have all of it done, as I'm pretty excited about all of it. I'm still working on that flower watercolor but I had to put it aside to work on the two other commissions. 

Anyway, I just realized I titled this post "Art Show" and haven't mentioned anything about an art show yet. So a co-worker of mine from NJ contacted me and said her theater company puts up kind of a gallery in June/July and said my artwork, florals in particular, were really fitting with what they were looking for and asked if I would like to be part of it. Sure! But since I am in Krakow, I had to call my mom and ask her to 1) Locate my artwork I wanted to enter (I knew exactly where it was, but still had to talk her through it) 2) Find out where I could do inexpensive framing, 3) Have my  mom take it to the framer and then pick it up when done and 4) Arrange my friend to pick up the work for me. So through a team effort, my work got framed and hung! It is for sale, so if I got a sale that would be so exciting! This is the artwork I entered:

So that's all for now, hopefully soon I can post a new painting!