Faux Wood Doors

Every once in a while, I get calls to do some faux finishing. In a past life, I used to do it for a living but life gets in the way and the kids were small so it had to go to the wayside. A neighbor down the block saw my house and asked me to do some work in her house - a faux brick wall! Then a faux stone wall. They in turn had a party this past winter and a friend of theirs saw the work and fell in love. So when her office wanted to redo their meeting room, she remembered me. The job was to take the metal doors and paint them on one side to look like the wood floors and crown molding. Here are the before and after shots, I will let you decide if they turned out.

Cardboard Alphabet

Another thing I have been doing in the last few months has been arting up some 9" cardboard letters sets for the preschool teachers. I have done two sets for friends of mine and this set, I actually was paid to do! I took pictures of sets of them and my camera died before I could get the last few letters. Gggrrrrr. I have been having a bit of fun with my sharpie markers! Hope you enjoy them! I have one more set and I may try to sell it when done.

Why so busy!

November was NaNoWriMo which is short for National Novel Writing Month. Check it out here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ They need donations to keep this program alive so please consider donating if you can afford it.

I actually am a winner! I finished a 50,000 page "novel" by the end of the month! I was feeling so lost with my art and totally unmotivated. Whenever that happens, I usually try to take a class or hunt down a book that will move me off into a new direction. Nothing was sparking my imagination. I had a crazy dream one night and thought that it would make an interesting book. Finding this website made me think that this was an omen and to give it a try. I found myself sneaking away for an hour or so a day and writing about my story. If you can write 1670 words a day, you can totally pull off a book in a month. It needs serious editing but I will leave that for another day! My creative spirit is refreshed and I am now feeling that creative tingle itching to get back into the studio. Yeah!!!

My certificate does not have my name because I keep forgetting to add it in. But you can only get this if you upload your novel and they verify the word count.

Grateful ATC Challenge

Wow have I been busy! I forgot to post this to my blog (and the trading card blog! Whoops!)
Our theme for November was Grateful which is appropriate for the Thanksgiving season. I struggled trying to find a way to incorporate all that I was grateful for into a small space. When I thought about what I was most grateful, the idea snapped into place. I am grateful for each and everyday that I have to spend with family and friends! (Insert smacking of forehead here) Here is the link to all the grateful ATC entries: http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com

I used cardstock and colored the background with sharpie markers to create sunrise/sunset and mountains. More details were added with colored pencils and then a pine tree was stamped in dark brown. The final detail was the birds drawn in with a black pigma pen.

Our next trade is a Flat Santa exchange! The pieces so far have been so cute and adorable. I unfortunately had to sit this one out as I had quite a bit going on. They should be going up in the next week or so. Stayed tuned!