A gift for you!

It might be my birthday but the gifts are for you. I've been spending my evenings playing with watercolors and instead of leaving them all tucked inside my planner, I've made them into cards for your project life!

I finished off this spread with left over bits and pieces from my stash from Studio Calico, Citrus Twist Kits and I can't get enough of those Kellie Stamps!

This set of five cards is available for downloading here. I hope you enjoy them!

It's Friday...

Evolution of a painting

Much like life, there are times when you're painting you wish you could go back a few layers to when you really LOVED it. But you can't. Things sometimes happen the way they are supposed to happen, not the way you want them to. The best you can do is let it go and start fresh.

Now in the shop...

I finally got my shop updated with all the paintings I've been doing in the last few months, including the two that I did in the weekend.

I get some much joy from creating things and these wee paintings always end up with a message that I need at the time. I'm sure everyone else needs them too!

For the first time in a long time, I spent the afternoon painting instead of doing all the things I am SUPPOSED to do. Including this week's Project Life, which I did finish but didn't have enough daylight left for photographing.

I found this great quote this week while trawling Mati Rose's blog. And it struck me, because that was exactly how I've been feeling this week, like the cracks are getting bigger. This quote helped me gain a bit of perspective on what was happening. And then I realised that light (my olw for the year) had popped it's head up again. Everything I need is provided to me, I just have to keep my eyes and mind and heart open to see it.

Another painting

I had such fun last time, that when my friend asked me to make a little painting for her daughter, I just couldn't say no!

It feels really meditative creating these and I can disappear into my own little world, light a pretty candle and create something lovely. I did manage to burn myself twice while melting the beeswax but it was worth it!

Experimenting

After getting Suzi Blu's book, Mixed Media Girls, a while ago, I finally sat down and did some drawing and painting and playing and experimenting and came up with this.

I love her sad little face and her message of hope. It was really fun creating the background and getting to play with all my paints and papers and stamps. I can see myself making quite a few more.

Finished

After several weeks of squeezing in a little painting time whenever I can, I finally finished this piece this morning.

It felt good to start something big and just play and get messy and to not rush through it just to say it is finished. But this morning I came in to work on it and that was exactly what it was. Finished.

Of course I have already rushed into the next project but I'm going to try and enjoy the process again this time.

A good day...

...sometimes, when it is pouring with rain and your feet are wet and there is no food in the house for lunch and you still have hours of work to get through, it can turn out to be a pretty good day.

I do love a good mail day. I just had Daring Adventures in Paint, Mixed Media Girls and Brave Intuitive Painting delivered and I can't wait to crack open the spines and start getting messy.

Creating layers

Computers are great, a fantastic tool I've built a career around. But I feel like I spend my entire life staring at a screen (well, at least 9 hours a day). Sometimes I forget the pleasure of using my hands, getting dirty and creating layers one at a time.

But when I remember, it feels good. Really good.

A painting for Daisy

A friend recently became an aunt again and wanted a gift to give her new niece. She asked me if I would paint Daisy something special.

I hope Daisy loves it!

I can't remember if I ever posted this or not but this is the painting I gave to my sister for for birthday.

Getting Messy

I had some fun getting messy with my gesso and paint in the weekend, working on some art journal pages/boards. Its a style I haven't worked in much, but it was really wonderful to really play with the paint and create some real texture and depth. I will definitely be doing this again but it does require a bit of time (and clean up!).

Pet Portrait

Elsie posted a really cute pet portrait tutorial a couple of weeks ago and I finally got around to doing it yesterday. Here are my step by step photos (sorry, it was quite late and there was very little light left!)...

Step one: Did some little doodles of lily, some were much better then others. I'm a little out of practise with my drawing.

Step Two: Painted a canvas (mine was recycled). Lily is mostly white so I painted the canvas pink! Then drew her outline onto it.

Step Three: Filled in the outline with white and decided it would have a little banner with her name on it, so I drew that in too.

Step Four: Filled in the banner with white and I drew in the details.

Step Five: Outlined with black and filled in her little black spots

Step Six: Outlined the banner, wrote in her name, dried and hung on the wall.

I think it is a cute little addition to the wall. It even kinda looks like her!

Brave and True

My words for the year are going to be Brave and True.

I live so much of my life in fear and anxiety but when I push myself I can do really brave things. I want to really try and grow this part of myself. I have a lot of things going on this year that are going to require bravery and inner strength so I hope that by focusing more on this I will be able to really learn to feel truly brave.

I also want to be true, to myself. I spend a great deal of time and energy worrying about other people and what they think of my that I am constantly censoring myself. I really want to be true to who I am and what I like and want. I hardly know what that is anymore so I am really going to dig and find out this year.

To really reinforce these things I made a new painting to go by my bed. It is the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night. I layered old book pages onto the canvas then used gesso to white out the area for my portrait, which I then drew on in pencil. I added a few circles, some filled in, some just stitch lines. I am really happy with it. I haven't painted in so long and it felt really good. Especially to do something with such a positive and strong message behind it.