Yearly update - (fairly) recent art projects

This was inspired by a beautiful quilt created by the baby's grandma. One of the squares had the same stripe/dot pattern I did my best to replicate in the border. I loved how it turned out. This one was one of my more time consuming projects. Stripes are enough to drive any perfectionist straight to the loony bin. I tried to use the silhouette to make a stencil for the stripes and it didn't work so well.

This was inspired by a sculpture in the baby's nursery of a porcelain giraffe. The colors were coral and gold. The sculpture didn't have spots but I wanted to include some - so I incorporated them into the border and I loved how it turned out.

This project was mixed media - I used cardstock cut outs for the flower and elevated it on the canvas. You can't tell in the picture but there is depth to it. I used my silhouette to make a stencil for the words. It worked ok but I had to fix most of it.

Holiday Crafting

So I won't comment how it's been nearly a year since my last post. Between moving, remodeling my kitchen (among other projects), and new baby coming, I've been a little preoccupied. I have done some projects though and wanted to at least record that. Most of my ideas came from Pintrest (of course, right?). I made a collection of holiday craft items for my sister-in-law's Christmas present: The first was wood painted black with silver vinyl on two sides - one for Halloween and one for Christmas:

This is a 4th of July (pottery-barn inspired) banner I used from another lovely sister-in-law's blog :

Her pictures are much better - you can see them HERE And then these JOY letters were cardboard letters (found at Joanns), covered in a printable music print found HERE:

Then with the extra burlap I had from the banner, I made another thanksgiving banner: This was actually the EASIEST project of all.... All I did was cut the burlap, glue it to twine, and then put letters/designs printed on the Silhouette adhesive cardstock. The cardstock sticks amazingly well to the burlap. Seriously - it took me a half hour to put it all together. MY kind of project!

Mother's day

So Mother's day actually inspired me to dig out my silhouette that has been collecting dust for the last several months and do a project!
Gathered some ideas from pintrest and this is what I came up with:


(vinyl on wood)

(I still remember coming downstairs to grandma JuJu feeding Alayna oreos for breakfast when she was like 2 years old. "teaching her to dunk". So funny)


This other gift is hard to see but I cut out vinyl and attached to a glass jar:

"Grandma's nuts" 



I knew my mother-in-law would get a kick out of it! And she loves nuts so it totally worked.
 

House: Before and After

So I've been out of blogging commission lately - largely due to some significant life changes that have occurred - namely selling our house, changing jobs, moving (multiple) states, etc

But I was going through old pictures and had to post these before and afters of our house.  We were in our house for 5 years and it was a labor of love.  We got it looking really great (and then moved).

Hoping we can get our next house how we want it and actually live in it for a while.

*Disclaimer: all the "before" pictures included the previous owner's belongings.

Front of house: BEFORE

Front of house: AFTER

 

Living room: BEFORE

Living room: After (new builtins, recessed lighting, etc)

Dining room: BEFORE

Dining room: AFTER

Guest room: BEFORE

Guest room: AFTER

Girls bedroom: BEFORE

Girls bedroom: AFTER

Boy's bedroom: BEFORE

Boy's bedroom: AFTER

Master bedroom: BEFORE

Master bedroom: AFTER

Master bath: BEFORE

 

 

Master bath: AFTER (this was probably our biggest project)

 

 

Basement: BEFORE

 

 

 

 

Basement: AFTER

 

Path to backyard: BEFORE

Path to backyard: AFTER

Backyard: BEFORE

 

 

Backyard: AFTER

 

 

"You Are My World" painting

My life has been turned upside down at the moment.  I did, however, finish a project I've been planning for a very very long time (like 2 years). (Priorities people!!)

This is for my great friend who had a baby.  We went back and forth on something she would want for her nursery. 

Her mother made this gorgeous quilt (wish I had a picture of it) which also left samples of the fabric. 

I wanted to incorporate the fabric somehow in the painting - which I did in the lettering.
 

I cut out the lettering with the fabric samples on my Silhouette machine.

After painting the world with different shades of green, I decopouged the whole thing to make sure the fabric does not go anywhere.  It is on a 16x20 canvas.

I love it.  It has the simpleness (my friend was looking for) and yet is artsy enough for me.

Wedding gift pillows

So when one of my best friends from high school asked me to be in her wedding, I knew I had to something creative for her present.

Since I ordered extra silk fabric with my bridesmaid dress, I thought I would put it to good use! 

I wanted to make something that would remind her of her special day, but something she could still use.  Her wedding colors were silver and turquoise.

I used my silhouette to cut out the Mr. and Mrs. from the silk and then sewed it on with matching blue thread.



Here is a close-up of the lettering sewed on.  

Congratulations Nikki! I'm so excited for you! Hope you can get good use of your new pillows!