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Surface Pattern Design

May 17 2014

Uh-oh!

By Domestic Arts 2.0

With all the temptations already available to me, from surfing other artists’ blogs, to pinning recipes sure to send me into instant sugar shock, to Netflix marathons, the last thing I need is yet another distraction. But have I ever found one. In fact, I think this one may even become an obsession.

Many of you will already be very familiar with it, and for those of you who are not, I’m talking about Spoonflower.

I have only just begun to scratch the surface and haven’t even really figured out how to navigate through all the possibilities available to me. No matter. I’m hooked.

This is what I came up with in about 20 minutes of goofing around. I started with my painting “Up, Up and Away (Hither and Yon)”

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And then I played with the direction of the pattern and the colors and got these four different possibilities….

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These photos are cropped screen shots of my patterns so the resolution isn’t great, but regardless, I was knocked out by how cool they looked. Almost like Native American patterns, or Pendleton wool blankets.

You’ll be seeing more from Sasi at Spoonflower, I guarantee. Be looking for the link to my account in my sidebar. It will be coming soon!

Apr 16 2014

Easter Egg Filled Empty Nest

By Holidaze

In spite of Lina and Logan being grown and gone, and the desire to decorate for Easter being somewhat diminished as a result, I still manage to refill our empty nest with painted eggs and funny bunnys every year around this time.

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Painted wooden eggs apparently last forever. You can’t devil them, and they don’t make your teeth hurt like Cadbury’s Cream Eggs, but they sure are pretty.

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Bringing them out every year whether the kids are home or not, we go to church or not, we share a meal with family and friends or not, is one of my domestic rituals.

I see my life in circles, and bringing out the painted eggs and placing them this year in our empty nest…another circle is complete.

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Apr 14 2014

Second Helpings: Painted Chairs

By My Artist Home, Second Helpings

I don’t know what makes people think matched sets of things are so special. Personally, I prefer the intentionally mismatched. The sets where everything is the same, but different, like in SET, the game.

GOOD……………………………BETTER……………………..BEST:

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So when I set up our new cosy dining room and we needed two more chairs to round up our seating capability to four I looked for a couple of “Windsors” to go with the two we already had. I found two which were similar — same rounded back, but smaller — giving me the kind of mismatched set I like the best.

Then I decided to paint them in entirely different ways.

The first, I painted black. You may have noticed by now, I love black as a background.

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I painted glazed donuts with sprinkles as the motif. Better I should sit on them than the reverse, if you know what I mean!

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I used acrylic paint and sealed with Minwax Polycrylic Sealer.

For the second chair I looked to my traffic box painting “Good Luck Sweet Cookie” for inspiration and cobbled together a variety of Chinese mofifs.

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I used three shades of blue, and metallic copper acrylic paint and sealed it the same as the first chair.

I’m pretty sure the characters translate to “Do not sit on the Donuts.”

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Second Helpings? Yes! The same but different? Yes!
Intentionally Mismatched? Yes!

SET!

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Apr 13 2014

My Cosy Dining Room

By My Artist Home

Since the beginning of the year I have either been swamped with my public art project; in the process of taking down (Foray III) or putting up (Metamorphosis) an exhibition for TVAA; or on artistic “hold” waiting to shake off the throes of inertia.

One of the things which I neglected during that time was my ongoing remix of our house, now that Logan has moved out and our space has essentially doubled.

I left off working on our cosy dining room in December. I was really happy to have gotten as far with it as I did before the holidays, and now that things are returning to a normal pace, I’m back to work on that room once again.

Here’s how it’s looking now…

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Tomorrow I’ll show you the two chairs I’ve painted so now we can seat four. It just keeps getting cosier!

Feb 10 2014

Second Helpings: Sewing Birds

By Second Helpings

Sewing birds have got to be my favorite Second Helpings objects to paint. I had no idea they even existed until a couple of years ago when my friend Marilyn brought me one she had for me to fancy up.

This is that first bird:

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Your scissors make the beak and topknot, there are padded wings to use as pin cushions, places to put your spools of thread, and a little drawer for your thimbles or the odd button.

They’re so sweet they make your teeth hurt just to look at them!

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I don’t find sewing birds very often but now I always buy them when I stumble upon one. I found these two at my favorite secondhand store soon after finishing Marilyn’s bird. Makes me wonder how many I missed before I knew to look for them.

Dagnabit.

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You may remember my finding this tweetheart a few months ago when you see this BEFORE picture:

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And here are the AFTER photos in sequence as I painted the entire bird with acrylic paint — including the felt wings which were painted with acrylic paint mixed with Textile Medium so the paint won’t crack.

When I was finished with all the colors and detail I wanted to add I sealed it with a coat of Minwax Polycrylic Sealer.

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I even got a brand new pair of pink sewing scissors to complete the look! Who’s a fancy bird now!

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So keep your eyes peeled for the odd objects, the misfit toys, the ugly ducklings — they make for the most spectacular transformations. And if you honestly don’t know what to do with them, just pass them on to me. I paint everything!