Oh where, oh where can it be?  I can’t believe that it is 2012.  Seems like just yesterday it was summer and I was making my last post here at my TT blog and now it is January, 2012.  As I get older the time just flies on by and before you know it another year has come and gone.

Happy New Year to everyone at TT, it is a little late to send out these wishes but hopefully not too much :O)  The New Year always fills me with new purpose and new energy, I used to make resolutions but found that they just led to disappointments as one by one they slipped away unfulfilled, so now I just try to take one day at a time and try to do better the next.  But having said that, one of my goals (is that any different from a resolution LOL?) for this year is to do more painting. I miss it so much when I don’t do it but always seem to run out of time as I devote myself to my fabric crafts. I just did up an order for some of my Love Bunny pillows though (a Sue Allemand design painted on fabric that I posted about last year) and it reinforced how much I love painting and want to get back to my crafting/artistic ‘roots’.  So I am going to make the time to paint, and really, that is what it comes down to doesn’t it?  We all have demands on our time, all have other obligations in our lives that demand our attention but it is just a matter of MAKING the time to do what you love.  So that is what I am going to endeavour to do, make the time to do what I love, paint.

And what better place to paint than at TT, right?!  I am waiting with anticipation for the January class schedule so I can plan to attend the classes and to see what the Quick Paint will be so I can join you all in the Malt Shop.  I am also going to give it the old college try and get those darn monthly Challenge pictures painted!  I also joined a painting group on Facebook: Painting With DonnaLee (hosted by Donna Lee Parella) and I am hoping it will kick me into painting mode too.  I see that Bev is a part of the group as well, so feel free to give me a ‘poke’ if I don’t participate Bev!

I hope that all of you had a wonderful holiday with family and friends and that the New Year brings us all peace, joy and good health.  Thanks for stopping by and see you in class!

Deb

 

Hello to all my Toletown friends!  I am having a giveaway over at my crafting blog to celebrate my first year “blogaversary” and would like to invite you to come on over to enter.  Just click here or click the picture below to head on over to my Blogger blog to enter.

Thanks for stopping by!

Deb

Hi everyone. Well, I promised to be better at keeping up on my TT blog, so here are some pictures of what I’ve been working on lately. I was in a spring swap for one of my Etsy teams and I painted a cute Terrye French design onto a wooden plate for my partner.

This design was originally designed for a floor cloth but I adapted it for this little wooden plate. It turned out really cute, hope my swap partner liked it!

I’m going to be in a local craft show in a few weeks so I’ve been painting up some signs and some ‘country’ inspired projects. Here’s a ‘Momma Hen’ I painted adapted from an original design by Debbie Bryan.

She’s too cute, I love how she turned out. The original design had her sitting within a frame of chicken wire but I made her free standing and I added the name “Eggbert” to the egg she has in safe keeping around her neck.

Then I bought some stencils from Folk Art From The Harbor and have been making up some signs for my show. Here’s what I have so far (you can see the ‘aged’ version of the ‘A Father Is…’ sign in my post below).

I love the Father sign but I have to admit my personal favorite is the Housework sign, boy can I relate! I have discovered I am not the worlds best stenciler (I am too impatient and want the stenciling to be done NOW!) so I spend quite a bit of time hand lettering the words to fix up my mistakes! I also added the simple floral border to the ‘Garden Friend’s sign, just some simple one-stroke flowers and leaves but it turned out pretty cute!

I have lots more to get done so this will have to suffice for now, it’s finally sunny out today so I am going to set up all of my sign boards on the deck and do my sanding and basecoating outside while the weather holds. Hope you are all have a lovely day and happy painting!
Deb

First of all, let me apologize for not keeping up on my TT blog, I’ve been getting ready for a craft show in May and have been very neglectful of this site but will endeavor to be more diligent!
I’ve been lucky enough over on my Blogspot blog to have reached the milestone of 200 followers and so have decided to have a giveaway to celebrate. I hope that all of my TT friends will come on over to enter as well, here’s what I’m giving away:

I’ve stenciled this saying onto some 1/2″ pine, I just love it, don’t you? The words say it all! I hope you’ll pop over to my blogspot blog by clicking here and enter my giveaway. Good luck to you all and talk again soon (I promise!)
Deb

Oh where, oh where has February gone, oh where, oh where can it be??!! I have no idea where this month has disappeared to, one minute it was February 1st and the next it’s the 22nd soon to be the 23rd. I don’t know about you but the older I get, the faster time flies by. Remember when you were a kid and the days, weeks and months seemed to last forever? I guess this is what we get for wishing that our youthful days would speed up, now the days of our, ahem, ‘middle years’ are flying by at lightening speed!
I finally finished up Susan’s class project for this month “Warm Your Heart”. Susan had done her’s on a little tea caddy so her saying fit perfectly into her design but unfortunately I didn’t have a suitable surface for a tea bag container so painted mine onto a little hard board artists canvas. The words made perfect sense on Susan’s project but not so much on my lonely little board so I changed up the wording, hope that’s OK Susan?! Here’s a picture:

I did the painting just as Susan had designed it initially (other than the wording that is) but it was looking a little bare so I added the banner with the words “Friendship Is …” above it and I think it looks better now. I’m going to put a little hanger on the back or maybe frame it up, not quite sure which yet.
I had the worst painting day today that I’ve had in years! I felt like I had never held a brush in my entire life. I was trying to get my class prep done for Lorrie’s class “Feelin’ Frosty” today and I couldn’t basecoat, couldn’t float, couldn’t do a darn thing! My basecoats had ridges, my floats were wobbling all over the place, my paint brushes wouldn’t hold any paint, it was very exasperating to say the least. I told Lorrie in class that it was a good thing I was home alone while I was painting as the air was rather blue! But despite all of that, my little painting of Lorrie’s sweet design is turning out not too badly. I’ve got some more touch ups to do tomorrow when the light is better but I’ll post a picture of it soon.
Hope that you all had a better painting day than I and that your paint flowed smoothly and your brush strokes were fine! Happy painting everyone,
Deb

Evening everyone, hope you’ve all managed to shovel your way out from under all of the snow safely.  I painted up a little pillow today, the line drawing was one I had stashed away on my computer from Sue Allemand, the date says ’04!  Been hanging on to that one for a while!!  I painted this cute bunny design onto some muslin then edged it with some homespun and backed it with the same fabric to make a little pillow that measures about 6″ by 7″ (15 cm by 18 cm for all us Canadians and Brits!).

I find painting on fabric to be a bit of a challenge; haven’t perfected my technique yet but I’m pleased with how this guy turned out.  I was going to shade around the outside of him but was afraid the paint would go all blotchy on the muslin so I just shaded the inside areas.  I think if you want to shade around a design you almost have to paint the background of the fabric as well so you can shade it properly.  In “primitive” parlance, these little pillows are also called cupboard tucks or stash abouts since they are the perfect size to tuck on a shelf or stuff in a bowl or wherever you want to “stash” it!  Here’s a picture of him on my book shelf.

You’ll note I placed him in front of some of my books from my English lit classes so that I will look especially well read :O)  Hah! Not!  LOL, thanks for taking a look and I hope everyone weathered the storm safely.  Off to take a peek at TT to see if the February goodies are available yet then I’ve got a stitchery to complete, it’s a cute Spring wreath by Sprigs ‘n Twigs, another pillow in the works!  Take care,

Deb

Evening everyone, hope you are all staying safe and warm at home with this terrible snow storm hitting the East.  We’re cold here in B.C. but no storms thank goodness.  I just finished up my card for the Valentine card exchange and wanted to share it with you.  Tammy Strahan, don’t look!  You were my exchange partner and I don’t want to ruin the surprise LOL!

I was inspired by the “heart” theme for this exchange but wanted to inject a little Spring into the card as well so I painted up these heart shaped cards from a design by Antoinette Cox that I found in an old copy of Painting magazine (April, 2005).  Here’s the card I sent to Tammy (Tammy, quit looking!!):

I love how it turned out!  Do you see the little blue butterfly on the left?  I painted it with acrylic paints onto card stock; Antoinette’s original design is more “watercolour” in appearance but I like the more opaque look as well.  And while I was at it, I painted up the second card from Antoinette’s design and sent it off to Joyce T. for the Sunshine Club.

Love the little bumble bees flying around this one!  Such cute designs and so versatile!  They’d be appropriate for Valentine’s Day, birthdays, and wouldn’t they make beautiful wedding invitations?  Thanks for taking a look and hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures.  Stay warm everyone!

Deb

Hello to all my TT friends!  First of all, my apologies for not having posted here for awhile; where in the heck does the time go?  Between working and home and everything else life throws at you I’ve been very remiss in posting here and in doing any painting.  What I have been doing though, is making up some new primitive crafts for my crafting blog, Paxton Valley Folk Art, and I am having a Valentine’s Giveaway over there right now.  The giveaway is for three stacked muslin hearts embellished with a fabric “love letter”, some rusty jingle bells and a vintage Valentine hang tag.

The original design for this craft came from Becky Erickson of Tennessee Ridge Primitives.  I’ve also included 5 vintage Valentine hang tags that I’ve made.  Now, I will warn all of you that this giveaway is not painting related and it is what some will call “dirty primitive”, meaning I’ve really aged these muslin hearts with a coffee, vanilla and spice mixture so they look old and timeworn.  But if you like the primitive look, I hope that you will come on over to my blog and enter for a chance to win. Click here, Paxton Valley Folk Art to go to my blog and good luck to you all!  I’ll see you in class this weekend, can’t wait to get painting again!  Take care,

Deb

Hi everyone!  I finished Cathy’s fab snowman board project this afternoon and so without further ado, here is the finished project.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this project; I learned so much about myself as an artist and my abilities.  It has reminded me that in order to grow we must step outside of our comfort zones and try something different, something that will stretch our wings even if it is a little bit scary at first!  Nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say!

I painted this sign on a 12″ x 20″ board that I had prepped with a crackle finish AGES ago and had sitting downstairs in my work area.  I’m so proud of myself for freehanding the snowman design onto the board and for brush blending the shading and highlights, I’d never done either before and was a little terrified at first when I attempted those techniques.  But look at the result!  I absolutely love it and want to send a shout out again to Cathy Strate of Tolentreasures for her wonderful tutorial and for helping me take the next step in my painting career.  And hey, I have some exciting news, I got a message from Cathy earlier today and she said that she has joined Toletown!  Woo-hoo!  Join me in welcoming her to Toletown and I hope you enjoy the picture.  Happy painting!

Deb

I’m working on a new project right now and it is definitely a change from the way I normally paint.  I think that like most amateur painters, I usually paint from detailed step by step patterns which have line drawings to trace, which tell you which brush and colour of paint to use and when, and generally lead you by the hand through the entire painting process until you have the finished project.  And I, like a good little girl, always do exactly as that pattern tells me to do!  But today I embarked upon an entirely new (at least to me!) way of painting.  I found a Snowman Board Tutorial on Tolentreasures blog and fell in love with the picture when I saw it.

Cathy was kindly offering her painting tutorial for free so I downloaded it and tucked it away on my computer until I had time to read it all.  When I finally took a look a the tutorial a couple of days ago, I was initially shocked.  While Cathy included lots of pictures and general instructions for her project, there was no pattern page, no project size, no step by step place this colour on this exact spot with this exact brush instructions.  And horror of horrors, her instructions expected me to draw the snowman FREE HAND on my prepped surface with some chalk!  My initial thoughts were “Well, I can’t do this” but then I stopped.  Why did I think that couldn’t I do this?  I have some reasonable amount of talent, I’ve designed my own primitive folk art sewing patterns and designs so why was I so sure I couldn’t use some of that creativity in my painting?  And so I dived into the project.  I mocked up my design on a small piece of paper, taped off the edges on my wooden board and started to paint.  And I have to say, it is a very liberating feeling to be making design decisions as I proceed.  Cathy’s tutorial said to stencil stars onto the board but how big to make them, what shape, how to position them?  I actually ended up changing the stars after I did the checked border because they were too small and instead of feeling frustrated at having to do it again I felt liberated that this was my project and I could do whatever I wanted to do.  Then came the big moment; I had to DRAW the snowman freehand onto the prepped board!  And you know what, it turned out just fine!  Not perfect the first time but that was the beauty of Cathy’s instructions to use the chalk, you just wiped it off if you didn’t like the way the nose was positioned.  I felt so empowered somehow to be taking Cathy’s wonderful design and making it my own.  The next challenge was to follow her directions for painting the snowman and his hat and scarf.  She directed me to block in different colours and then brush blend them on the snowman.  What??  Mix colours willy nilly on my project??  Actually combine colours in a painterly way in order to define the shape and shading??  And you know what, it worked beautifully and was only a little bit scary!  Not perfect to be sure but FUN!  And so I continue on this project; reading Cathy’s tutorial and following her steps but somehow making each and everyone my own.  I have to thank her so much for giving me that power, for instilling in me the thought that yes, I AM an artist.  I should have the project finished tomorrow so I will post some pictures as soon as I am done but I hope that in the meantime you will go to Cathy’s blog and download her tutorial and find the artist hidden inside of you, you will be glad that you did!  Just click the picture above of the snowman to go to Cathy’s blog.  Happy painting,

Deb