Welcome to my Home

The front door needs to say "Welcome" when my guests arrive to my home.  It was time to let my doors make a cheerful statement. 

Small cheerful canvasses

This morning I grabbed a few canvasses and some bright colors and started these paintings. I'll post later when they are finished. I sell these for $50. Great gift!

Making a pop up flower card

Let me know if you want to make it happen!

The surprise you get from a Pop Up card makes it so much fun to open over and over again. 

This card is made from squares cut from colorful pages in a magazine. 

You will need 7 squares. Mine happen to be about 3.5 inches square. 

Then fold them in quarters. 

Next fold the corners so take all the folds of the square are next to one another. 

Cut the rough wdges into a petal shape. 

Cut out one petal from each flower.

Then glow one petal over the next to close the gap. 

  So now you have 7 little flowers. 

The trick is how to put the touch of glue on the make it pop up!

Dalia Flower Garden and paint

When in bloom, the Dahlia garden in Volunteer park is so beautiful and full of color.  Here is one of my favorite photos.  

For this project, I tore a photo in half and glued it to a painted canvas board.  

In order to have the photograph ripped where I wanted, I brushed water along the tear line.  After gluing the left half of the photo onto the canvas, I painted the right side to match.

Tulips ... photo and paint.. 30 Day Art Challenge

Again, this year I entered the 30 Day Art Challenge. I have to complete 30 8x10 canvas boards within 30 days.  The Art who will take place at the Pioneer Square Art walk on December 4th. It is an unburied show with over 3000 canvasses!

I love taking photos at the Skagit Valley Tulip festival every spring.  For this project, I selected an 8X10 canvas board. the background started with papers and tissues that I added with a Golden Gel medium.  I added a layer of blue acrylic paint..  The bottom third of the canvas I painted a couple shades of green.

I cut the photo of the tulips into sections.  The largest tulip I cut out to add last.

Two sections of the tulips were glued on the canvas. 

Then I painted the tulips across the canvass at the horizon line.

The leaves and stalks were added next.  

The large tulip was then added. 

The last touch was a tulip bud that I had cut out of the photo.  From a distance it is hard to tell the photograph from the painting of the tulips.

Poppies and Lavender

Starting from scratch painting a field of flowers would not occur to me.  I wouldn't know where to start.  Here I took a photo of a field of poppies with lavender in the background.  I ripped the photo in half and painted the left half.  It is a good exercise choosing and mixing paints, looking at the layers, and blending the photo and the paint.  

I use acrylic paint and just mix colors as I go.  The photo is printed on Kodak Matte paper.  I run a line of water along where I plan to rip it so that it tears where I plan.

Little Boxes

There is something special about a decorated box. Craft stores often have kraft paper boxes that I paint first with gesso. Then I paint the box. When i paint, I often put two or more colors on my brush.  On this one I took a napkin and separated the design so it would only have one layer and decoupaged it on with Golden Matte Medium.