Super Crafting Day!

Yesterday was a super crafting day for me and boy, did I need it!! Morgan has had a terrible ear infection and is now better, so I was able to take advantage of my stamping group's little get together. We made some BEAUTIFUL cards! My contribution was a card using one of my favorite PTI stamp sets, A Wreath for All Seasons. I took my inspiration from a card that I found on SCS. It is such a versatile card! In fact, I made one variation yesterday that would make a beautifully simple Christmas card and today, I made a slightly different variation for a sympathy card! I'll post some of the other cards we made in the next few days.

My other crafting adventure took place at Spirited Art, a newer business in Knoxville where ordinary peeps with little or no painting talent (that's me!) along with those who are more adept at painting (a girl named Emily who sat across from me!) come together to create beautiful paintings. The instructor guides you through the entire process, step by step, and it's a lot easier than it looks! Last night's project was a bird's nest with robin's eggs and it was so much fun! My eggs looked a little, um, how shall I put this, suggestive when I first drew and painted them, but I worked on them all night until they looked much better in the final product. The nest was so much fun to paint - very free form, lots of random brush strokes, nothing too precise, just like I like to create!! Remember my love for the stamp set Branch Out?! :D This was my second attempt at Spirited Art and while I'm no ringer, I have been happy with both canvasses. Bailey and I are planning to take a class together soon. I can't wait to see what we create!! Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

We started by mixing bright blue, white, and a bit of yellow to create what was supposed to be robin's egg blue, but I never got mine that shade. I really like this blue, though! This is the background for the bird's nest that we painted within the white space.

Next, we drew the eggs. Mine are obviously sub-par and I HATED the bright blue outline. I worked all night to get them to look better.

This is when it became fun!! Lots of random brushstrokes and Xes in a dark brown that we made by mixing brown and a little black.

My finished masterpiece!! We added a mustard yellow paint to a gel medium for texture and then we took the wooden end of the paintbrush and sort of scribbled in the paint for even more dimension. Very cool!

Halloween 2011

October is by far my favorite month of the year and it seems to come and go so quickly every year. This year, I made a conscious effort to celebrate this glorious month in as many ways as possible. I made the cutest owl cupcakes that we shared with Bailey's teachers and our friends at my parents' church, and I made candy corn shaped cookies that turned out to be tasty. I love filling our hutch with all of the decorations I've collected over the years. This year, I added a banner to the mix and I love how it looks in the living room. And after a super fun night of trick-or-treating and eating with our friends, the Duprees, I had to make an adorable thank you note to send, hence the ghosts in the pumpkin patch! Hope you had a wonderful Halloween and a fabulous October!