Announcements

Over the past few months I have been designing announcements one right after the other. I love doing these because I love to recreate the person's personality onto a card. Here are a couple of my favorites. I love how each one matches that girl's style.


McCall graduating from high school (photos by the fabulous Kristin Bednarz):




Kim graduating from college:




Callie graduating from college (she loves green, can you tell?):




My stinkin' awesome sister-in-law, Kim B. graduating from college (photos by me):



Janessa getting married in June (I designed this B monogram for her which will be on her invitations and seen throughout her wedding material):



Natalie & Talia graduating from high school (graduation party invite):

The First Paintings

I know you all have been waiting to see what I did with all those paint supplies I bought! Let's just say that I am in love with my new hobby! I have lots of new ideas filling my head.

Here is my first "experimental" painting. This one is for my totally amazing friend, Meghan who is currently in Europe without me...so it will have to be a late birthday present! I totally played on this one and I tried a whole bunch of different stuff. I laid down a thick texture of gel medium and let that dry overnight. Then I painted the dark pink color in the upper right hand corner. Once that dried, I laid down the word "LOVE" in sticker letters. Then I had fun painting over it. I also decoupaged one of my favorite verses from Ephesians that talks about love onto the canvas and painted over it. I also added drips and splatters. Once the paint dried, I gently peeled off the sticker letters. It was so fun and I was able to try a bunch of stuff on one canvas.



My good friend, Deanna watched me paint the whole LOVE canvas, so she decided that she needed to come over and have a painting day with me. So this Tuesday, she came over and painted a beautiful yellow and white paisley canvas for her new home. While she did that, I worked on my first collection for my house.



I had an empty space above my towel rack in my guest bathroom, so I wanted to paint something green to go above it. When I found a huge paisley stencil at Hobby Lobby, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it! I bought 4 8x10 canvases and painted them all black. Once they dried, I laid the paisley stencil on top of all four of them and I slathered over it with a thick coat of gel medium to create a raised paisley pattern. After it dried overnight, I brushed four different coats of green over it while still exposing some of the black. It looked perfect with my green paisley towels! Don't you think!?!



Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be happy to answer them! Now to think up my next project...

My 21st Birthday!

I just realized that I hadn't blogged any photos from my birthday! The night before my birthday, Clint and I sent to see the movie 21 which was totally appropriate since it was my 21st birthday! That same night, Clint threw my a surprise party at Carino's with all of our closest friends! Afterwards, they all came over to have cake and hang out at our house. Clint did a great job of putting it together!

On my birthday, Kim took me out to lunch and we finally sat down and designed her graduation announcements which turned out fabulous! I'm going to have to post all of the announcements I have done this year! For dinner, we went over to Clint's family's house. It was very special and it was so nice to actually spend a birthday with Clint (the first time in four years!).

Thanks to Kim for taking all the photos!

Here We Go...a New Hobby!

Do I need another hobby? NO! But do I want to start one? YES! As you can see, I just bought a bunch of supplies to start a new hobby. I have been wanted to start painting for quite awhile, but I have had no time until now.

Clint and I moved into our rent house three months ago. We love having a house, but the sad thing about this house is that all the walls are white! Yuck! And Clint and I LOVE color...bright colors! So, because we don't want to spend the time and money to repaint the whole house (especially if we won't be staying in here for very long) we decided that we would look for large pieces of artwork that were brightly colored and that we could use in our next place. Well, Clint and I have a very picky style and we could not find anything that we really loved that was in our price range. So I said forget it! I am just going to paint something myself!

Although I have lots of scrapbooks, cards, design, photography and crochet projects that I could be working on, I have decided to paint instead. Thanks to my good friends Christa and Katja who gave me advice about what to buy, and lots of inspiration and video tutorials from the awesome Donna Downey, I went out and bought supplies this weekend and started my first project! I am just about finished with it and will be posting here on my blog later this week. It has been so fun and freeing and I am looking forward to creating lots of original works of art for our home.

Kim's Graduation Photo Shoot

On Saturday, I went and took photos for my totally awesome sister-in-law Kim! She is graduating this May with her Bachelor degree in Accounting after five long years of hard work! I'm so, so happy for her to finally be done with school and get to move onto other great things in her life. Here are a several of my favorites from our shoot. Isn't she so, so beautiful?



I love you, Kim!