7 Layer Studio

Basement Blahs Banished

I'm happy to report that the basement is (almost) finished! 

Just in time for us to move.  But we won't talk about that right now.

Here it is while standing in the kid's playroom, looking into the guest room.  I didn't want to close off the space entirely because of all the wonderful daylight from the sliding glass doors.  But I wanted to provide a sense of privacy to guests, which is why I opted for a partial wall and the drapes between the rooms.

Just to refresh your memory, here's the same space in the midst of the remodel.

Just a slight improvement, don't ya think?

Our only regret is that we didn't do this a lot sooner so that we could enjoy it more...we LOVE our basement now!

Here's a dresser I rescued from dump-dom (and yes, 2 of those knobs are a little different....I started painting them and wiping away the excess, but I'm not sure if I prefer the painted look or not).

Here she is before the makeover, all $25 of her.  Someone had started refinishing the top, but since that time the top had suffered extreme trauma so I decided to just fill, sand, and paint the whole thing.

The whole dresser was completely thrashed with scratches and dents, and the light colored "stripe" you see there is actually exposed raw wood from where part of the vertical corner piece was entirely ripped off.  Steve helped me a lot on this piece = he was really tired of it sitting in our garage (I lacked the energy/impetus to start the repair work on it) so he fixed the broken corner and helped me fill the millions of scratches.  What a great guy, eh?

 

Here's another rescue project...but unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures of this one.

I decided to just go with all the dings and dents that were in this piece and distressed the finish to accentuate the "character marks". 

Here's another fun project, my darling armoire named Big Red.  Yes, I'm really good at stating the obvious.  Again, no "before" pictures of this one, but I'll just tell you it was blonde pine wood with a lot of knots showing and you can probably imagine what it looked like before.  I actually painted this one a long time ago, but I don't think I ever showed it to you.

The guest bed is another refinishing project I started long ago and finally finished this past month.  The initial layer is turquise, with white over the top and then distressed.

I made this pillow a few days ago because I just COULDN"T let that huge red bedspread sit there all alone without a single cute pillow to engage the eye.  I love the ruffled red ribbon in this pillow - and I love how easy it was to attach to the pillow front with fusible hem tape!

The bed skirt is another recently finished project - I swiped 20" from the width of 2 IKEA drape panels to make the skirt, then fused grey grosgrain ribbon to the (already hemmed!) bottom edge.  I put a center box pleat in the middle of each skirt for added interest.  The remaining drape fabric was then used to make drapes for the sliding glass door - I sewed the red and white polka dot fabric (3 yards of home dec fabric cut in half lengthwise) to the raw edge that I had just created by swiping the 20" for the bed skirt.  I love multi-tasking fabric!

I still have to paint the louvered doors which lead into the furnace room.  The previous owners had slapped paint all over those poor doors...you can probably imagine all the huge drips and globs that were marring the finish.  I spent quite some time sanding it down, and haven't had time to repaint them yet.  I can only paint trim and doors in spurts because it's not a task I enjoy...and after cutting, installing, patching, caulking, and painting all the baseboard and doorway trim in the entire basement, I needed a rest.

Here's a closeup of some little paintings I did a few months ago.

I hadn't painted any artwork for YEARS, and after finding out we were moving I had a sudden, very impractical urge to start painting again.  Not the best timing in the world, I know.  I think it was a reaction to all the stress of not wanting to move and being overwhelmed with everything that needed to be done prior to leaving this home.  Kinda like blogging about the basement remodel at 3:00 a.m. instead of sleeping.  Not that I would ever do such a thing.

Anyway, I did these little "practice" paintings to get warmed up again, before starting on the GIANT paintings that I was craving to do (big, door-sized panels like I painted for galleries before having children).  Needless to say, reality hit before I finished any big giant paintings, but at least I enjoyed a little creative outlet for awhile.  I'm really looking forward to resuming painting once I get settled in North Carolina.  No fair taking bets on how many years that will take.  :-)

 

 

 

Pattern Testing, anyone?

Don't worry, the bow is optional.  :-)   I've run out of photos of my new pattern because I posted them all in the last post, but here's a refresher:

I have worked out all the kinks that I can find in the Pocket Purse pattern - now it's up to you to make it bullet-proof!  If you would like to be a pattern tester for this bag, leave a comment telling me so (or email me if you're having trouble commenting by clicking on the Contact Me in the sidebar).

I will leave it open for comments for the next 24 hours or so, then will randomly select 3 people as testers.  The bag is probably an Intermediate skill level because of the gazillion pieces (slight exaggeration) of fabric and interfacing and the precision required to put it together well.  I've got another wedding to help with this weekend (3 friend's daughters tied the knot this summer = busy, busy) so I'd like to get the patterns farmed out by Friday.

On an entirely separate note, look what I found in my college portfolio!  I dug my trusty (dusty) old large portfolio case out of the closet today, and found several student drawings from my days as an art student at BYU Utah.

Dinosaur bones, anyone?  Wow, look at that date...I can't believe it has been nearly 20 years since I was a freshman in college.  My signature needs work, but it's pretty hard to sign one's name legibly with vine charcoal.  And yes, my maiden name was Mendenhall.

These drawings were done in one of my favorite classes I had there.  Each class period (3 hours long) we would go to either the Bean Life Museum (which housed an extensive collection of taxidermied animals) or the local dinosaur museum and draw things.  Like bones and stuffed animals, as you can see.  There were 2 rules:  we could only draw with vine charcoal (the burnt twigs with no wooden casing surrounding the charcoal) and NO ERASING ALLOWED.  EVER. 

The point was to force us to evaluate the form as a whole and map out the proportions before obsessing about one particular part of the object, not to mention mucking up the paper with excessive eraser smudges.  We had to really concentrate on where our lines were going before diving in because once a line was there, it was THERE.  Using vine charcoal made us acutely aware of line quality, and we learned where to make thin lines and where they needed to be dark and bold.

Oh, man, looking at these brings back so many memories.  And it makes me crave drawing with vine charcoal - that is my favorite drawing tool by far.  With all the other hats I'm wearing right now I just don't have the time to put my "fine art" hat on right now, but believe me, I have plenty of drawings and paintings planned in my head for when I do.

This was from a different class, one about shading and light sources.  We were only allowed to use pencils in this class, so we learned about the different hardnesses of pencils and when to use which pencil.  For this assignment, we each had an egg in front of us on a white piece of paper.  The only light source was from the wall of windows on one side of the room.  We studied the gradation of shadow and the different depths of shadow.  Also note the reflected light on the very back of the egg - it doesn't just keep getting darker even though the direct light is not falling there at all, due to the white paper it's sitting on.

This egg, in reality, was plain white.  But we had to pretend it was white on one side, grey in the middle, and black on the other end and draw it accordingly.  There were also multiple light sources on this egg, which is why you see multiple shadows.

This was a large piece of paper that the professor had tacked up to the wall as another exercise in light and shadow.  Ahh, I sure miss those college art class days.  Since the art department was relatively small and studio class sizes were, at most, 15 or 20, we all got to know eachother really well.  I had a great relationship with several of my professors, and they became my friends more than instructors in many cases.  Good times, good times.

Okay, I have to share one story with you.  The professor for the shading class, Haagen Haltern, was a native of Germany and was typically very quiet and seemed pretty serious.  I discovered he had quite the sense of humor, however, when he caught me dozing at my drawing bench (I didn't sleep much in college because of a heavy class load, and morning classes killed me).  He snuck up behind me and, grabbing my ankle, let out a series of very convincing - and loud - dog barks. 

Oh, you can well imagine how high I jumped and how loudly I shrieked...and how utterly surprised and delighted my classmates were!  Haagen thought it was pretty darn funny too - we were all cracking up laughing for quite some time.  I'll never forget that day, needless to say.  And from then on, I tried a lot harder to stay awake in his class.

Well, my friends, it's late again.  I'll post the pattern testing "winners" either tomorrow night or sometime on Friday.  Thanks in advance! 

 
  
  

Oh, What's In A Name?

We had a friend come visit  (she and Steve knew eachother from CG Academy days) this past week when she was in town and it was so much fun to spend a day together.  She and her husband have 3 adorable daughters, and many years ago I had done name paintings for the first 2 girls when they were born.  Well, child #3 got left out of the deal when she came along about 3 years ago, so Joanna commissioned me to make one for Kendra. 

Kendra loves purple, so this is what I came up with.  Hopefully it fits the bill - I think it might.  :-)

This is Eliza's name painting.  I painted it before she was born, and even brought it with me to the hospital for something to focus on during labor, which turned out to be a very good thing (long story).

I didn't make one for Hyrum until he was a year or two old - but no matter, he was too young to care.  I STILL haven't done one for Hazel, poor girl.  It's so true what they say about the last child not getting nearly as much photo/video/attention time.  I've got to do better about that.  Doing Kendra's name painting has gotten me back into the mode of stuff like that again...hopefully I'll be able to start (and finish) hers soon.

But not today, though - today is my friend's daughter's wedding, and I'm helping with the decorations/tables/flowers for the reception.  Things are going pretty smoothly, except for the "minor" dilemma of what to do with 100 asiatic lilies that refuse to open, despite my warm water and sunshine treatments.  I don't know what I'm going to do if at least some of those lilies don't open - there are only 2 blossoms that have opened even partway out of the entire bunch.  They have 6 hours to do their thing.  Tick tock, tick tock.  There's always gotta be something at the last minute, eh?  The last wedding I did was crazy because of the weather, now it's the flowers.  Maybe if enough of you chant "Open...Open...Open" they'll respond in time.  Here's hoping!
  

A Product of my Former Life, and Did I Really Say I'd Be Settling Down?

 

I'd like you to meet a giant painting I did many many moons ago, before 9 years of marriage, 3 babies, and 5 different houses came into my life.  It's really big - as big as a door, in fact.  Wait - it IS a door! 

 

Yes, it's painted on a hollow-core door available at your local home improvement store.  Much less expensive than the art-specific wooden panels available for the equivalent of an arm and half a leg, and it serves the same purpose.

This painting is hanging in my sister's house.  Tricia, my sister, owns more of my art than I do at this point...how funny is that?  She and her husband were very generous sponsors of my work when I was playing Starving Artist.  

Before my 3 precious little kiddos came along, I was selling my work at a few galleries in Oregon.  I managed to produce a fair amount of artwork up until Eliza was about a year old.  When we made the big move across the ocean blue (Steve was stationed in Hawaii for 5 1/2 years, and we decided to come along), I either sold or gave away most of my inventory. 

 Reality had sunken in at that point, and I knew I'd have to put my artwork on the back burner for the next decade or so.  Besides, shipping a  highly embellished door from Hawaii was likely to cost more than the artwork itself!  Okay, not really, but you get my drift.

 

So anyway,  when the kids and I were in Oregon I got to reaquaint myself with some of my pieces at my sister's house, my brother's house, and my parent's house.  That's the benefit of family members collecting your work - you get to stop and say hello once in awhile.   I don't really know how else to explain it but to say that it feels like I'm meeting up with an old friend again.  After spending so much thought, time, and energy into a piece of artwork, it can be hard to see them off.  Which is why I love it when my pieces are passed on to family and friends.

  

This piece includes collaged elements from my etchings and monotypes, plus little details like hand-stitching (yes, that's real thread holding those paper squares together) and cool old postage stamps.  The turquoise ribbon is painted on...what a time-consuming effort that was, but I loved the results so much I usually incorporated the ribbon into most of my painted works.  Ah, the memories this piece brings back!  Those were good times.  Back when I would work 12 to 16 hours a day on my artwork, without a single other obligation. 

But how can I begrudge those days when I now have 3 sweet little monsters who make life so incredibly exciting and meaningful?  And almost overwhelmingly challenging, but we won't bring that up right now.

Look at my darling little man, learning how to dance under the charming tutelage of his effervescent and imaginative cousin, who occasionally moonlights as Cinderella.

Nothing can compare to that.  Except maybe a good night's sleep, which I'm definitely not going to be getting tonight ... I mean this morning. 

I'm so excited to show you all the fun things we did and saw on our vacation, but processing and documenting about 400 photos is a lot of work!

Besides, I have a new, BIG reason it's taking me so long....

No, I'm not pregnant. (phew!)

The day after I got back from our trip, we signed papers for the house we just bought.  So instead of unpacking and doing laundry (can't say I'm incredibly disappointed about that, although it's coming back to bite me now) we were finalizing what was an unbelievably smooth and quick short sale purchase. 

I didn't dare say anything about it sooner, because everyone told us that about 3% of short sales actually make it to closing.  Since we slipped into the contract when a previous buyer-to-be backed out, however, it all happened relatively fast and easily.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to manage packing and fixing up the "new" house while summer vacation is in full swing.  The kitchen and baths are in desperate need of remodelling, and the whole house needs painting inside.  Then there's the question of what on earth to do with a gigantic fish tank left by the sellers, full of water and so much slimy growth inside (nary a live fish in sight) that it makes me cringe just thinking about cleaning that thing out enough to try and sell it on Craigslist.  Aquatic slime farm, anyone?  I'll throw in the stagnant koi pond and poor dead turtle and tadpoles outside too, if you'd like.  Anyway, there's lots and lots of work to do, but we're grateful for the opportunity to buy a (relatively) affordable home in a great location, and the place really does have a lot of potential.  Give me a few months, and I'll start sharing the transformation with ya'll.  For now, though, I really do need to get to bed.  Good night!

Easter Wrap Up + Giveaway

 

We had a belated Easter party yesterday in our backyard.  I was going to do something fun for the kids and their friends last week, but with Hyrum, then Hazel, then finally Eliza getting pink eye, it put a damper on our plans to do so.  On Monday I just did a really low-key, spur-of-the-moment event with cupcakes to decorate and an egg hunt.  This is Hyrum's creation...can you see the frosting at all?  It's somewhere underneath all those sprinkles.  He was, as you can tell, tickled pink about having free reign of the sprinkle supply.

Ah, such sweet indulgence...and Hyrum was relishing every morsel of it.

 

This was Hazel's interaction with sprinkles just before the party began...fascinating, isn't it, to see what happens when one dumps out an entire container of sprinkles on the floor?  It looks like she's thinking, "Now how in the world did those get down there?  Hhmmmm...where should I start eating first?"

I had turned away just for a second to look for a funnel to pour the large container (the contents of which you now see on our floor) of sprinkles into separate smaller containers with shaker lids on them.  That's all the time it took for Hazel to reach up (not even counter height is safe with her anymore!) and test the effects of gravity on an open container of sprinkles.

 

After both of us stared in awe at the mess (remember this is just before the party started) Hazel immediately embarked on a feeding frenzy while I got the broom and the vaccuum cleaner.  I'm glad I had my camera right there to document it.  I must admit it's pretty funny...and I'm just glad it wasn't something liquid and sugary spilling all over my pretty kitchen rug!  In the end, there was no harm done and we still had plenty of sprinkles to go around (I always keep a hefty stash of sprinkles in my house, the kids love to use them).

Eliza loves to smear food on her face to create the mustache/beard effect.  Charming, isn't it?  I'm sure it makes the cupcake taste better.

 

Here's a beardless version of Eliza...I can't believe how grown-up she's getting.  I still think of her as a toddler sometimes.

 

Through the years I've started on countless (admittedly half-baked) projects with the intent of generating a little income while being a stay-at-home-mom, only to be stymied by the marketing aspect of the deal.  Here is one such project I started a few years ago, but never went anywhere with it.

Back when I was doing a fair amount of scrapbooking, I decided I'd paint these holiday-related images with watercolor on nice, thick watercolor paper, cut them out like these are, and sell them as cute little original images on ebay for people searching for hand-made accessories for their pages. 

I thought that, as long as I kept the images fairly simple, it shouldn't take me that long to make them so I could turn a little bit of a profit on the side when my kids were in school/napping.

Well, it didn't take long for me to realize that if I broke down the number of hours it took me to paint these, cut them out, photograph them, list them on ebay or etsy, and pay the commission, I'd be making somewhere in the realm of $1 or $2 an hour for my efforts = NOT worth it!

 

So then I thought, well, maybe I can just color photocopy them on heavy-duty paper and sell collections of them for just a few dollars apiece, and then the buyer could just cut them out her/himself.  No go, because the copies looked lousy.

THEN I thought that I could just find a company that does licensing work and have them do all the un-fun marketing/producing stuff, and I could retain a percentage of the sales.

 

That, obviously, didn't pan out either.  The quality isn't really good enough to reproduce (remember, I was trying to do simple, quick little images to sell the originals of?) so these little watercolor ditties have been sitting in a box for quite some time now. 

I'm not exceptionally proud of them, but it would be nice to do something with them instead of putting them in a box until the unknown day I find the time to start doing scrapbooking again.

 

 

So here's what I'm going to do: 

I'm going to host a little giveaway of all the little ditties you see pictured below so that one of YOU can start making use of them!

 

I may end up giving away more of these later, but for now I think I'll start with these.  It's a smorgasbord collection, with a little bit o'everything!

Sooo, if you're interested in winning these to do a little springtime scrapbooking with, then please just leave a comment at the end of this post.  I'll have one of my kiddos randomly draw a name in one week, say, next Tuesday April 21st.  Until then, happy blogging!

A Desk All Her Own

 

This is Eliza's room, and this is the desk I just finished for her.  It used to look like this:

 

Yes, this was another bargain Craigslist find, and it came with the chair too, only it was originally brown.  Once again I had to contend with that awful laminate top that seems to be the standard surface for furniture built in the 70's.  I brushed on 2 coats of primer (the stain was still seeping through in spots) and 3 coats of white paint, then finished it with a clear gloss sealer because (silly me) I had purchased satin finish white paint and it did not scrub clean very easily.  Hazel attacked it with a pencil after the 3rd paint layer, and it wouldn't come off so I had to touch it up with paint again.  That was when I determined it was necessary for the clear coat!

 

I decided that white was definitely too boring for this chair, with all its fun little details just begging to be embellished.  There was a lot more I could have done with this chair, but I was on a time crunch and had to leave it at the "medium-decorated" level.  Eventually, when I start sewing again, I'll make her a seat cushion but for now this is what it looks like.

 

Eliza REALLY wanted to help paint her own knobs, so I gave her lots of Qtips and little baby food plastic lids full of craft paint, and she went to town!

Not bad for a 6 year old, eh?

 

 

Eliza was basing her designs on the knobs that I had painted years ago for her dresser and nightstand.

 

I posted these knobs about a year ago when I first started this blog, but in case you've never gone back that far, here are some of my favorites again!

 

These were obviously done back when I had more time...I can't imagine sitting down and doing these in such great detail now.  If I remember correctly, each knob took me 30 minutes to an hour to paint because I had to work so slowly and carefully.

 

 

Crazy, I know...

 

So there it is, the finished product!  Eliza is thrilled about having a desk in her room, she loves to go up there and do her homework and write letters to people.  I remember when I was a kid I had a special tree stump (complete with little nooks and crannies for my markers) out in the woods that I would write and illustrate stories on, and I loved having that special space all to myself.  Now Eliza has a (slightly more sophisticated) creative space all her own, too - and she couldn't be happier.

Giveawayeroni

Well, I haven't been posting this week because I've been caught up in an effort to reverse some radical decisions being made by our beloved (not) principal at Eliza's elementary school.  To make a long story short, they needed to cut 3 teachers from the school because the predicted enrollment fell short (they don't require pre-registration here) and instead of combining small classes and minimizing the damage, they're shuffling at least a hundred kids here and there, switching teachers and creating a big confusing mess.  School started at the end of July here, so they were already in the groove with their classes and now they're being uprooted and transferred all over the place.  Eliza's wonderful teacher (who has been with her the whole time since kindergarten, as they move up from k to 1st grade with the same class and teacher) is being sent to another grade and Eliza's class is all broken up.  She is being sent to a different 1st grade teacher whose own 1st grade class got shuffled away, only to get an entirely new set of 1st graders.  Go figure. 

We were told of the changes on Tuesday, and they began splitting everyone up the very next day.  Not all of the teachers involved, let alone parents, were asked for input.  Needless to say, lots of teachers, parents and kids are very upset and we've been trying to figure out what can be done.  It's the latest event in a long line of poorly executed decisions by our principal.  Gotta love it. 

ANYWAY, needless to say I haven't been doing any creative projects this week.  Just lots of letters and meetings.  Soooo, to make up for it, how about another giveaway?

 

This is a (bad photograph of a) print that I reproduced from a watercolor painting awhile back.  It looks better in real life, don't worry!  It's a reproduction printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, signed and numbered by me. 

Let's see, how about I draw a lucky winner next Monday, September 8th?  Deal.  Just leave a comment on this post and your name will be included in the drawing.  And, just for fun, I think I'll go back to the terms of my first giveaway, where if you send someone else over here to enter and they mention you in their comment, your name will be entered again!  The more the merrier.  :-)