Working It Wednesday: Creating a series

As those of you who have been following my blog know, I've been pondering the idea of no longer painting my Nativity sets. I've gone back and forth about it and decided to do both. That's right, both!

I'm going to retire the current Nativity set at the end of this Christmas season. I will then reveal a newly designed Nativity set next year in October for the 2017 Christmas season. I've decided to start a series where every year I recreate the Nativity set with a new design. This will keep my best selling Nativity sets available while also keeping my design unique and fresh. I'm excited to see how it all turns out! Note to shoppers, if you want one of the current Nativity sets you need to go to my Etsy shop and order one now because it disappears forever on Christmas Day!
You can visit my shop here: Etsy Shop

I've read before that artists should try and create a series out of items that have been successful sellers. I've never done it but feel it's a good time for me to start focusing on that. I've got my Nativity set that sells wonderfully but I've also got a few canvases that sell consistently that I may try to turn into series as well. There is a canvas I sold back in April that I've missed like crazy ever since then. It's a bird silhouette with a perfect turquoise background. On Pinterest, it's my most repinned pin. Seriously, it's at like 9,600 pins! That means 9,600 people liked my painting! I'd like to do a series spinoff of that. I honestly think it's my best painting I've ever done. And I never even took a truly decent picture of it! I've done other bird paintings but nothing ever looked quite as good as that one.

And there's a colorful, whimsical tree painting that almost always sells every time I paint it so that's a thought too. You can check out the colorful tree here: Whimsical Tree

While craft fairs are on hiatus until early Spring, this might be a great project for me to work on. So stay tuned for insight into series I'll be creating!

Working It: Volunteer work

So I didn't blog last week and I know today isn't Wednesday but I have seriously been working it and I've just now gotten time to blog about it. I was asked to decorate the sanctuary for New Hope Christian Church's upcoming VBS and their theme this year is Deep Sea Discovery. Now, growing up, the churches I attended never did much by way of VBS decorations. There were maybe some posters or signs but no real decorations that I can remember. New Hope goes all out. Like, really, really big, elaborate decorations. But hey, I've got some time and a touch of artistic talent so I figured I was up for the challenge. After some serious Pinterest researching, I sketched out my ideas and mentally planned out how long it would take me to make everything. Seemed simple enough. I figured it would take 4 or 5 days tops. I figured wrong. It took more like 8 or 9 days. Most of which were pretty labor intensive days. Things I thought would take a couple hours ended up taking a couple days instead. Thankfully, I'd allowed 2 weeks even though I anticipated finishing in just 1 week. But as of tonight, it is finally finished and it all turned out beautifully (in my professional opinion) and I'm sure the kids will love it next week during VBS. I fully intended to take tons of pictures along the way but now that I'm blogging I see that I missed LOTS of photos of steps in the creative process. I did get some pics though so I can at least share those.

The original sketches. 

Step 1 in creating the rocks of the coral reef: tear up old magazines.

Step 2: Tape balls of magazine pages to 3 sides and the top of  a sturdy box.

The completed product of Step 2 in making rocks. I had to do this 5 times. This was the smallest of the 5 rocks.

Step 3 of Rock Making was one of many things that I forgot to take pictures of. It was to create a 50/50 mixture of glue and water and paper mache over the taped up boxes. It is recommended that you do 2-4 layers of paper mache. For the sake of time, I only did 2 layers. Let it dry for 24 hours.

Step 4 of rock making: Coat each box in Dryloc to give both durability and texture.

Step 5 was also left out of the photos. It was to spray paint each box with a light sand colored satin paint. 

Step 6: Bring out the details of the rocks by sponge brushing a darker tan color over the spray painted boxes. 

This is what the rocks looked like when I was finished.

For seaweed plants, I cut old cardboard into plant shapes and then painted them in three different colors of green so that they would look more realistic than a simple one-tone green color.

I created coral for the rocks using a can of spray-on expanding foam. It was the thing I thought would be the hardest but ended up being the easiest, least time consuming thing I made. I laid out sheets of wax paper, taped bamboo skewers to them, and simply sprayed the foam over the skewers in random, coral like patterns. Then I let them dry for a day before spray painting them neon pink. I have zero pictures of this process which stinks because it would have made a great pinterest tutorial. 

To make sea stuff to attach to the rocks I took small styrofoam balls, covered them with bamboo skewers and spray painted them in bright blue. Not 100% certain what sea life/sea creature they're supposed to be but they added color and texture and someone else had done it on Pinterest so I did it too. Easy enough to make but I did end up with several teensy tiny little splinters that were a pain to pull out. And of course I didn't take any pictures, go figure.

I also took natural sponges and spray painted them neon yellow. They ended up absorbing a lot of the color and turned out more mustard than neon but that's ok. Again, no pictures were taken.

And lastly, to decorate the rocks, I took Dollar Tree pool noodles and sliced them up. I used lime green ones but really any color would've looked great. These were super easy to cut but gave me a real pain when it came time to super glue them to the rocks. Lets just say it took multiple tubes of super glue and several command strips to get them to stay. I ended up feeling very thankful that I'd only planned to incorporate a small amount of them onto the rocks. 

The church had provided me with a poster of a submarine and a sea turtle. I took those and using a repositionable glue, attached them to foam core and cut them out. I had no clue how hard it is to cut foam core. This ended up being my least favorite task but still turned out great.

I used simple green crepe paper to make seaweed around the submarine and school of fish.

 To make a school of fish, I took old bubble wrap and cut random, free-handed sizes of a basic fish shape. I laid them out, ever so slightly overlapping them and tacked them together with dots of super glue. Then I used my fingers to wipe various bright colors over the bubble side of the plastic. This was easy and I sorta liked how the bubbles in the wrap, once painted, looked like fish scales.

The end result of the centerstage for New Hope Christian Church's 2016 VBS!!!

Working It Wednesday: Event Booth Prep

This week I've been working on my booth for my upcoming events. The event I have later this month is the Hutchison School Beeline Bazaar, which is an indoor event. I love indoor events! That means my booth doesn't need a tent and I don't have to worry about wind or weather situations. 

I haven't participated in any events since last April and that was an outdoor event so needless to say, my booth needed some re-vamping. I started by sketching out the vision in my mind of what my "indoor" booth should look like. Here's what I came up with:

How I hope the booth will look!

I still had all my old signs from events I'd done last year but they were the wrong colors so I repainted them and am so much happier with the new color scheme than my previous one. My previous colors were more primary colors and now they're more of a beachy pastel scheme. Yellow, Coral, Aqua and Light Grey. I also used my newfound skill of hand-lettering to redo my chalkboard sign. My writing still isn't where I 'd want it to be but it's much better and will do for now until I can sharpen my skills.

My pile of table fixtures and signage, all freshly painted!

Next, I needed a backdrop of sorts. I already had tables and shelves but have never had a backdrop because I've never wanted to shell out the money for one. Everything I found that would work in the past has been upwards of $100 or more. I hate spending a lot of money on display stuff and just won't do it. I'd rather put money into my products. Luckily for me, I scored a wonderful shutter folding screen on a yard sale site for only $40! It was old and dirty as the previous owner had used it outdoors but I figured it was nothing a little elbow grease and painting couldn't fix up. 

The shutter screen before my handy work.

Let's just say I had no idea how much work it would be to sand and paint shutters. All those teeny tiny wooden slats! It took 2 days of working on it to get it how I wanted it. Eventually though, I got it looking decent enough to make me happy. I was so happy to be finished with it that I actually forgot to take a picture of the finished product before I put it in my storage unit. I painted it a light grey and made sure it had a distressed and worn look to it. 

 Me, all smiles before getting started! I had no idea how much work was ahead of me!

I can't wait to see how everything comes together at my first event and I'll be sure to post lots and lots of pictures on here, Facebook and Instagram afterwards! If you're local to the Memphis area and want to come see the booth all finished and set up, please come visit the Beeline Bazaar on Saturday, March 19th! You can read more about the event here: https://www.hutchisonschool.org/beelinebazaar

Working It Wednesday: Record Bowls

So I haven't worked on anything at all lately because I was out of town for vacation. No worries though! I can still offer up a blog worthy post. Record bowls!

Last year I made a bunch of them and took pictures along the way intending to blog a tutorial about it but never actually did it. These are crazy easy to make and are a fun rainy day activity if you have kids. Super cheap with no mess.

You will need:
Old vinyl records (find them at Goodwill or yard sales)
Metal or Pyrex bowl (shape and size don't matter all that much)
Cookie sheet

To make:
-Preheat oven to 200.
-Place bowl upside down on the cookie sheet.

-Place record centered, on top of bowl.
-Place items in oven and watch through the window as the record begins to droop.

-Once record has drooped, pull cookie sheet out and pull record off. You may want to use pot holders when handling the record but I personally don't. It's too hard for me to follow the next step if I have oven mitts on. But for safety's sake, do what is best for you.
-Immediately mold and shape the bowl by pinching and bending the edges. The record will harden very quickly so you have to work fast.

-Let the bowl cool for about 10-15 minutes.

While these bowls are not food safe, they do make awesome decorative items. I've used them as a quirky catch all by the door for cellphones and keys and I've hung them like artwork on my wall. I've had a friend use one as a base for a cool gift basket. Every bowl will be different, no two alike. Whatever you use them for, it's sure to be a fun activity and create a conversation starter.

I'll be back in my normal groove of things next week and have a real post to share!