BYOB Paint Classes and First Official Consignment Deal!!

You guys have heard of Groupon, yeah? (If not, it's a service that works with businesses to offer discount buys of services/goods that basically help businesses get noticed or get some easy business to try and retain long-term customers. They provide emails and have deals not just for your city, state but also for vacation trips and more! It's pretty awesome.) Well, my friend got a couple of classes scheduled through Groupon to a BYOB Paint class at a place called Easely Amused here in Austin, TX. If any of you can, I highly suggest making it out to one of their classes sometime. They've only been open for 2 months, but the owner Bridget, is FANTASTIC!! She makes the classes so much fun with little stories, jokes and just her love of what she does!

For these classes, you are allowed to BringYourOwnBeverage (see beer or wine, etc ;) ), you pay the $30-$40 (depending on size) for the art piece you want, and you are provided all the supplies from the canvas to the brushes to the paints. Once the class is over, you get to go home with your very own piece of art that YOU painted. It doesn't matter your skill level when you go, it will turn out however you want it to. The awesome thing is to see the variety that comes out of the same class, with the same instructor and all the different choices people make and ways they paint.

This is pretty much what you start off with: a blank canvas, a plate full of paint colors, water cup for your brushes and whatever brushes deemed necessary by Bridget you'll need for the picture and of course, my choice of beverage for the night was a bottle of Cabernet Savignon.. yummmm!

This is after a few steps of a blue wash on the top 3rd of the canvas, kiwi green on the middle and a darker green on the bottom of the canvas. Then layers of dots from a pumpkin red all over, to a red on the bottom half and a bright orange on the top half.

Here we have Airon deep in thought as she's adding the leaves on her trees.

This is my finished piece, with a few more layers of leaves added on (including some dark reddish brown leaves in the bottom right corner of the foliage) and tree trunks, nice and whispy!!

Airon's showcasing her awesome finished piece! She added the extra white stripes near the trunks in the grassy area and a few holes in the leaves along with adding a pretty cute bird's nest with some robins!!

After the class, I got curious if I could re-create this picture again. Only, I didn't want to do a full-size so I grabbed a 2"x3" miniature canvas from my stock and.....

What do you guys think?? Pretty similar, eh?! Painting in miniature is pretty challenging! I maybe could have added more layers of leaves, but I like the way it looks now!

The next picture we did (we had 2 Groupon sessions) was poppies!! This is the first few steps done:

We did about 5 yellow dots anywhere on the canvas to place our poppies, then made red sort of flower bodies around them. Then we did a light blue wash down the middle and dark blue on the outsides.

Then we did another round of the blue washes to make them darker. This is Airon's (she wanted more than 5 :) :

This one is mine:

The next few steps were to darken and texturize the poppies, add some dark brown and black scribbles in the centers, leaving however much of the yellow we wanted, and then add some lavender and pink to the meeting ground of light and dark blues and added kiwi green stems.

I added a little more texture to the flowers and was done with mine:

Airon added a few more details and stems and such to hers and here is her final piece!!:

All in all, I'd say these classes, if you have a studio near you, are a MUST!!!! If you happen to be in the Austin, TX area, you can find Easely Amused here. You can also take a look through the picture gallery to see the variance of these pieces people have painted!

 It was such an awesome experience, both times and even though it was the same studio and same instructor, the experiences were still different!! It's also pretty awesome to see all the variations on final pieces with the same instructions!!

Now to the more exciting part!!

I showed Bridget about 10-12 pieces of my jewelry and the pink and brown flowered gathered clutch I showed you guys the other day.... SHE LOVED IT ALL!!! She's giving me a whole shelf on a bookshelf that is in her lobby with the backside facing a full wall WINDOW to the outside/street!! I am so excited about this opportunity for consignment and look forward to working with Bridget on this first time endeavor for my business and hobby!!

Now I just have to price everything, make more clutches, figure out displays, layout on the shelf, etc.....

SO EXCITED!!!! I can't wait to setup my shelf and don't worry, I will definitely show you guys what I come up with!

Craft ya laters!!