Finally, some more mini canvas painting!!

I finally painted some more mini canvases!! :)

There's no real chatter to put with these, so I hope you enjoy!

Cherry blossom in the wind is on a 2"x3" canvas.

Simple daisies on a black canvas is on a 4"x4" canvas.

And one of my new favorite pieces!! Lovebirds on a branch, with flowers and green background is on a 3"x3" canvas. LOVE IT!!

This 3"x3" canvas I had painted with a blue gradient a while back, and could just never decide what I wanted to put on it. Well, I brought it out when I was hanging out with my mom this last weekend to paint together, and she just 'saw' a boat on it, so I offered her the canvas, and this is what she did! Pretty good, huh? :)

This is another canvas I painted a while back, didn't know what to put on it, but left it with my mom to see what she puts on it! Whenever she decides, I'll try to show y'all, too! :)

Until next time.....

Craft ya laters!! :)

Another Mini'd Rendering of Full Size BYOB Piece

I had my first ever craft booth this past Saturday, and I want to update you all but it will definitely take time to do even close to the amount of information I learned and want to update on here, so keep an eye out this week for that post (or maybe those 2/3 posts? We'll see how much I end up writing up!) 

In the meantime, I wanted to do a quick post to show one of the last mini art pieces I painted to put in my stock for the craft show!

Remember when I painted these pieces with my bff Airon at the BYOB painting sessions?

This post here

This post here

The third one we did, I only just realized I never blogged about to show you! But here's the piece we did:

As you can see in the first picture and below, I created miniature pieces of all 3 to mimic what we did in those sessions. This last one I only just made Thursday night however:

I'm really really glad I made this one though, and I think especially for doing it in a 4"x4" size, bc there was a woman that saw it and FLIPPED!! She just *had* to have it, along with these other pieces:

 

I'm thinking I might just have to paint some more pieces in the 4"x4" size....

Craft ya laters!

Craft Show Prep - Miniature Galaxy Art, Daisies, Starry Nights and Display Ideas

I hung out with a friend of mine this last Saturday and we ended up getting some crafting done! I believe I was actually the most product craft-wise in that 4 hours than I have been lately....I really need to work on that one...

Anywho! She's been getting pretty into papercrafting and gave me this piece she'd done before:

And she got this one done while I was there:

I can't wait to see what else she comes up with!

So, what did *I* get done in the 4 hours we were hanging out? Well, I think I mentioned to you guys before about using some mini canvases to re-create a couple of larger art pieces I did at Easely Amused here, but not that I'd been on a huge miniature art kick earlier this year that was the reason behind even having those miniature canvases! 

Those little art canvases are so awesome! You can get in sizes like 2"x2", 2"x3", 3"x3", 2"x4", etc... I'd gone to a local art store and gotten a ton of them because I was seeing online lots of cute things you can do with them! They sold them in packs of 6 and were about $5-$7 a pack. These little things are perfect for use as doll house art pieces, putting on a little trinket shelf, or for me, the appeal is putting on my wall at work since I have a desk job and only so much space to display art and things. 

I also love the miniature canvases because I don't have to be a great artist to get a small piece of art that actually looks pretty awesome! The Starry Night especially is one of those cases where if I tried doing the detail of the tree tops on a bigger canvas, say, 2'x3' or something I would have taken FOREVER and still not felt like I got it just right.

Now, I haven't sprayed these guys in an acrylic gloss sealant but I wanted to show you what I got done. I will show you guys what they look like after I spray them though as they should pop just a tad bit more on the colors, similar to what resin does on the clay pieces I've done.

The whole set.

Galaxies - Top left is 2"x3" and then 2"x2" canvases, bottom row are all 3"x3" pieces.

Daisies - This piece is 2"x4".

Starry Night - This little guy is only a 2"x2"!!

There were a couple of these that I painted what I thought would look good and then completely painted over and started again, but hey, I'm pretty happy with the results! Now I just need to do more!

I was also given an AWEsome suggestion by my bff, Airon, about what other pieces I could do. She suggested I do some sets as Xmas ornaments by doing some wintery/Xmasy themes and putting ribbon on the back to hang them by, and sell them for something like "Any 3 for $12". What do you guys think?

Also, I've been thinking about how to display them and have seen this idea which I think is cute:

Seen here from Two Hand Design blog.

Or maybe something like this:

Seen on Jamie's Home Blog here.

I want to mix the two ideas above and make something that's maybe about 1' wide by 2' high, with a hinge, so really there would be 2 pieces that are each 1'x2' and instead of using 1/2" quarter round for the shelves, I'd use 1/2"x1" quarter round so there's enough space for the canvases to be leaned back.

For the Christmas themed pieces, ornaments and such, I have bought a 2' tall (tabletop type) green fake Christmas tree so I can display the ornaments on that. I'd be able to use a clip and put a yellow paper star on the top, and that could be my price sign!

Craft ya laters!!

New ideas, new upcoming projects, new inspiration!!

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 06-29-2012

So I've been gone for a bit because I was working 2 jobs, but I quit that one about a couple months ago and since then, have just basically been settling in to the new house we moved in to in March, but also have been incredibly busy at the day job! Thankfully however, we have internet access and in my minutes here and there, I have found inspiration to start crafting again and MAKE the time at home to do stuff!!

I have started a pinterest account and through this, I have found lots of awesome ideas, and I continue to find awesome things each time I go on, but have also posted a lot of ideas for things I would like to try and have even tried a few already!!

Here are a few of the things I've come up with and will be aiding in my immediate future projects/items. Please forgive the poor photo quality, I have had issues with my digital camera capturing the colors just right and/or have used my camera phone just to get these up for you guys:


These are done with shades of purple in an ombre-style painting, then stenciled on the black rose, first one has silver paint to accent (I accidentally used a little too much black paint and it seeped under the edges of the stencil, honest 1st-time type of mistake) so for the second one, I didn't use as much paint and then just sprinkled a little purple glitter over in a few spots and it was much better!
 
This one I painted a 2-tone background, a wooden table with a pink tablecloth draped on it at an angle and a blue pearly vase and attached silk flowers to look like a flower vase on the hall table perhaps.

This one was just the blue pearly background (love this color!!), brown tree branch painted on and then the white silk flowers were glued on to look like a cherry blossom tree in full bloom on a beautiful spring morning!

For this one, I painted thick stripes of red and a dark orange as the background, if I'd had a stencil I would have used it but unfortunately for the leaves, I cut these out by hand out of card-stock and then laid it down and sponged around with the gold to have the imprint show of the background.

All the canvases above were painted using acrylic paint and 3"x3" canvases and then sprayed with a gloss varnish-type spray to seal in the paint and to give the awesome extra gloss look.

Yes, believe it or not, these are all only 3"x3" canvases!! I have gotten 24 of these little guys and am having a blast with testing out techniques on them!! This has been a good way to make sure that before I get to a larger, more permanent canvas, I am less likely to make a big mistake and if I do make one, it'll be less severe just as I have a basic idea of what to do.

You should be able to find the blank canvases in a 6-pack at Hobby Lobby for about US $5.00; I haven't found an online supplier yet as I was really anxious to get these the day I wanted to play!!

Next I will post a couple of resin pieces/projects I've done/am working on!!