Thursday, April 15, 2010

I knew I couldn't do it.

Well, I tried to keep up with sketching daily but boy is that hard when you have ten million things to do every single day. Plus I get distracted so easily. I seriously can't focus on one thing at a time. I guess that's all a part of being a mom. Plus my little guys started baseball this week. Just one more thing to add to the list.
Hope everyone is having a good week so far and got your taxes turned in. I don't know why but we always wait until the last minute to do ours.
I did manage to get a few scrapbook pages done this week. I am so behind. I used to scrap a page a day. Now I can barely get one done in two weeks. Peppermint Creative came out with some new products so that got the fire burning. Some new templates help the process too by Ingrid at peppermint creative.
Here are those pages using Ingrid's templates. I modified them a bit.




Happy Thursday!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Sketch 4/7

I sketched from photos of my cat when she was a kitten. Our Sammy girl. When we bought her we were told that she was a boy. I guess most Orange Tabby cats are boys. Well about a month later after our "second" visit to the vets office the vet figured out Sammy wasn't a boy she was in fact a girl. Isn't that funny! I was very happy to have another girl in the house. I guess about 1-300 Orange Tabby's are girls. So I was told. Pretty cool huh! She is the best cat. Luckily we named her something that was gender neutral. LOL!






Digital scrapbook supplies found at Peppermint Creative and Designs by Dani

Update our home exterior

Now that spring is here I have been thinking about being outdoors and working in our yard. I love to garden and of course paint. One thing that has been bothering me is the exterior of our house. It just looks a little dated. So I'm thinking it needs some paint. Our home was built in 1992 and still has a lot of the original 90's features. So I need to liven her up again. I have been playing around in photoshop and getting some ideas for colors. Any suggestions would be great as well. Here is our house how it looks now during some seasons.




The yellow on our home is all aluminum siding so it can't be painted. But the shutters, porch, garage doors and everything else needs to be painted in my opinion. The shutters are made of vinyl. I have done a little research and you can repaint vinyl shutters. You have to buy a special paint that will contract and expand when heat beats down on them. Sounds like you can use Krylon Fusion or Rustoleum paints that are specifically made for vinyl. Correct me if I'm wrong?

First I was thinking the garage doors need to be painted the same color as our house. I think they stand out way too much as they are right now. My husband thinks they should be the same color as the shutters but I strongly disagree. What do you think?
Next I was thinking of adding white trim around the garage doors, gutters and the porch. Right now it's all the same color as the house.
Shutters and the door? What colors? I was thinking possibly black. Or a green that almost looks black. Like Essex Green by Benjamin Moore.

The front door I was thinking a red to welcome you or just the same as the shutters.

Here is what I came up with in Photoshop to give you and idea.


Here is how my hubby would like it. It looks funny to me. You don't notice the house all you see is the garage doors.


Here it is how it is today. Same photo not edited. Excuse our realtors van. Just a quick photo I found to work with.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Start of Sketch a Day

So it's been a while since I went to Art school and Design school. I graduated in 2001, got married 2 months later and had twins in 2002. Seems like once I had kids I felt I had to stop doing what I love. I know that's just me, it really is me because I know all of you still keep on going. But going from no kids then to two right away and not wanting to put them in daycare made my design life come to a standstill. I don't regret having them at all...no way. I just feel I spent all this time in school and never got to use it. I have kept busy while raising my boys. I taught myself how to use Photoshop and I would digital scrapbook almost daily. I have hundreds of pages to prove it. Here is one of my online galleries. I was also on quite a few Creative Design teams. Now that my boys are older I don't enjoy it as much, so I have quit many teams. I tried to paint children's art canvases after I had my twins but I didn't make enough money for all the time I spent. I wasn't charging enough to say the least. My fault. I had no idea there was an Etsy out there. I actually don't think there was yet.

So now I spend most days day dreaming about what I can do so I can pay off those stinking school loans. I was going to go back to work this fall when our youngest goes to kindergarten, but then I thought,"What am I going to do with my boys in the summers?" What do you guys do? What have you done? I feel it would be such a shock for my guys who have never been in daycare. It makes me want to cry. My thought was I can draw. I love to draw. Maybe I can start working on some art and sell on Etsy. What do you think? I thought I would start posting my daily drawings and improve my skills. I really don't have a technique or style yet. Still searching for that. Last summer I took a children's book illustration class. It was very insightful. It taught me a lot and made me realize that there is so much more to learn. If I work on my skills my style will then emerge.

Here is a sketch I worked on last night to get me started. A caned chair. I'm going to challenge myself to do a sketch a day. Boy that will be a challenge.


Thanks for reading my ramblings. Have a good Tuesday!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Remember These

I hope everyone had a great Easter! We certainly did. It was in the 60's. Quite nice for Minnesota weather. Here are the boys decorating thier eggs in the warm sun.




I also got crazy and made egg shaped rice krispy treats. I saw the commercial and thought it might be fun for the boys. They dunked them in chocolate and added sprinkles too.


Remember when I got these little jar lamps at the thrift store a while back.


Well a few weeks ago I stripped them down of their dated country funk and revamped them a bit. I just used whatever I had around the house. Spray painted the tops with some oil rubbed bronze. I think later I will try and do a little more with them. We needed a little task lighting in the kitchen without having to turn on the big overhead light. So I thought, "Hey, I will pop one of those cute jars right into the corner." I found some popcorn and wild rice sitting in the pantry and just filled it up. There are so many things I can put in there. Pretty fun.



Have a great Monday everyone. My boys don't have school today so I think we might go minature golfing. Yippee!