Art Room in Use

 I'm finally using my art room!!! Yeah!! It has turned out to be a wonderful, warm, light-filled space and I am feeling inspired to create. Here are a few shots of the room.

Lots of storage for yarn, fabric, and inspirational things.

A corner shelf to store glass and some vintage lace.

Items from nature.

An old wooden shelf where I'm starting a collection of things.

My brushes in handmade (not by me) ceramic containers

 Here are the "before" and "after" photos. Remember this.

YUCK! Terrible.

Gettin' better.

Now that's more like it. :-)

 With all this inspiration I think I'll start a spring project! I've been crocheting all winter and I will have some pictures soon of my finished projects.  In the meantime... I'm looking forward to some PAINTING TIME. Right now I'm prepping some canvases with gesso. 

I used a canvas drop cloth and embroidery hoops to save some money.

I'm trying to be economical and use a drop cloth which is SOOOO much less expensive than going to the art store and buying stretched and primed canvases. The canvas is really nice and thick but does require a few extra steps to prepare it for paint.  Here are the steps I followed.

Trimmed to large, medium and small sizes

Gotta iron those wrinkles out!!

Trim the excess canvas.

Stretch between the hoops, secure with glue, and trim.

Ready for gesso.

That's it for now. You have unlimited possibilities with these little canvases. I'll let you know when they have something on them.  Stay tuned....

Thanks for stopping by for a visit and I hope you'll come back soon!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Snowflakes

The climbing rose is under the protection of the porch.

The new screened in back porch is not very inviting right now.

It seems the snow followed me home from Colorado! We had a magical, soggy, wet snow last weekend and THEN this weekend we had an ice storm. January of 2013 is turning out to be very...   WINTERY! We get very excited in Tennessee when we have any kind of frozen weather and when the weatherman predicts one flake of snow people RUSH to the grocery store to pick up bread and milk. Snow is slippery and fun, but ice is just scary and dangerous. Even my little dog, Smokey, fell down our front stairs when his feet hit the ice. Luckily he is very close to the ground so he did not get hurt. It did take several days before he would go down the steps by himself. ;-)
Here are a few comparison photos of the snow and ice.

This last shot was just to remind us all that spring is coming.

While all of this frostiness was going on outside, I decided to bring a few flakes inside. Soft, fuzzy flakes in the form of yarn!!! Here is a sneaky peak!

I hope you are able to enjoy this wintery weather wherever you are, and God bless you!

Keystone Colorado

We have returned from a week of skiing in Keystone Colorado. Well... my hubby and son skied.... I CROCHETED! I made fuzzy snowflakes made of yarn.

I am not good at skiing. I get very scared and panic and stiffen up.  If you ski you know what that means... FALLING. I did venture out for walks everyday and took some pretty pictures of this beautiful ski resort. Enjoy...

It is truly a beautiful place and I highly recommend visiting any resort in Colorado. It is magical in winter but also great to visit in summer. They have mountain biking and hiking trails and take riders up to the top on the ski lifts.

I hope your having a wonderful New Year and have been able to see some winter weather in your area. Thank you for stopping by for a visit today.

Happy 2013!

I hope your 2013 is filled with many joys and blessings!  I have really enjoyed starting a blog this past year and hope to post on a more regular basis in 2013.  We shall see....

On the tv is playing "What a wonderful World" by the great Louie Armstrong  and the ball has dropped in TimesSquare .

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones!

Love,
Jeanette