Holiday Greetings!

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, all my followers should be head over heels in love with me right now!!

Working two "regular" jobs has been eating away at all my spare time and my art studio is hollow and lonely...it did see some life in the past month for a few Christmas-y projects, so I will be posting those after presents have been opened on the 25th.

In the meantime, I would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year!!

P.S. And let's all look forward to dealing with people like the first 288 involved in this Tim Horton's Christmas "pay-it-forward" event
And as for the guy that stopped it all by NOT paying for the next person's order of 3 coffees (even though his own 4 coffees were paid for by the previous customer, well, let's hope karma is a bitch :-)

Top 20 Finalist!

Great news! One of my Painted Pony submissions, PAINT FOR A DAY, made it into the top 20 finalists. Now it is up to public voting to pick the winners. Please surf on over to the voting page and check out all the wonderful ponies... of course I would LOVE to have you vote for my pony :-D

 Note: Unfortunately, TOPP was unable to print the little stories behind each pony. To recap my "Paint for a Day" story, please check my previous post

APHA and the Trail of Painted Ponies II

Here is my other entry into this competition: "Paint Jubilee"

This little pony is celebrating the milestone achieved by the American Paint Horse Association-50 YEARS!

I have tried to impart the "Jubilee" feeling by using a Western look with the old-style banners and bunting decorations, plus the wonderful type face that used to adorn their posters...and of course, red, white and blue, with some gold thrown in for the 50th!

I can just see this handsome fellow strutting down Main St., to the cheers of his on lookers!! :-)

APHA and The Trail of Painted Ponies

There is a new competition out at the Trail of Painted Ponies. The APHA has joined in this event and together they are looking for pony designs that represent both associations.
I have a few that I may enter, and here is the one that I personally like the best....

 

The title is "Paint for a Day"
Hopefully the title and image is strong enough to carry across the idea, but just in case its not quite there...

This little pony is a lovely BAY, but its young owner has an idea that she could be even prettier if she was a paint! But how to do that? With paint of course! So out comes the bucket of white paint and brush plus a little diagram to follow and here we go: a number of well placed "spots" and voila!

I think this design works on a couple of levels:
- the bay "pony" is very quarter horse looking, in demeanor and body type, which represents the early merger of the Paint Quarter Horse Association with the AHPA.
- the handprint is reminiscent of the paints' long history with the Native American and its part in the growth of the Western Frontier
- the interaction of the youngster and her very patient mount, gives recognition to the extensive support and programs the AHPA offers for youths
- the title was taken from an AjPHA Horse show which is an open, all breed event, including all youngsters, no matter what they ride, in a fun and friendly competitive outing.
- the white paint...well, it turns our lovely bay into the ultimate "Painted Pony"!!

The voting is now open. Click HERE to vote (I hope its for Paint for a Day!! :-D )

The winner of this competition will be by online voting, so please check back next week when I will be posting the link for votes. I would LOVE your support!!!

For something different...

A lovely girl who I am aquainted with had the sad misfortune of suffering a broken ankle during her hockey game mere days before her 16th birthday :-(

Everyone was signing her cast, but I said I'd paint something....did you know that casts can either be plaster or fiberglass? This is fiberglass, quite bumpy not very absorbent. My acrylic paint needed some blowdrying help to set and dry, but we got it done.

A very patient girl now has a little painting of her favourite pet; pot-belly pigs!

Of course, afterwards, my husband pointed out that I should have painted little pigs on her toes too...

Christmas - Day 10

So the bride has her bouquet and loves it :-D

Here are a few more details about the bouquet and how I tried to make it unique to my sister:

First, many of the brooches were versions of snowflakes in keeping with her theme. Very beautiful pieces, and I could have added more; there were lots to choose from...

Extra-Special brooches included:

A Rhinestone Fish-both the bride and groom are avid (some may use the word obsessed) fisherpeople

A Crystal for added bling to which I attached the charms "hugs & kisses" which every marriage should have lots of!
It hangs free on the bouquet giving a little added movement.



A Rhinstone Puppy pin that represents "Justy" the couple's fabulous Blue Picardy Spaniel. She isn't part of the wedding plans (to my sister's dismay) but she is there in spirit on the bouquet, complete with her little ball!



A really beautiful (I lucked out on this one) silver and rhinestone sunflower brooch, on of the bride's favourite flowers.



A Rhinstone butterfly, as both the bride and the groom are "social butterflies" (You can see one of the snowflake brooches in this shot as well)



A Rhinstone Dragon....weird? I think not! 2012 which is the Year of the Dragon. It is also a water sign (re: see first special brooch) It is a symbol signifying success and happiness. May the celestial Dragon bring great good luck to everyone, especially the new couple! (A little hard to see- a snowflake to the right and the pearls sit behind the dragon's head and back)



A few more that I don't have pictures for are:
A Rhinstone Christmas Tree, which symbolizes the lovely season that the wedding was part of..
And some beautiful little blue and white rhinestone snowflake hair pins which came all the way from Australia. Given that the jewellery is from Japan, China, the US and Canada, it also has kind of an international flair.

Than, I added a lovely little picture of her husband-to-be in a small heart charm that hangs on the handle. A little something she can look at in secret and....



....hidden on the handle, under the bouquet is a small baby braclet for good luck and a blessing of the family to come!

Many years of Happiness and Love to Kristy and Paul!

Now, we party :-)

Christmas-Day 9

Here it is: Finished!

Unfortunately, the photo does not do the bling in this bouquet justice; the sparkle that comes off it in the sunshine is awesome. It goes t the bride tomorrow and I will follow up this post with close-ups of some of the brooches that were included...little hidden meanings behind some of them :-)

Christmas - Day 8

I have finished the Brooch Bouquet, but will post some of the steps over the next few days...With working 2 jobs, the wedding crafts and a few commissions, I hope you can understand why my time has been limited on the blog. Anyway, onward...

Making the BB was fun, challenging and rewarding. I started by purchasing a number of brooches over the summer/fall months. Some were basic designs, while others had specific meaning for my sister. All were pretty much rhinestone/white crystal in style. If you haven't guessed by now, we are continuing with our "Winter Wonderland" theme :-)


Once together, I began to wire the brooches and tape them with florist tape. Make sure you wire well and tight. Sagging brooches do NOT sit well in the bouquet.
I also had a few powder puffs of light, icy blue material to include as "filler" (Note: some people use a silk hydrangea as their base which I wanted to do but couldn't get that proper ice blue color)

After all are wired it is a matter of trying to assemble them in a pleasing bouquet: hold in one hand and add and move brooches around with the other.
My advice here is to try and get brooches that are similar in size; I had some that were 4" across and others 1" across. That is too much of a difference as the larger ones then look too flat. I started and stopped this process about 4 times until I finally got a shape that was working for me. It takes patience, so don't despair if it doesn't come together on your first go around.

Below is a shot of the bouquet from the underside (with a bit of florist tape holding it together) I eventually built up the handle and finished it completely with the tape.
You may notice some of my "tools" in this pic. My wonderful husband suggested using his hemostats from his first aid kit to help pull through wire,material etc. They worked wonderfully! They may stay with me now and I will have to get him some new ones!


More tomorrow.....

Christmas - Day 7

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Okay, so there's no artwork to showcase today...I got home at 10 mins to 12 last night after working all evening and got to count down the last of 2011 with my husbandXOXO.

Had a low key New Year's Day, finishing up the Brooch Bouquet for the wedding. Sorry, I can't show you now, maybe in a few days, the Bride has to see it first!

Other than that, here are my boys, Suede and Dax, enjoying the mild temps here in southern Ontario.

Here's wishing everyone the very best for the New Year-
Peace, Health and Happiness for 2012!

Christmas - Day 6

Whoops! Falling behind again....after showing my Wedding Invite ornaments, I thought I had better show the invite itself.

We made 120 invitations for the wedding. The type was set on a Mac and run out on white paper then glued to a metallic blue text stock, which was then glued to a metallic white/silver cardstock. The snowflakes were punched out using a store bought snowflake punch and the direction map was drawn in Illustrator.

The invite, response card, reply envelope and direction card were all inserted into a hand cut envelope which was folded and secured with white ribbon (which could be easily slipped on and off and is shown below ) These envelopes were from embossed cardstock which was then embellished with glitter glue drops.

The whole invite was then placed in the outer enveloped and mailed. The outer envelope matched the pale blue metallic paper which was used in the invite. We were very pleased with the results and I think my sister was too! :-)

The ribbon was purchased at Michael's as was the embossed card stock. The "Winter Wonderland" theme was carried throughout with the sparkly paper in white and pale blue. These metallic papers and the reply and blue metallic outer envelopes were purchased from the Paper Garden, which was a super fantastic company to deal with and supplied us with a stellar product. I can't say enough about them--if you need paper products of any kind, please give them a look; they also send out free paper samples!

And many thinks to my crew of helpers, who gave time to glue, punch fold and cut alongside me.