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.

Christmas- Day 5

And here is the next one; another for my sister and yes Susan, you are right! It was the invitation. You may be able to see it a bit better in this ornament, cut up into strips and curled inside a glass ball. The blue color on this pic is more accurate as we took this photo outside in natural daylight.
I was really pleased with these two, and got the idea from a variety of sites. Take a look here-Glass Ball and here-Triangle Ball. I'm not sure where the ideas first originated, but they sure are beautiful--Thanks for the inspiration ladies!!

Christmas-Day 4

Whoops! Forgot to post this yesterday!

Continuing on in the ornament theme; here is the first of 2 ornaments that I made for my sister (Sorry about the poor pic; my photography team wasn't on their game with this shoot:-D ).
Some background info; She is getting married in, oh, about a week and a half, in a winter wonderland wedding. Her colors are white and icy blue with lots of sparkle :-D

Can you see what the ornament was made out of??

Christmas-Day 3

From Calendars back to Christmas ornaments;

Here is another little bauble I painted for a close friend. It is a porcelain ball and has a parade of puppies. There is a boxer, beagle, cocker spaniel, golden retriever and a little westie. (Sorry, the pic of the side with the little westie was under exposed and didn't turn out).
The ornament was painted in sepias and hunter green, finished off with a light mocha and golden bow for a bit of 'bling.'

One of the hardest things about painting on a sphere is how to hold it still! Tried two items that worked: an egg cup, which was okay but a little slippery, then used a cardboard egg carton, which worked great!

Christmas-Day2

One project that had kept me busy had more of a design aspect than an artistic one...

Being the owner of two beautiful blue picardy spaniels, I am involved in the breed and, with the help of other owners submitting pics, we have produced a calendar showcasing these great canines--13 wonderful months of blue beauties!!!!! The proceeds of the calendar sales will go to finance future "Blue" events.

Merry Christmas! Day 1

I have made it back to the land of the bloggers. Plain and simple, "life" has bulldozed through and I have not had the opportunity to sit at my desk and create art for art's sake.

I do have a few things to show you that have blossomed within the last few months, so in honour of the season and the 12 days of Christmas, I will post you Twelve Days of Art
Above is a hand painted porcelain Christmas ornament of "Indy"

A very Merry Yule to everyone and their families, human and four-legged and all the best for a stellar 2012!!!!:-)

TOPP Competition Entries

Another project finished (for now)...
The Trail of Painted Pony people put out a call for entries and I managed to get 2 finished. I had two additional ideas but they just didn't translate well once I got them sketched out over a pony. I only wish I had more time to paint these two on real figurines.

Anyway, TOPP will be taking all the entries, picking the best 10 in each of the six categories and will put them online for voting. I've seen some of the other entries and they are awesome so we'll wait and see....fingers crossed mine get in!



1.) FLIGHT OF FANCY

This pony began as a blast of color, with brilliantly hued parrots bursting out of dark, lush rainforest foliage.
As they "flew" along my pony, I couldn't help but be reminded of the circus horse pageantry, and the way they too "burst" out of the darkness into the circus ring limelight, adorned in their own finery and bling, ready to delight and dazzle us with color, beauty and power...from there it was a natural progression for my design to morph the pony into a tattooed, feathered performer ready for his cue!
I most definitely want to paint this design on a blank pony in the future










2.) MY TYPE OF PONY

Pure fun, this pony is the ultimate play on words...I've taken a number of creative words that are used to describe a perfect pony type but then rendered each word in a different style of type face (font)!
I've made the words in black on a warm cream dun colored pony with her own white bling (socks and blaze). In contrast to the design above, colors were kept fairly muted to keep attention on the words and meaning of the figurine.
Will this make it to a hand painted original? Not sure, doing justice to all those typefaces will take some care.

Happy (Belated) Mother's Day

I ♥ U Bear
5"x5" Coloured Pencil on Pastelmat

Happy Mom's Day!

Playing catch up here with my celebrations....all that special treatment over the weekend must have got to my head!! Seriously, had a lovely, lovely time and hoping all the other moms out there did as well.
In honour of our special day, I have finally completed this commission for an extremely patient client....Thank you so much Linda!

(I'll post the second half to this pair tomorrow)

The Front Runner Autographed Ed. Sold Out!

Last year I posted about a design of mine being made into a Painted Pony Collectible Figurine. Well, I'm happy to say that earlier this month, the Autographed edition sold out!
One of the projects I've been juggling (with a number of others) has been to embellish one of my ponies. Well, it's finished!(below)
Just to explain a bit here: The TOPP Figurines are sold beautifully painted and numbered. The artists are then allowed to take their ponies and paint, add to or embellish them in any way. I have taken this figurine and repainted the horse so he is a dark bay with undertones of red, touched up the riders and ponies, added a hand painted chestnut foal galloping across the base, signed it and glazed the entire piece.

The picture at the top of the post is of the original figurine, the pictures below are of the embellished pony. This may be sold privately, but if not, it will go up in an ebay auction next week.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend and a Happy Easter!

What's old is new?

I did a double take at the grocery store when I saw the People's cover memorializing Elizabeth Taylor. Looks like People's art directors and I have the same taste in beautiful photos!

I got around to rummaging through some old drawings and pulled out the one above. I did this years ago, at least 10, with a limited palette of coloured pencils on super slick Lettraset paper (if some of you remember that!) A softer rendition, using lots of cross-hatching throughout the face, then directional strokes through the hair. I still like it :-)

A stunning woman and a film icon; a heartbreaking loss~Godspeed, Liz.

Projects and....a Puppy!

Time does fly! Literally! These months have evaporated, between being busy at my "bill paying job" and trying to finish up 4 projects on the go (all of a creative nature) I have had a very full plate.
So while I do have art to show you, I must to wait for client approvals and a birthday to pass before posting. In the interim....

We did it.

We got a puppy.

And no, you can't see the hole in my head.

Only my mother can.
And apparently she is able to do this no matter how old I get ;-)

So I thought I would share a bunch of those mushy, gushy isn't-he-the-cutest-thing puppy pictures! (Note: For those of you serious blog readers, you might want to stop here as the remaining part of my post gets awfully syrupy)

We already have an almost-5-year-old-Blue Picardy Spaniel in our family and were going to get, at some point, when we had more space, another Blue. Fate had other plans, and waiting was not part of them, so excuses were set aside and we welcomed home Brighthope Power Point, aka "DAX" (Eighteen weeks young as of yesterday)

Although I'm sure he still hopes, for the most part Suede has resigned himself that the puppy is not leaving and has become a wonderful big uncle and role model to little Dax.
Note Dax's careful positioning to be just like his big buddy Suede! (The following pictures were NOT posed. Honest!)





Too precious right? They cuddle like that all the time. I can't help but smile; if only life was that easy!! And Dax will pretty much cuddle with anyone that will have him....


Dax is named after a medival French city, and he is the only son of the wonderful Ciron of Brighthope kennels. With a litter of 1 boy and 6 girls, Ciron obviously likes to produce girls! Dax will get a little darker as he ages; he will be a black and grey roan. Right now he is a super gangly youngster....



Here is Dax trying out for a part on "Meercat Manor"...


We can already see glimpses of the handsome dog that Dax will become.... they grow up so quickly!