Art Catch up 2010-2011

This is a picture blog to post all (or most) of the completed works I have done since November 2010 until now, June 2011. Just to bring you up to speed. This is going to take a while, so let's jump right into it with minimal banter.

My work on being set up on display at Melt November 2011

Acrylic on 11x13 canvas, done in Nov 2010. This one is for sale for $35.00

The second cherry blossoms, this one was painted live during Melt Nov 2010. This one hangs in my daughter's room now, acrylic on 18x24 canvas.

Me at work during Melt

This one I did as a Christmas present for my friend http://handsomepaddy.blogspot.com/ . It is Dita von Teese on a 11x13 canvas. I actually still have this in my possession since Paddy loaned it to me to keep displaying at Melt, and I need to mail it to him since he moved to Washington state.

This is the second in the breakdancer series and I am really really proud of it. Seriously. I did it live at Melt March 2011, our first night at The Orpheum. Apparently, some guy liked it so much at Melt, he attempted to bully me into selling it to him while it was half way completed for an insultingly low price. I just smiled and told him to go get his money and he never came back. It is done with acrylic on a 12x12 canvas.

This one is sorta a half sculpture/half painting and is some sort of contemporary home decor. It is done in acrylic on a 18x24 canvas. I also bought a "crackling" chemical that makes the paint look aged, which I painted the frame with. It is for sale for $50.00

Close up detail of the crackling magic :)

The cherry blossom branches are just placed in the vase, but the new owner of this painting can swap them out for anything, only the vase and frame is secured in place.

This is another second in a series. This is the second Breakfast in Bed tray pillow. The first one was such a cute idea that everyone loved and it sold fast on my old Etsy store (now closed.) So I made another, this time with waffles. It is approximately 12x18 and made out of the same fabric as the first. It is for sale for $35.00.

This was fun to make, it was the first stencil piece I ever did. It is done with acrylic paint mostly, hot pink spray paint, and a little bit of glow in the dark paint, on a 7x14 canvas. It is for sale for $25.00

This last piece has a little fun story. I am fascinated with masks and face paint. While shopping around for art supplies, I got lucky and found a roll of plaster gauze. So I did the mask thing, cut out strips, soaked em in hot water and applied them to my face. (Note: If you are going to attempt this, make sure to cover ALL of your face in Vaseline first.) Anyway, I was really thorough and covered up every inch of my face that I could and then the plaster started to harden..... and then I gave myself a panic attack feeling like I was smothering in a mask that I couldn't rip off. I had to widen the one nose hole I left open and force myself to calm down.

When that fun part was over and I carefully (painfully) removed this thing from my face and let it dry.... I painted it with something I feel really connected to. So that is the whole story of the John Lennon mask. It is for sale for $20.00

That's all for today, thanks for reading!

Holly

Breakfast in Bed pillow!

There is a new item that just went up for sale on our Etsy store. I made this pillow a couple months ago, but just now got around to taking some good photos of it and now it is for sale. This 20" x 16" pillow is hand sewn and embroidered. The brown fabric is very soft and I found it in a bargain bin and didn't know what I would make with it, but I had to have it. The food items are 3 dimensional and made of felt.

There is a bit of a story behind why I came up with this idea. The day that my husband proposed to me, he surprised me on Mother's Day. I awoke on Mother's Day and was surprised with gifts, cards, flowers, and a lovely breakfast in bed. I was very happy and already thought the day was perfect. I had no idea. After I had finished my breakfast, my husband took the tray away and then got down on one knee and pulled a small box out of his pocket. Since then, I have always loved breakfast in bed.

Years later, I gave birth to a daughter. During the early weeks of her life, my husband prepared breakfast in bed for me on a regular basis. One day I said "I love eating in bed. I wish I could do it every morning." Another day I was very groggy and hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. I said "I'm so sleepy, I wish I could just cuddle up to this warm plate of food and go back to sleep." That's when the idea came to me of what I would do with this brown fabric I had recently purchased.

This pillow was very fun to make, but probably took the longest of all my completed projects. The strawberries were surprisingly easy to figure out how to make the little "seeds" appear with the yellow embroidery thread. The napkin and fork were much more difficult. First it took me a couple trips around town to find the right fabrics. Then I probably discarded 4 forks as I couldn't make the tines look right. The cup of coffee proved a little challenging as I had to make a flat object look 3 dimensional. The plate and all the other food items were the easiest. The whole thing just took a little patience. But, in the meantime of sewing this, I found that I was a huge fan of the show LOST. Since Hulu was streaming all five seasons, I could go back and watch the whole show. So this pillow was made with lots of love behind it. And also LOST.