Penguin paintings in watercolor

After doing the fox circle paintings, I wanted to do something similar with penguins...



















I think these also came out pretty cute :)  I love baby penguins...they're all fluffy and awkward. Here are my sketches beforehand:

 Some detail:






















I think I prefer this look for the sky:

Yay penguins!

Custom owl orders

I recently had two fun custom orders of my embroidered felt owl ornaments!

The first was an etsy order for 10 pink and brown owls for a baby shower--what a cute idea! The owls are great for decorating, and can then be given as favors to attendees after the party.

I did a bunch of color variations. I actually cut out 19 owls to give the customer a chance to pick which combinations she liked best.

 

 

Here are the finished owls in the color combinations she selected.

So cute!

 

The second order was a set of blue owls for my friend Mary (they were a gift for her daughter who goes to UNC). It was Mary's idea to do them in her daughter's college colors...also very cute!

 

 

I love doing custom orders! Sometimes customers have great ideas for color combinations or uses I hadn't thought of yet :) Plus I love making these owls, they are a lot of fun to sew.

materials: DMC, eco felt, grosgrain ribbon, thread, polyester quilt batting

PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) Part 4

My friend Angie was in town this week and she is also crafty so we spent an afternoon at The Pottery Stop. I finished two pieces that came out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself! Angie had never tried PYOP before and she had a great time and may be hooked on it too :) And her piece came out amazing!

Angie painted this lovely bowl (as part of a vertical spoon rest) with a Tuscan countryside scene.

 

I just love the koi on the inside of the bowl, what a beautiful touch! Angie has really meticulous attention to detail which paid off here, especially since the bowl is actually quite small (about 4 inches in diameter). It looks awesome.

 

This time I thought to take "before" photos of my pieces...partly to show the difference, and partly to remember what paint colors I used and how they looked before they were fired. I tend to use blues that are too dark and hide the black outlines and don't want to make that mistake on my next one.

 

Here's my three-section tray, with a ladybug, bird, and dragonfly. Before:

 

 

And after:

The ladybug was my favorite section on this one once it was fired. See what I mean about the overly dark blue sky in the other sections?

 

I also decided to paint a cute little design on the back.

 

After I finished this piece, I had some extra time while waiting for Angie to paint her tiny trees, etc. So I started a new tray (wavy sushi plate) with one of my favorite little scenes that I've painted in watercolor and other media before...whaley!

My little whale scene before:

 

 

And after being fired:

 

 

I love how bright all the colors turned out! And I did a little bit of a dotted texture detail in the coral, which came out better than expected. I added a silly little chicken legs box signature design on the back for fun:

 

 

We really had a great, relaxing day painting our pottery! What a nice way to spend the day with a friend :) And then picking up our pottery pieces was like a surprise present all over again, to see how they turned out!

PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) Part 3

I went back to pick up my latest pottery piece from The Pottery Stop and was sort of surprised with the results. The vase turned out great on some sides...on others the design did not come out quite as I intended...but overall it was a pretty successful experiment!

 

The side with the red bird is the one I'm happiest with. Even though the branch near the top didn't come out quite as visible as I would have liked (I underestimated the darkness of the dark blue I used for the top), it looks pretty close to what I had in mind. The birdie is so fat and cute!

 

 

Here are some of the other views...

 

I'm not thrilled with how the side with the monarch butterfly below turned out...I think I was rushing to finish on the leaves and they didn't come out quite right.

 

The colors on the leaf were not what I was expecting for some reason! Haha. Otherwise I am happy with the dragonfly panel though. 

 

 

This side has a bird on it but you can barely see the top because I used too dark of a background, unfortunately. Otherwise it looks really pretty...sigh.

Vase bottom...I guess it got a little scratched in transit to the kiln?

Overall the vase was sort of an ambitious project for a beginner at PYOP so I'm fairly pleased with it...and ok with the slightly imperfect results. Hey, I can always go back and do it again! It was lots of fun to work on :) What a great crafty activity to do with friends!

Owl watercolors for special occasions!

This weekend I celebrated both Brie's birthday and Mark & Rachel's baby shower...and I painted a sweet little owl for both. Edy helped by sitting on my knee and trying to eat the paintbrush.

 

I painted Brie's owl in the colors she has in her house, so she could put him in any room.

 

For Mark & Rachel, I wanted to make the colors of the owl gender-neutral since it will be a surprise whether they are having a boy or girl.
 

 

Didn't they come out cute? I'm surprised I hadn't painted owls sooner since I made like 8000 of them out of felt :P

 

materials: pencil, Prang semi-moist watercolors on Canson Montval Watercolor Block, Faber-Castell PITT artist pen (brush) in #177.

Owls in progress (or ghosts)?

Here's a bunch of the felt owl ornaments I've been working on, in various stages of completion. Some of them resemble colorful ghosts rather than owls at this point...

Red owl ornaments

To go with the stellar bright red sunburn I got on my feet today, here are my red and pink owl ornaments. I was helping Jyoti with a yard sale this morning...nice to be outdoors but forgot sunblock on my feet! It itches!

 

Also here are some of the other owls I'm working on...

 

 

 

Outdoor owl photo shoot!

There are lots of pretty cherry blossoms near my place, so I figured I'd re-photo some of my owl ornaments outside.

 

Next: new red owls!

Even more tiny bird paintings

I made a little bird watercolor painting for my friend Amy for her baby shower (she's having a girl)...and it turned out so cute I made a few more similar ones. Which colors do you like better?

 

 

I really love painting these, they are so much fun. What other animals should I do?

 

materials: pencil, Prang semi-moist watercolors on Canson Montval Watercolor Block, Faber-Castell PITT artist pen (brush) in #177.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday today! I spent a nice leisurely morning doing photos of some of my new creations. Hoot!

 

 

My Thanksgiving plans include going out to FANCYDINNER, which is something my friend Brie and I have been doing for 5 years now...we pick a different restaurant each year and get dressed up and go out for a really nice meal. Most places have traditional Thanksgiving fare on the menu (which Brie likes but I don't much care for) in addition to their regular menus, and something hilarious and awkward always happens.  Two different years, the the lights went out in the restaurant! So I'm looking forward to some great food, good times, and no dishes to wash! :)

 

materials for hoot owl ornaments: Eco-felt, DMC, thread, ribbon, quilt batting

Elephants, owls, and pendants!

I've been doing a lot of sewing lately and working on a variety of new felt creations!

These are a bunch of pendant necklaces I made earlier in the month while traveling. I'd seen a metal/glass pendant in JoAnn several months ago with a picture of lollipop flowers and thought, I can make something cuter than that...so finally I got around to it!

Since I love (ok, am sort of obsessed with) experimenting with color combinations, I also made more of these (ok, like 30) as pins/brooches. The necklaces and pins should both be up in my etsy shop later this week. My favorite color combinations are the red flowers that look like poppies, and also the yellow/orange/white/gray pendant (cockatiel colors, as my brother suggested I make!)

 

Another project I'd been thinking about for months was felt Christmas tree ornaments...I decided to start with my usual owls, since I've been working with that image so much and therefore knew exactly how I'd want it to look. And it came out exactly as I imagined!

 

Once I made the owl, I decided to branch out and make some cute little elephant ornaments too!

 

I've been doodling elephants on everything for weeks so I think they were trying to come out and play :) What do you think?

 

Materials: Eco-felt, DMC, thread, ribbon, quilt batting, jump rings, Darice faux suede necklace cords