Through the Clouds

She floated gracefully through the sky, never knowing where she might land...
This is my new painting, "Through the Clouds." It is painted on a 9"x12" stretched canvas and is available in my shop.

If you have visited my shop lately you may have noticed that it is pretty sparse right now--I am working hard to get it filled back up! :) I took all of my prints out, as within the next week or two I will be introducing new professionally printed giclee prints. I'm very excited about this! I will keep you updated :)

I hope everyone who celebrated had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was lovely, we hung out with our families and got so many wonderful gifts :)

Have a great week, I'll see you soon!

Happy Holidays to you!!

Happy Holidays from me, Daniel, Violet, Jasmine and Rosie! We hope you have a wonderful weekend surrounded by loved ones and good cheer! :)

Marie Antoinette

Here is my newest painting, "Marie Antoinette." I have been meaning to do a Marie painting for a long time, and you may remember my Sunday Sketch from a little while back that was somewhat similar to this. She was a lot of fun, though the hair was a challenge! :) She is available in my shop.

Painting this made me think about the trip to Europe I took with my sister in 2006. We went for a week each to Italy (Rome, Florence and Venice), Paris and London. We were very lucky to be able to go and took full advantage of it, cramming in every museum and landmark we could think of! While in France we had to go to Versailles (of course). Here are some of my not so good pictures (my sister is a fantastic photographer but sadly had her nice camera stolen when we first arrived in France :( From the Hall of Mirrors:

Some of the grounds around the palace:

Inside one of the rooms:

I also got to meet the wax Marie Antoinette and family when we went to Madame Tussauds in London:

And I thought I'd throw in this one of Queen Elizabeth, me, and Mary Queen of Scots!

Okay enough with the vacation pictures, I hope I didn't bore anyone too much :)

I hope that you are all having a great holiday week, and I'll see you soon! :)

(Early) Sunday Sketch

Hello everyone! I have a new drawing in my shop, "Catching the Moon." I thought I'd go ahead and use this for my Sunday Sketch too over at Sophia's blog. Make sure to check out all of the other wonderful sketches on Sunday!

We had a nice little rain on Thursday which hasn't happened in quite a while in our little desert city, so it seemed like a nice day to do a drawing :)

The beautiful archival mat was custom-made for the drawing by my boyfriend Daniel, a professional framer. I am including it with the drawing.

I also wanted to mention that I have put my remaining two Christmas paintings on sale in my shop, $10 off the original prices. They are in my sale section.

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend! :)

Three new ACEOs

Hello everyone! I just wanted to let you know that there are three new little ACEOs in my shop. I haven't done these in a little while, so it was a lot of fun! I will hopefully get a few more done soon.

I hope everyone is having a good week and that, for those who celebrate, your Christmas preparations are coming along smoothly! I have most of my shopping and such done, and now I need to go into super cookie-baking mode! :) It all sneaks up so fast!

I'll see you soon :)

Giveaway Winner!

Hi everyone, I just wanted to pop in and announce the winner of my mom's snowmen wall hangings! The winner is...HEATHER FOUST! Congratulations Heather, please email me your mailing address at laurenstar1@yahoo.com when you get a chance :) Thank you so much to everyone who entered, and I hope you are having a great night!

Snowman Party!!

My mom recently hosted a fabulous Snowman party at her house for me, my sister Michelle and her friend Tonya. It was a wonderful day full of treats and crafts! :)

There were plenty of sweet things to eat:

We started out by making some cotton ball Christmas trees from Vanessa Valencia's lovely tutorial. First we made cones out of cardboard cereal and stuffing boxes:

Here's Michelle showing off her creation:

My mom goofing off :)

We glued the cotton balls on with either hot glue or craft glue:

Tonya working on her tree:

Then we decorated them with glitter, buttons and sequins.

Here are all of our finished trees! The upper left two are Tonya's, the lower left ones are my sister's, the upper right two are my mom's and the lower right two are mine.

Then we started on making our snowmen. This project was one my mom saw in an older issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine (sorry, I forgot to get a picture of the magazine).

My mom had been collecting these beautiful old bottles, which we filled about halfway or so with beads.

We shaped heads for the snowmen out of a papier-mache-like clay.

We then made little faces for them out of brads and other objects while the heads were still wet.

Now we were getting to the really fun part: decorating them and fashioning hats out of random doodads :) Tonya's snowmen in progress:

Here are Michelle's finished snowmen! The one on the left looks like he is wearing a beanie, so cute :)

Tonya working on an awesome elaborate hat:

Me adding some finishing touches:

My mom's adorable snowmen:

We finished them off by covering them with spray glitter and putting mica glitter on their heads.

Here they all are! My two snowmen are on the left, then Michelle's, my mom's, and Tonya's. It was so much fun!! We will definitely have to do this again next year :)

My mom would like to give away these two cute mixed-media snowmen wall hangings to one lucky winner! Just leave a comment on this post to enter. Make sure to leave an email address if you do not have a blog through which I can contact you. I will pick the winner at random this Sunday night (December 12) so that I can ship them Monday, in plenty of time for Christmas :)

I hope you are all having a wonderful week!