Happy Halloween!

Hi there lovely blog friends!! I am back to wish all of you a very Happy Halloween! Grad school has been keeping me busy, but I have been making sure to set aside time for painting and sketching; I am really itching for a good painting day, so hopefully this week :) I have been better about posting on Facebook lately just because its quick, but I am hoping to get back in the blogging groove!

 

What are you all up to for Halloween? Today was my husband's day off, so we went for a great hike. Now I have two stuffed pumpkins in the oven for dinner (here is the recipe--its amazing!!), and we are watching Mad Monster Party :)

 

Below is a pic of some little paper mache coffin boxes which I painted as favors for my little Halloween party with a few friends on Saturday. They were so fun!

 



 

I also made these little treats out of pretzels, hershey's kisses and candy corn.

 



And here is the table, before all of the food was on there :) I made some orange punch and got some adorable Halloween sugar cookies from Trader Joe's.

 

 

And below is our sweet little Rosie in her pumpkin hat; she only had to keep it on for a minute for the photo op ;)

 



See you soon!

Giveaway Winner (Finally:) And Other Happenings

Hi there everyone! Well I am finally back, so so sorry for the delay! I am beginning graduate school this week, going for my Master's in Information Resources and Library Science, so I have just been getting my head wrapped around that :) I am very excited to start!

Thank you all so much for visiting my Tea Party and leaving such sweet comments! I had so much fun visiting the other parties!

Well I chose a random name from my party hat, and the winner of my Alice and Mad Hatter kokeshi dolls is:

Laura of laura and her favorite things!

Congratulations Laura! Please email me your mailing address at laurenstar1@yahoo.com and I will send them on their way :)

Thank you to everyone who entered!!

Since I am behind a bit on blogging here are a couple of my newest paintings:

"The Peacock"

and "Briar Rose"

They are both available in my etsy shop.



I have been enjoying some summer fun reading and art books before school really gets into swing, including this gorgeous little Marion Peck book, a lovely gift from my friend Briana.



I was also lucky enough to win a Tea Party giveaway of my own!! I won this beautiful, whimsical

mixed-media cupcake from the talented Wendy from Bliss Angels.

What an awesome new addition to my studio!! Thanks Wendy! :)

I hope that everyone is having a great week! :)

A Mad Tea Party!

On a lovely overcast day, five friends gathered to enjoy breakfast, cake, pastries, tea, lemonade and sweets :) 

There was sugar and fun galore, as well as sweet favors for the guests (handmade by my mom)!

Even Alice and the Mad Hatter dropped in to make an appearance!

And even Alice has to eat her vegetables ;)

Thank you so much for dropping by our un-birthday celebration!

As a special treat for the occasion, I will be giving away my hand-painted Alice and Mad Hatter kokeshi dolls to one guest! Simply leave a comment on this post, and I will draw a winner at random next Saturday, August 4th.

Thank you so much to the lovely Vanessa Valencia for hosting this blog party, make sure to visit her blog here and to follow the sidebar links there to other parties :)

Have a beautiful day!



Happy Easter!

Easter greetings, everyone! :) I hope you are all having a really fun and relaxing day. My mom and I and her best friend got together yesterday and did some fun Easter festivities. My mom had picked up some cute papier mache eggs at the craft store, so we decided to paint on them :)

Here are our eggs: Mine and Tonya's on the left (mine is the pink egg girl) and my mom's three on the right. So much fun! :)

We had fun putting egg head girl in different poses ;)

I also baked up some mini cupcakes with caramel frosting and caramel corn on top.

Today I am just relaxing with the hubby, and we are going to try to get our patio spruced up a bit for spring :)  

I am behind on blogging my newest paintings too, so here they are! The first is "Away," on an 11"x14" canvas.

Below is "Miss Kittens," on a little 5"x5" canvas.

And last but not least, "The Queen of the Night Sky," on an 8"x8" canvas.

"Away" is spoken for, but the other two are available in my shop.

I hope you all have a lovely Easter with your family, friends and furbabies!! :)

Poppy and Petunia, plus Snow White

I am feeling on a roll this week! :) I have two new paintings in the shop, the first of which is "Poppy and Petunia." I had been wanting to do a spring-y painting with a bunny :)

Visiting the wonderful Theresa's blog yesterday, I saw her beautiful new Snow White painting (she is doing a series of princesses for an exciting project), and it inspired me to do a Snow White as well! I haven't painted any classic fairytale characters in quite a long time, so I really enjoyed it.

It is so nice to get back into the swing of things. I had so much fun planning the wedding and making decorations, but I must admit it is nice not to have to worry about it anymore and just work on what I

 feel like :)

I hope that all of you are having a lovely week! 

The Castle On The Hill

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone so much for your sweet comments about our wedding :) Each one made us smile. I was so happy to share our photos with you! I am so lucky to have made such wonderful blog friends: you all contributed some bit of inspiration for the wedding in one way or another :)

Here is my latest painting, "The Castle On The Hill." I was feeling ambitious and did a 16"x20"!! That is huge for me! :) It is available here in the shop.

We were lucky enough to go to Disneyland for a few days for a wonderful honeymoon, and one of my favorite parts of the trip was going on the Storybook Land ride. For those of you not familiar with it, it is a little boat ride through a tiny-scale village, complete with houses, windmills and castles. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones above 5 years old on it, but I had a blast ;)

When we got home I couldn't stop thinking about the magic of that tiny village and this little pink castle. So of course I had to paint it! I hope you all like it :)



Happy Spring to you all, and I hope you have a wonderful beginning to your week!

The Wedding!!

Well hello everyone! I am finally back, and I am a very happily married lady!! I am so excited to share these photos with you. It was truly a perfect, fairy-tale day. I would not have changed a single thing. These photos are by our amazing photographer Melissa Millage, with a few of my sister's and mom's mixed in :)

Above is one of the centerpieces. We made these peonies out of crepe paper (many of the decorations were a combined effort of me, my mom, her best friend Tonya, and oftentimes Daniel :) They were so much fun to make but definitely time-consuming! We found the little baskets in the dollar bin at Target, and spray-painted them antique white. Then we filled the baskets with moss. I love the way they turned out.

My shoes



Getting ready!

A special little tree made by my mom, and the card birdcage.

I painted a little portrait of me and Daniel, which we used on the invitations. We also made the guest book completely by hand, starting with two vintage book covers.

Getting my hair and makeup done by my talented friend Ann.

My beautiful sister and maid-of-honor, Michelle

The handsome groom!

 One of the table settings. We made the favors by hand as well--we adhered vintage book pages, copies of vintage postcards, fabric and lace onto matboard, and topped them each off with a butterfly handpainted on muslin. My mom sewed dryer sheets filled with wildflower seeds into little hearts and those were sewed on as well.

Our mini cake and delicious mini cupcakes, made by my amazing friend Geri. She made three different flavors of cupcakes: vanilla, hot chocolate topped with homemade marshmallows, and red velvet with cream cheese icing.



My mom and I made the cupcake stands ourselves out of thrift store glass candleholders and plates (thank you to Geri for the great idea!)

I painted a little Lauren and Daniel on kokeshi dolls for the cake topper :)



My crepe paper flower bouquet. My mom gave me the amazing antique bouquet holder as an engagement gift.

The flowers were perfectly in bloom that day!

My mom made the beautiful little ring box.

My sister Michelle Startzman very kindly made our gorgeous rings by hand! She is an amazingly talented metalworker.

Michelle and Daniel's best man James, ready to go out!

My beautiful mom walked me down the aisle.

And I married the man of my dreams!

It was truly a perfect day, and we really had a blast. I can't stop smiling every time I look at the photos and relive those beautiful moments.