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Friday, March 29, 2013

Watercolor Fern {or how to make a blown egg}

I have a collection of watercolor eggs that has slowly grown over the years. This year I painted a fern egg to add to the lot. These are blown eggs--the whites and yolks have been removed. 
Although they are quite fragile, blown eggs will last for years if treated gently.



If you've never blown an egg before, it's easy to learn! 
Use a needle or safety pin to poke a hole in the top and bottom of the egg.


Make sure the hole is 1/8 inch or so in diameter. 
If you are having trouble getting the whites and yolk out, make the bottom hole a little bigger.

 (No, I'm not losing my dinner.)

Then gently (but with quite a bit of force) blow through the top hole. 
The contents of the egg will pour out the bottom. Now you can make scrambled eggs! 
Rinse the egg shell and let it dry thoroughly. Then paint, sketch, dye, create!



 


Happy Easter!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Green Gallery Wall {a study in landscape}

My living room has been a slow work in progress ever since we moved in to this house seven years ago.  We've experimented with a few different rugs, replaced old furniture, added a new (old) chandelier, painted the walls white, and I've tweaked and shifted things around almost daily. 
(That's one of my gifts weaknesses--don't judge!)

I recently redesigned the one big boring wall in the room by creating a gallery wall of original art. Four of the paintings are mine (three oil and one watercolor) and one painting I bought on ebay.


 The composition of the paintings on the wall was tough to figure out. After lots of unsuccessful experimenting with the four oil paintings, I realized I needed one more little one, so I rummaged around in my stash and found the watercolor which I had painted years ago.

I traced the shape of each frame on brown packing paper and cut them out to use as templates on the wall.


Once I decided on the composition, I taped them up to make sure I liked how they were centered and how they filled the space.  Then Scott and I hung the frames with a few minor adjustments and came up with this ~

 The painting on the top left is the watercolor I painted in college. It's a landscape from a photo I took in the mountains outside of Quito, Equador. The top middle is an oil I did a few months ago from a shot I took this summer while we were vacationing on the Oregon coast. The painting on the top right was done in college as well, a study of a Van Gogh. I painted the one on the bottom right a few years ago for an art show at our church.

They are tied together through color and theme, but vary a bit in style. I like gallery walls that are more random, too, but I'm loving the repeated green fields and ocean imagery in this collection.
I think it brightens up the room, and the added height and gold accents relate to the chandelier and make the room feel a little bigger to me.