Banks of the Guadalupe

So this is my second painted glass work of art (well, that I'm posting on my craft blog). This time the lines, colors, texture reminded me of my childhood summer camp days on the Guadalupe River. Specifically, for those Camp Mystic readers out there, I am reminded of the way the river seemed when you arrived for first period classes, early in the morning, before hours of splashing and kicking had driven all the river muck far from eyesight. This reminds me of the way the river looks first thing in the morning, undisturbed, peaceful, completely natural.

Below you'll see the same work as it is leaned in my new West Elm chair. I purposefully gave you a chance to see how dramatically different the work looks when it has differently colored backgrounds. It's much busier with the brown, but the colors seem to come alive. However, I like it better with the turquoise behind it. For now though I'm leaving the glass alone.

I really welcome any feedback regarding my painted plates of glass.... Let me know what you think!

Turkish Delight 2

Alas, a masterpiece! Enjoy a pair of pictures of my latest work of art, Turkish Delight 2. I'm still waiting on someone (who lives in Nashville, Tennessee and whose name rhymes with Pason Juccio...) to send me pictures of Turkish Delight 1. And now I'm going to wax art history on you, so watch out... This work is an exploration of shape, negative space and the delightful interplay of color. The shapes are inspired by patterns, lines, and figurative shapes that appear frequently in Islamic or Mediterranean art. The bright and fresh blue recalls the sea and the acorn and sunflower yellow-orange colors echo the warmth of the summer sun, the richness of earthy dirt, brick, grains.

Below you can see the piece as it leans on my kitchen counter next to some painted Diet Dr Pepper bottles. It is acrylic on glass. I'm in the process of painting two more slabs of glass. One is a swirly (this one is a spikier one than the next piece will be) blue/green piece that is, at the moment, reminding me of summers spent on the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country. The second picture is a circular work rendered in pink, red and gold. It is distinctively more girly than the first two glass paintings I have worked on.

This Just In From the Party Planning Committee...

So, I was put on the company's party planning committee. Yeah, it's JUST LIKE ON THE OFFICE. We sit around and plan parties. There's no snatchy Angela to rule the roost, and its not just a collection of every girl in the building. Actually, its one person from each department. We meet every month to discuss fun things that we could do to brighten up the office atmosphere. And well, today was my first event to plan. Can you say fiesta? Well... they gave me a tiny budget, but I dreamed the impossible: coming up with something cute, Mexican, and tasteful. So these are the pictures of the break room all decked out for Cinco De Mayo. I used a roll of red gift wrap with a green one on top (think the Mexican flag) as the table cloth -- have you gone table cloth shopping recently? It's a little ridiculous. Everything is either Disney or Pixar or Disney/Pixar. There's no plain colored party table cloths anymore. Geez. So I settled for gift wrap. It has to last for half a day, so I figured even cheap dollar store gift wrap could fit that bill. Then I found -- total dollar store miracle here (after all I asked the saints for some assistance) -- a book of 20 postcards from Mexico! So I spread those out around the table. Toss in some chili peppers, Jarritos and chicklets and I think it's a pretty great setup, considering the decorating budget was under $10. That's the cost of two helium balloons, which, in our office breakroom, is really not that festive.
So enjoy the pictures! And Happy Cinco De Mayo.

My mom was with me when I went to the Dollar Grocery Store (actually, it's the 99 cents Only store) and she approved of the bandana with the Virgin of Guadalupe on it being used as the liner for the chips & salsa bowl. And if my mom says that's OK, that's OK.

Light Up Liquor Table

I remember back in the Christmas-post writing season that taking pictures of anything that involves twinky lights is difficult. The flash overpowers them and, thus, they look pretty lame. But sans flash looks pretty cheesy too. And as I never took a class in photography, I hope you can forgive me for the extremely low quality of these pictures...

I stole this idea from the holiday issue of Blueprint, the dead Martha Stewart magazine that I was really smitten with. I'm actually still mourning its loss. Going to the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble has certainly lost a lot of its charm at this point. I'm always hoping that Blueprint will be revived. And I know I'm not the only one! Moving on... So I the moment I saw the Blueprint version of this project I knew I needed it to top my liquor cabinet, which, by the way, used to reside at the Dallas club Sense. It's great because that corner is sort of dark and dreary, and this is project that really lights up the space and creates a festive atmosphere all the time! Well, all the time that it's plugged in. I am still a little scared that the whole thing will catch fire and burn down my apartment building (and make me eligible for a Darwin Award). And when my coworker Mariya mentioned that Michaels was having a big sale (with 50% off one item coupons), I jumped at my chance to turn this long-term design dream into reality. My normally $40 canvas was a cool $20 thanks to the coupon, bringing the total cost of the project to about $21, since I bought a thing of paint, too. The twinky lights were donated by my mommy. So I painted the canvas a nice cream color, with some patches that tended toward yellow and others toward pink/red. So it's modern art gone bad. Then I poked 200 holes in the back using a fav tool from the hardware store to make these three starburst shapes and carefully shoved the lights into the holes. And then I plugged it in, and well, you get the idea.

I like it a lot. Come by, I'll make you a cocktail and we'll admire it together. (Oh and by the way, the picture below is a better view of the whole thing. I realize it looks terribly boring though. I'm going to have to work on that...)