Doodle, Possible Painting?

I wanted to show off a new type of doodle I've been working on lately as sort of a template for some future paintings. I'll keep you posted on how it goes as far as the painting thing goes.

Off the Shelf

Normally, I don't like to post pictures of projects until they are completed. But today I wanted to give you a preview of something that I am anxiously working on. Of course, fate isn't cooperating as I'm having a hard time getting my greedy paws on some of the key ingredients for this project. What is this project you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It's a spice rack/shelf for my kitchen. And it is super personalized, as the spices will be stored in glass Diet Dr Pepper bottles, with precious little red, yellow and blue rubber caps (from Sweden) on top of the bottles. I was really inspired a few months ago when I saw a project by a super cute pair of designers in Virginia, who painted up bottles for storing odds and ends. And I immediately wanted to do something like they had done, but instead of using it to store ribbons, buttons and the like, I thought it would be fun to use to store cake toppers, cocoa powder, curry powder, cinnamon sticks, you know, kitchen items. So I've been tossing this idea around since April! That's when I first saw the Virginia version of this project and was really inspired.

Often in Dallas, I go to Corner Market, which is on the corner of Greenville & McCommas. It's so old school and the food is delicious! It really feels like it's not in Dallas somehow. I feel like I'm some other city... try the A-1 To Go in Gardiner, Maine. Anyway, whenever I'm there, I order my sandwich, read my Observer and drink Diet Dr Pepper out of a glass bottle. In a stroke of genius, I decided that instead of using milk bottles, I'd use Diet Dr Pepper bottles! Of course, I have this idea at the very time that Corner Market sells out of Diet Dr Pepper. I've been waiting a couple of weeks for them to restock their selection and then I'll be buying 30 bottles. The next step will be drinking them, then I buy/fill all the bottles with exotic spices and baking decor items and, voila! Project Completed.

For now, I'll tell you what I've done. Above is a picture of the supplies I needed to make the shelf. And below is a picture of the area to be perked up with the shelf/spice rack. Pretty dull, huh? Give me some credit though, I usually keep a collection of cookbooks, cute plates and cups and that kind of thing in that corner, but I really don't use the area as a cooking surface, so I thought I'd build a spice shelf. I got a 48" wooden beam and covered it in Mexican oil cloth from La Mariposa, right in my neighborhood. Then I painted little "L" brackets to match the bright Mexican oil cloth. And that's my progress thus far! I'll update as soon as the project marches forward.

* Sorry I went a bit links crazy today. No explanation. I just got carried away.

Corner View

Hey folks. I bet some of you started to wonder if I'd ever post again. It's true I've been a real delinquent, and after saying I'd be better, too. Oh well. I have a billion things to post--all these great craft projects that are done but I just haven't had the chance to put up here yet.

And today's post is so silly, but I just thought I'd show you the "corner view" from my office. I built this litte hammock for my Wally The Green Monster to sit in out of a paper napkin and some straight pins. He gets the lovely view of a postcard from the Dallas Art Museum over his left shoulder and a snapshot of a lemon tree in Italy over his right shoulder. And of course, facing straight ahead, he gets to look at me typing away at my computer all day long. Naturally, a partially doodled calendar for the month of July is at the front of the picture.

And that's enough silliness from me for one day! Who ever heard of bringing a Wally The Green Monster to work? Some days I can tell I'm just going to need the little burst of energy that his silly little self brings me.

And in case you wondered... this is actually one of the tamest sections of my little office home (note that I didn't say home office). I should post more pictures so you can see how completely over the top the place is. It matches me pretty well though...

Talk to you soon!

May Doodles

Yo Peeps! I know it's been a long time, but that doesn't mean that I don't love you. You know that I do.
I don't know why I'm so busy or noncrafty these days; perhaps I should consider expanding the criterion for what qualifies for this blog. I certainly got some creative inspiration from my little cousin Mary when I saw her last weekend in Austin. She's the cousin that needs a craft blog... Alas...
In news that should bode well for the number of blog posts, I got a new computer! This should allow more posts.

These are my Month-O-May calendar doodles. The above section features a white out project that I won't try again. Turns out it's pretty hard to draw anything with white out. And at the bottom of that picture, you'll see a doodle inspired by an afternoon of listening to my Grateful Dead channel on Pandora. Trippy.

This one is fairly generic. You do learn that I'm tired of Mariah Carey from this shot though.

Here's my birthday salute to me. Yay. 26. I'll try to do some creative stuff soon. I hate to lean on office calendar doodles. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy my fav leisure time activity.

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...)