playing with oil paints

When my grandmother passed away, she left me a whole slew of oil paints, some of which were too old to open, and others of which were still usable. A few weeks ago when I had an afternoon off I decided to try my hand at modern art oil painting.

Here is my trio of paintings:





I shall title them "confetti western 1, 2, and 3". Try not to get too blown away by all that raw talent.

I think one day soon I am going to make a more earnest attempt to paint something that looks like something. but for now I've got these stunners!

books need a pretty house, too.

I am a book nerd. my idea of a perfect date is to go to the biggest used book store in town, buy an armload, and then take them to a hole in the wall bar and read. I am lucky enough that Ethan also thinks books and beers make a pretty sweet combination, so I get to have my perfect date pretty dang often. As a result of the frequent book-buying, our shelves are getting pretty crowded. I've got two shelves that started life in my parent's house. They are huge, oak, and really, really, heavy. The above image is from May. notice that they were completely full at that time. full bookshelves+ never wanting to get rid of any + buying several books per month= unruly, unsafe piles.

I've decided that the next time we move (aka June), Salvation Army is going to have to do some heavy lifting and haul the big old bookshelves away. They are not terrible to look at, but they are REALLY heavy, and I can't buy another one for my expanding collection. There is also some water damage (hidden by placement). I am going to replace them with these:


And to make it look more awesome, I am going to paper the backs with this:


Not sure yet about black or white bookcases. but I am sure that the back will be lined with the most beautiful paper in the entire world.


Other options:


white and gold... makes me think of Liberace.


pink and gray large marbled. less wild than my turquoise choice and maybe more modern.

in a dining or living room:


plus

For someone a little fancier and girlier than I am, in a dining room.


The above, painted charcoal gray, bright green, or white, plus:

a sunny and preppy option

The best part is, if you used a non-permanent method of affixing the paper (like double-sided tape) then you could switch out the whole background for about $15 per bookcase. The paper is all archival-quality, sold in fairly large sheets, and ridiculously less expensive than if you were trying to buy actual wallpaper with a similar design. Plus, books traditionally have marbled paper in the inner binding, so It's extra fitting.


All of the furniture above was from Ikea. The paper is all from papermojo.com.

things I make

here are a few peeks of things that I've been doing with yarn:

1. Crocheted Tea Cozy! I didn't use a pattern besides knowing how to do basic increases and decreases, and tried it on my tea pot as I was making it. It is crocheted with Stitch N Bitch wool, which I like because it is affordable, has non-fugly colors (lots of them) and it has nice stitch definition. Seeing this makes me happy and it keeps my tea hot when I'm using my thrifted china teacups.


2. squares in squares in squares blanket. I first bought the yarn for this when we were in Austin last September from a pretty little store called Hill Country Weavers. It was the first fancy yarn that I have ever bought (Blue Sky Alpacas worsted weight organic dyed cotton) and this blanket is turning out gorgeous. I used a ton of colors in this (I think they were: dandelion, wasabi, pickle, azul, aloe, sky, mediterrenean, periwinkle, thistle, poppy, flamingo, and shrimp. The background color is Honeydew)

I am waiting for some more of the honeydew to come in so I can finish the blanket. It will end up being 8 squares by nine, plus a border. It's hard to get an honest picture of what the colors look like, since they look so different in different lights. If I had to do this blanket over again (which I won't any time soon, since we have to buy food as well as luxury yarn) I would have chosen a different color instead of sky blue, and then used a really pretty icy gray as the background color. unfortunately the icy gray was too close in color, so I couldn't use it. I like the honeydew, but I think I would have liked gray better. c'est la vie. I'm going to use the leftover cotton to knit either a striped scarf or a striped cushion cover.

And this is where things get made. I am trying to block out the area below the desk because it's pretty disorganized (multiple tote bags full of yarn and fabric and oil painting supplies I inherited from my Grandma when she passed but I don't know how to use yet). Please note the awesome yarn winder that my in-laws got me for christmas (along with an umbrella swift). I've even been winding my cheaper balls of yarn using it, so that they look a little more swank.


The column prints are from somewhere in Italy but I don't remember exactly where I got them. The frames are from Sweden (Ikea).

back

(dancing at Central Market when we were in Austin)

yeah I know I haven't posted in a long, long time. Things are busy, and my life is so repetitive that if anyone read what I have been doing and my thoughts have been for the last 5 months they'd probably need a prescription for some Prozac. I have been working a lot. except for the month of November (when I was doing a PM&R rotation which was beautiful), I've been on call every third or fourth night. that means every third or fourth day I stay overnight, come home, and then sleep till the late afternoon when I'm post-call. I've made it to church approximately 3 times since my job started, because I work most Sundays, and the ones I don't work often come after 12-15 days straight of working. So I sleep in and figure God's not mad about it. Here sre some of the projects that I have been working on during my short and sweet days off.

1. TV cabinet. I bought this at a small-town antique store in Whitney, Texas. it was originally a drab oak color (in an unfortunate 60's-70's way) and the hardware that is now brass was so dirty that it matched the rest of the piece. I sanded it, primed it, and spray painted it with Rustoleum's Safety Red. Then I covered it with poly to make it durable and shiny. I tried Brass-o on the hardware and nothing happened, so I broke out the big guns and used some Bar Keeper's Friend. That will dissolve ANYTHING, including my own skin. I stole this idea directly from Little Green Notebook. And yes, I was watching Toddlers and Tiaras, because I am on vacation and therefore entitled to watch trash.


2. I got this bench at the thrift store near my house. it was originally a kind of awful gold velvet, and I really liked the legs. I re-covered it in black and white stripes, because I am a little obsessed with them. I didn't have a staple gun, so it's on there with plain old paper staples. we'll see how long it lasts. probably not long.


3. This is a sneak peek of a birthday present that I'm making for my sister. It's also a Christmas present because I took a while to get it going. It's a basic zig-zag crochet blanket, using Bamboo-Ewe wool.


Let's have another look at it, shall we?


ziggity-zag! I hope she likes it.

4. This is something I really want to try using one of the suzanis that I brought back from turkey (the black one). I know that the whole ethnic-fabric-on-a-classic-shape thing is very trendy, but I honestly don't think I would ever get tired of this, or outgrow the trend. I think it would be really special to be able to remember drinking tea and haggling with the owner of the carpet shop for my suzani every time I saw a chair upholstered with the fabric.


My incredibly late new year's resolution is to do more posts. one of my favorite things is to read other people's blogs and see their ideas (who needs magazines anymore? there are five thousand bloggers out there full of wit and wisdom free for the taking!)