Treasure Boxes

Each year the Town and Country Decorative Painters does a service project. For several years, they have painted Treasure Boxes. These are photo storage boxes that are painted and sent to the children at the Shriner's Hospital for storing their personal stuff while they are in the hospital. We use the photo storage boxes because they fit perfectly into the opening in the bedside table. Since the children can be any age from babies to 18 years old, the designs may be appropriate for any age. The February meeting is reserved for service projects, but I will not be able to paint that day, so I have done mine ahead. I painted two boxes and both designs will probably appeal more to the older children.

Getting Ready for the Basket Luncheon

The annual basket luncheon for Town and Country Decorative Painters is this Sunday. I;m busy packing everything up and making sure I haven't forgotten anything. The theme for this year is A Victorian Tea. My friend and I are making a theme basket. We have a tea set with a rose pattern as the centerpiece of our basket. My job was to paint a cookie plate to match. Here is one of the teacups and my cookie plate. The cookie plate is wood.

A Fun Font

Sometimes you find the answer to a problem in an unexpected place. One of my baskets for the luncheon is a basket of games. All sorts of games: jacks, pick-up sticks, a yo-yo, a cube puzzle, a deck of cards, dominoes, a wooden puzzle, and a glass chess set. In addition to these items, every basket has to have at least 3 painted items and I was really struggling over what I might paint. The container for this basket is a canvas storage bin. While I was noodling over ideas for painted items, I came across a font in MS Word called Game Night. The font consists of Scrabble tiles for each letter of the alphabet. PERFECT!!! Here is what the canvas storage bin looks like now.

Geisha is finished

I have put the finishing touches on the Geisha statue. I hope my client likes her. I will be calling today to see if I can drop her off. She is pastel on grey Hannemuhle velour paper. The size is about 11x14. I must say I did enjoy working in the garden. There were enough positive comments about having an artist in the garden that the Garden Club wants to do it again for the next tour. They do this program every other year. A lot of people took my business cards and perhaps there will be some additional work as a result. These kinds of activities are what I call "planting seeds". You don't know the results until sometimes months later when you see what "grows".

Work in Progress

Here is the second pastel painting I worked on in the garden. This statue is part of the gardenscape. She is far from finished, but as soon as she is done, she is sold. This one is pastel on grey Hannemuhle velour paper. This is a surface that I like more and more as I use it for different projects. It does take a little getting used to, but it really is a nice surface to work with.

Painting sold

I participated in the Franklin Garden Club's House and Garden tour today. I sat in one of the gardens and painted. Earlier in the week I visited the garden to take pictures so that I could be painting something OF the garden and not just an unrelated subject. One of the features of this garden was a goldfish pond. I was able to get a nice few pictures of the pond and that is the subject I chose to paint. This piece is pastel on black velour paper. When it was finished, the homeowner bought it. I was very pleased.

Doing a good deed

I had promised the Franklin Fine Arts Council that I would donate a painting that they could use as a fund raiser. I wanted to make sure it got done before we move, so I worked on this little piece last week while I was in Maine. It is based on a photo that I took of the downtown streetlights during the Christmas season. It is pastel on velour paper, 4x10. The framer has it and as soon as it comes back, I will take it to the Arts Council to do with as they wish.

Bird House for Bike Trail Benefit

I finally finished my bird house for the Bike Trail Benefit Auction. The birdhouses are given to artists to paint and then they are auctioned off during May Mart, Franklin's garden mart held the first weekend in May in Fountain Park. I really struggled to decide how to paint it this year. I finally found a design on the Plaid website that provided my inspiration. I still need to put varnish on it, but it is done and I can meet the end-of-March deadline. This one is much simpler than the one I did last year, but it is sort of cheerful. I hope it does well in the auction.

Christmas Tree that Celebrates the Arts

Each year there is a Christmas Tree display in the lobby of the Barrow Theater in downtown Franklin, PA. The trees are decorated by various civic organizations, clubs, schools, and individuals in the area. I have had the privilege of setting up and decorating the tree for the Franklin Fine Arts Council. If you look carefully at the photo of the tree, you will see that it is a celebration of all of the arts. There is an old metal clarinet and sheet music to represent musical arts, a number of small paintings and paint brushes to represent visual arts, and a pair of ballet slippers to represent dance and theater arts. The tree topper is a wooden palette with a big bow. Right below the palette is a miniature painting of the Venango County Courthouse tower with fireworks in the night sky to celebrate Franklin's annual light-up night that opens the Christmas season.

Giving to the community

I think it is important to give of yourself and your time to your community. As an artist, I prefer for the contributions that I make to be in support of art and culture or at least to be artistic in nature. Our town sits on the Allegheny River and we have a bike path/hiking trail that runs along the river. The organization that supports this bike trail recently asked a number of artists and craftspeople in the area to decorate birdhouses that will be auctioned off in April as a fund raiser for this cause. The birdhouses are all alike and were made by a local company. They stand a little more than a foot tall. Unfortunately, the wood was rough and the birdhouses are somewhat rustic. Mine had a very rough roof--too rough to even consider sanding down to smooth. This presented a problem when it came to deciding how to decorate my birdhouse and how to turn the liability of really rough wood into a positive. I settled on making my birdhouse a seaside cottage with weathered siding and I covered the roof in seashells. Since the roof is hinged on one side, I could not run the shells to the hip of the roof. Everything you see is painted on the birdhouse except for the shells.

Treasure Boxes

January has been a rather unproductive month. We have had lots of snow, it has been cold, and I have just not been inspired. Today I painted a Treasure Box. The Treasure Box program is sponsored by the Society of Decorative Painters. Boxes like the ones that are used for storing photographs are painted with various designs suitable for children up to age 18. These boxes are then donated to the Shriners Hospitals for the children who are patients to have a place to store their personal "stuff" in their bedside tables. Ours will be sent to the Shriners Hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania. It is a nice service project.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

Each year the city of Franklin holds a festival called Light-Up Night. It involves the Christmas parade, decorated store windows, lighting the City Christmas tree and fireworks. It is a wonderful night and always very well attended. One of the annual activities associated with Light-Up Night is a Christmas tree display in the Barrow Civic Theater--our downtown jewel, We are very fortunate as a small community to have a theater that is home to an active community theater group and that sponsors performances by traveling groups as well as our community Silver Cornet Band and the community orchestra. So, before Light-Up night various community organizations put up trees in the theater lobby and decorate them. This year, I did the tree for the Franklin Fine Arts Council. Since I just joined the Arts Council, I didn't have a lot of time to plan the tree. I went through my small paintings and decorated the tree with ribbon, paint brushes, and a number of my small works in oil, watercolor, and colored pencil. The tree topper is a clean (fancy that) wooden palette and the small painting featured just below the palette is an oil painting of the County Court House on Light-Up night with fireworks behind it.

Learn To Paint Month

The month of October is designated as Learn To Paint Month. The decorative painting club is celebrating this month by holding free Learn To Paint classes at 4 different locations in our region. This coming Saturday, I will be the instructor for the session in our town. We will have two classes at the local library. They will be open to the first 15 people who sign up for each session. We will be teaching the same simple project in all of the class locations. The project is a small diary/notebook with a papier mache cover. We are painting a design that was published by Prudy Vannier for use with these types of events. We are providing all of the materials--paint, books, brushes, tracing paper, etc--for the classes and there is no fee for the class. We hope that we will inspire some of the participants to want to study further and to perhaps even join our group.

The Learn to Paint project

A Painted Quilt Square

Another project from my studio--a painted quilt square. This design is painted on a piece of white cotton. The theme of the quilt is the state flowers and birds of the 13 original colonies. Since I grew up in Delaware, I volunteered to do the Delaware square. Each person who participated in the quilt project was given the fabric square and the design for her quilt block from an old embroidery book that included the birds and flowers of all 50 states. In this way, the designs were consistent, even though the painting on each one may be a different style. Each one has a banner, along with a design that includes the bird and the flower for that state.

The Delaware state bird is the Blue Hen Chicken. It was originally bred for cock fighting, which, of course, is illegal today. I don't know if this breed of chicken is widely grown today. If it is, it probably ends up on the dinner table. It is not a flashy bird. Its feathers are grey with some white markings. The only real color on this bird is the red of its wattle and comb. The Blue Hen is the mascot of the University of Delaware. although the University of Delaware Fighting Blue Hen is actually blue. The state flower is the Peach Blossom.

So here is the quilt square. It is painted with DecoArt SoSoft fabric paint.

Another Memory Box

The Memory Box Artist Program is such a worthy cause. The boxes are much in demand. The program started in June of 1998 and has grown every year. It takes such a little effort and brings such comfort to the recipients. If you are interested in getting more information about this very worthy cause or would like to contribute a painted or otherwise decorated box, you can get more information by going to the memory box website: www.teraleigh.com/memoryboxes/

Today I finished this memory box to be delivered to the service program chair at our next meeting. The box is a 10" papier mache box that is basecoated inside and out before painting the design. It is then given a couple of coats of varnish. My favorite varnish for most projects and surfaces these days is Final Coat, a wipe on product.

Memory Box

Today I painted a Memory Box. Many artists participate in Memory Box programs. We paint a papier mache box with any design we desire. The designs are typically florals or things like teddy bears or animals. When the boxes are finished, they are donated to hospitals where they are given to parents of infants who are still born or die shortly after birth. It is a wonderful program and the boxes are very much in demand. This box is part of the Buffalo Snowbirds program. I am going to Buffalo this weekend to take a workshop sponsored by the Snowbirds. In order to take the workshop as a member, you must have paid your dues and painted an item for one of the service projects. This box is about 10" in diameter. Notice that the strawberries and leaves fall over the the top of the box on to the sides. The box is painted to look like a bentwood Shaker box.

Quilt Block

If you have never tried painting on fabric. It is fun and with today's fabric paints, you can get wonderful results. Here is a quilt block painted on muslin. It is painted with DecoArt SoSoft fabric paints. These paints do not require any sort of heat setting and can be layered to achieve shading and highlighting for pretty detailed work. It dries in about 24 hours. Once dry, it is washable. I have used this paint on sweatshirts and have washed them many, many time with no loss of the painted design.

This block is part of a quilt painted by members of the Town and Country Decorative Painters and will be given away at the annual retreat in two weeks. It is a fund raiser to support the retreat.

PAWcasso

Our local SPCA is holding a fundraising event they are calling PAWcasso. The event includes a reception with wine tasting and appetizers. They have invited local artists to donate a piece of their work to be auctioned off. They are also going to have a Chinese Aution for pieces "painted" by dogs and cats in the shelter. I will not be able to attend the event, but I have told my husband he will have to go. I have donated a piece of my work. A local frame shop is donating their services to frame all of the donated work. My donation is a small work (4x5 inches) called Salsa pianted in Genesis Heat-Set Oils. I think this is a very cleaver fund raising event and I hope it is wildly successful.

Class for Seniors

I have beeen asked to participate in a series of classes at Senior Centers and homes starting next week. This program is called a Taste of the Arts and is sponsored by the Meadville Arts Council in Meadville, PA. There are a total of 8 locations. I will visit a different location each week for 8 weeks and hold a 1-hour class. Here is the project I've designed for these classes. It is a little 4x6 watercolor. I will put the design on the paper with masking fluid prior to the class. The seniors will be given paint, water, and a brush. We will talk about creating puddles of color to paint from and they will be instructed to put whatever colors they wish on the paper so that the whole sheet of paper is covered. Once the papre is dry, they will remove the masking fluid to reveal the painting. I will mount this on top of a piece of mat board rather than cutting mat openings. I am told there will be between 20 and 25 participants each week. I hope they will enjoy the project.