Playing around

I have to come up with several painted items for my baskets for the Town and Country Decorative Painters annual basket luncheon. One of my baskets has a tea theme. This is a journal with a papier mache cover. The design is created using watercolor pencil overlayed with colored pencil. The journal is about 6x8 inches.

An experiment

I recently had an opportunity to buy some velour paper from a different manufacturer. There were a variety of colors including a bright orange. I bought a number of sheets of the tan, blue, and gray that would most typically be used with pastels and I also got some dark brown and some orange. The orange intrigued me because I wondered if you could get the same sort of luminous results with pastel on orange paper that Robert Warren achieves with his orange canvases. I played with the orange paper a little. These eggs are certainly not finished, but I did enough to figure out that for some subjects, the orange paper just might work. More playing is required, though. The eggs are actually more colorful than they appear in the photo. My scanner picked up a lot of the orange undertone and ignored the blues to a large extent. Watch for more.

Happy Easter

Here is a little Easter bouquet of pansies and m&ms. Have a wonderful Easter with family and friends.

Food as Art

You may have figured out that I am not at home. I am visiting family on my way to Ocean City, Maryland, to teach at a decorative painting retreat. My poor husband and my dog have been left at home to fend for themselves while I am off having a good time.

Today I went to lunch with a friend at the Tea By Two tea room in Bel Air, Maryland. It is a charming tea room with fabulous food. One of their specialties is what they call their Celebration Dessert. It is an absolutely decadent, but beautiful dessert that consists of a puddle of frosting in the bottom of a teacup to hold a small cupcake in place. On top of the cupcake is a fantastic frosting rose. When you have finished eating your dessert, they wash and pack the teacup for you and you get to take it home. We were celebrating my friend's birthday--a little late, but this is when I am here--so we each had a celebration dessert. Hers had a candle.

The reason I have shared so much information about this dessert is that you never know where you might find art. I have to say, this is not only decadent, but it is a beautiful work of art as well

The Gurls

There is a party happening in my living room! Four full-sized, life-sized Red Hat Gurls are sitting in my living room having a chat.
One of the Red Hat groups I belong to is decorating a car for a PT Cruiser convention at the end of the month. They asked me to design them. I found some Styrofoam wig forms to use for the heads and painted them up. Members provided wigs, hats, clothing, and accessories. This morning 5 of us got together to assemble the gurls. We stuffed thermal underwear and pantyhose to make their bodies--including bras to make sure they were curvaceous. Then we dressed them up. Three of them will sit in the car and one will be hanging on to the roof.


They will sit in my living room for the next three weeks. Their next adventure is a ride to the convention. I can't wait to be driving down the road with these three lovelies riding along--properly seatbelted, of course.