D.I.Y. time!

I have been on inspiration overload lately and I am itching to redecorate my studio and my bedroom!

I'm going to blame it on spring time, my obsession with HGTV and the Design*Sponge blog I have been following. :) 

A few days ago I started collecting images of things that caught my eye and here they are... 

I am not exactly sure how far I am going to go with my redecorating since I am tight on time and budget but I do know that I want to paint my furniture.

I went to Home Depot today and found these wonderful Martha Stewart 8oz test paint bottles (the brush is built in to the lid) for $2.94 each.  I fell in love with most of the colors they had available so I bought all my favorites to play with!   I'll take before and after pictures of all my projects and update them on the blog when I am done!  I am so excited to begin! : )

Pinecrest Gardens

I went on an unexpected field trip this weekend to Pinecrest Gardens.  I had no idea it was open to the public since it used to be Parrot Jungle and had been closed down for a while.  My sister and I were out and about with my cousin who came to visit from out of town and had to stop when we drove by the magnificent grove of banyan trees in the entrance of the park.  It had been raining all day and it stopped just in time for us to walk around and take pictures.   I had forgotten my camera at home so I took some pictures with my phone.  I can't wait to go back with my real camera and take better pictures!  

Photo set up

I thought I'd document what my photo set up looks like so I don't forget the next time I take pictures.:)

My studio is in a bit of chaos right now with all of the photo equipment out and up.

I went to the hardware store and bought a sheet of bead board and I sawed it with a handsaw (yay fun!) and used the front as the wall and the back side as the ground for my pictures. The planter I am using as a prop is actually a mug I bought on Etsy last year. It was a little too big to use for coffee but makes a beautiful planter!

The white board I am using as the ground in this picture is actually a shelf  I borrowed from my book case.   The sides are from a lightbox I purchased on ebay last year...it was a small and boring but the material is good for diffusing the light on the objects.  The prop is a planter my aunt gave me and is about the size of a regular mug.

Front Page!

I just went on to Etsy and saw my clutch on the front page!

I am so excited that my new pictures are getting more views!  I am still in the process of photographing but I have quite a bit done so far. : )

Almost Spring!

Time to dust off the photo equipment and take pictures! 

Here is a sneak peek at some of the new goodies I'll be adding to my Etsy store in the next few weeks! :)

Dream weaving

Butterfly: "Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name."  The Last Unicorn

I was thinking about a story I wrote for a class in elementary school.  The assignment was to write a story and illustrate it and I wrote mine about a dream I had about two men who were in charge of the dream world.  One was very old and one was young. The younger one was named Schmendrick because in my dream he looked like the silly magician from my favorite movie at the time, The Last Unicorn.  During the day while we were awake, the two men would knit a large sack which they would fill with the sand from their garden and it would turn into dream dust at night.  When night fell, they would travel around the world and sprinkle dream dust over every sleeping person and then go back to their little cottage and begin knitting a new dream sack.  As they knit, they would be so tired and weary from their journey that they would unknowingly skip stitches or make little mistakes.  They didn't know it but every particle of dream dust that touched these mistakes would turn into bad dreams and nightmares.

That is all I remember about the story.  This says a few things about me...I was a strange child and had a wacko imagination...yikes!  This was probably around the time when my aunt was teaching me how to knit.  It must have been, because I really had a hard time with it and I suppose that my knitting struggles were actually causing me weird dreams instead of bad ones!  : )  Anyway,  I have now come to find that the nuances that happen when I am doing something which requires repetition of an action tells a story.  The thing I am working on becomes a continuous recording of my current emotion or thought and I believe that is what gives something handmade its character and makes it beautiful. 

I was thinking about all of this because after years of searching, I found that Peter S. Beagle (the author of  The Last Unicorn) just narrated and released his book on audio!  I can't wait to listen to the book I have read countless times growing up and one whose images combined with the animation from the movie, formed the basis for my artistic aesthetic! : )  Yes, I am a dork!