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"Dear God, thank you……"

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Happy Easter! The below painting is very fitting for the day.

Dear God, thank you via lilblueboo.com
This original piece was hand-painted in acrylic on 1/8” hardboard and embellished using dmc stitching, shaped buttons, and rhinestones. This painting is one-of-a-kind and I will not be reproducing it for future sale so grab it while you can! You can find it on Etsy here. It features a favorite prayer of mine by E. Rutter that I remember from when I was little: Thank you for the world so sweet, Thank you for the food we eat, Thank you for the birds that sing, Thank you, God, for everything.

The Lost Paintings….

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The Lost Paintings via lilblueboo.comThe Lost Paintings 2 via lilblueboo.comThe Lost Paintings 3 via lilblueboo.comAs an artist I love looking back on work I’ve done to see how my style has changed and progressed over the years. I’ve always been diligent about taking pictures and documenting paintings and projects but there are a few that got away. I refer to them as my “lost paintings.” I know other artists probably go through the same thing. My friend Shari sold her first painting at age 19 and in her exact words it was her “absolute favorite painting” that she ever painted and she doesn’t have a picture of it.

There are two “lost paintings” that I wish I had photos of:
One was my first “real” painting as an art minor in college.  A distant acquaintance of my husband’s family bought it in 1999 for a few hundred dollars. It is one of a pair of paintings I did…..the unsold half of the pair “Ephemeral” hangs in our house today. I don’t even think I signed the painting I sold.
The other painting is a reproduction of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” that I painted as a mural in our first house. It was almost 9 feet tall and 4 feet wide on a wall as you climbed the stairs to the 2nd floor. The finished mural had a gold dusting I did over it to make it shimmer just slightly. The photos to the left were taken of the mural in its beginning stages. Almost to the day I finished the mural the house next to my childhood home came up for sale and we jumped on it. The mural helped sell our townhouse but because I was finishing my MBA, starting a new job, packing a house, renovating a new house…..I never got a photo of the finished product. I’ve wondered many times if it is still there or if it has been painted over. I never signed it. No owner will ever know who painted it.
Update:  My mother read this blog post today and says she is going to visit and knock on the door of my old townhouse when she is back in NC to ask if the mural is still there 🙂

Ten Dollar DIY Hand-print Plaque

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You have probably seen all the DIY hand-print plaque kits in the craft stores…. they don’t always look that great…. or turn out that great.   I wanted to get a professional one done for Sienna but I couldn’t find a place that creates them closer than 100 miles from Palm Desert (plus they can get pretty pricey).

Ten Dollar DIY Hand-print Plaque via lilblueboo.com
I bought a Lil’ Hands kit from JoAnn’s.  It comes with non-toxic paper clay  to cast your child’s hand which doesn’t dry fast so if you mess up you can retry before you pour the plaster into the mold. The set also comes with paint and ribbon to decorate but I didn’t think these did the plaque justice.  I used green and pink Folk Art acrylic paint to add polka dots, paint the handprint, and paint the lettering “Sienna” and “1 1/2 Years.”
To make the handprint plaque look more like ceramic than plaster I used Krylon Triple-Thick Crystal Clear Glaze as a finish.  It is a glaze that you don’t need a kiln for!  It also protects the plaster from denting or cracking.
Once the plaque was dry, I cut a large piece of 2 inch pink polka dot ribbon to hang it from.  Hand-print preserved! Memories on a budget: kit was $9.99 but I used a 40% off coupon, paint runs less than a dollar for 2 oz, already had the glaze and ribbon!
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