Be YOU tiful!

Words to live by :)

Out of the canvases I've made in the last year or so, thisis the one that is most truly "done by hand." I didn't use any stencils for the lettering, just used my fanciest cursive and own "bubble letter" font and ta-dah! 

I did buy a pack of paint pens from Michael's for the gold letters, though. It came along with a silver and black pen that have been really great for other projects I've done.

Jefferson's Rotunda

Wahoowa! 

Made this a while back but just recently got around to posting about it... This was fun and not hard to do! The process was not very conventional, but I enlarged a cartoon of the Rotunda and cut out the individual pieces. Then, I placed them on a large blue canvas that I painted, traced the various parts, and came out with this. 

Gotta love UVa. :)

Splatter Paint

     8 by 10 canvas with splatter paint background 

      Glue

      A stencil/initial of your choosing

+    Glitter

__________________________________ 

Success!

Pocketful of sunshine!

For this project, I took painter's tape to my white canvas and in the sections between the lines of tape, used a paper towel with a shade of either red, orange, or yellow and blotted it. It gave the paint some texture/a spongey look and feel. Once I finished painting, I peeled back the tape, hence the white, "beam-like" pattern on the canvas. My final major step was, using my best handwriting, I wrote "Make YOUR own" but traced stencils for "sunshine." Then, I filled in the letters using a black paint pen. 

If you don't have stencils of your own OR neat handwriting, you could take the time to print your own letters using a font you like on Microsoft Word or a similar program and then printing and cutting them out for tracing. 

Pretty sweet stuff. You should try it sometime. 

:)

Love,

Susan

Another birthday present I made for a friend of mine who is a pretty happy-go-lucky, optimistic kind of person

This, too, shall pass.

My mother has used this quote for as far back as I can remember. It's not a cliché for her, nor something she throws into conversation whenever someone mentions having problems in life. But it is one of her favorite things to say when times are really tough and people forget that tough times don't last forever. 

I made her this 8 x 10 canvas for her birthday this past year.

Be true to you.

In a recent performance, a friend of mine sang the song "I Am What I Am" from the musical La Cage aux Folles. While I have not seen the original production, I did see my friend's rendition of "I Am What I Am," and it was high-energy, fun, and exciting. I could tell that he really loved performing it because it's a testament and statement to the individual he is in real-life, off of the stage.

So when I got him for a Secret Santa gift exchange, I knew that I wanted to make him a canvas that used the title of that song. Here you go.

Love, 

Susan

"You know, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender - people are people." - Judith Light

Rainbow Cupcakes!

How I passed the time with my friends during Hurricane Sandy.. :)

To make these, you simply follow the recipe on the back of a box of white cake mix. But before you pour the batter into the cupcake mold, you should have a few different bowls of batter (I believe we used 6..) and add the desired amount of food coloring into these containers. Then, you can pour at random the various colors into the cupcake liners and put them in the oven for the suggested time on the box. You can't really mess these up; they turn out pretty neat no matter the order or amount of the colors!

Love & Kindness

A canvas I made for a dear friend of mine who is always going out of her way to make life better for everyone around her. It was awesome to see how she lit up when she opened this gift -- now it's hanging on the wall in her small apartment. :) 

Christmas 2012

I haven't done any posts recently, so I thought I'd put up some of the gifts I made for people this Christmas. I'll add others in a separate post later on, but here are the coasters I made for lots of my friends. They all really liked them, and these gifts were so fun to put together.

My mom provided me with sets of stencils, but if you don't have access to these, you could just as easily print off letters from your computer to trace onto the tiles. From there, I used paint pens, acrylic paint, and even clear spray paint to cover the surfaces and protect them a bit better. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! 

Love, 

Susan