I haven’t shown you any pictures of Cooper since he was a little pup so I thought I’d do a quick post of some of his “grown up” pictures. Some words that describe him are: fun, lazy, and a big goof ball! The pictures capture a little of that. His favorite things in life are frisbee, sleeping, going running with his dad, and giving big sloppy kisses to EVERYONE. The last picture is of him snuggled up in my lap while I’m having my quiet time – he makes for a good table . Click on any of the photos to see them larger.

I’ve been playing around with a new medium lately that I really really love – acrylics. As always, there’s a big learning curve when you start a new medium but it’s been fun playing around with something new. It’s actually been hard to pull me away from my studio because of this new medium. For those of you who may be interested, I came across a great website that has a lot to share about acrylics. There’s lots of instruction, tips, and FREE videos!!! Yahoo for that! Here’s the link if you’d like to check it out www.willkempartschool.com. I also signed up for Will’s art courses and they were really good.

I still have a LOT to learn with this medium but I thought I’d share some of my first paintings with you. I’m adding several to this post since it may be while before I get back on here again – at least that seems to be the pattern . You can click on the picture to see any of them larger. All of these except the red barn are small 6 x 6 paintings. There’s also some glare on some of these – I’m still working on photographing these acrylic paintings without glare – it’s much different from photographing my watercolor paintings.

Or cleaned up and cropped like this…

Here’s another example of sketch book view or cropped. The last picture is cropped because the bird’s body was wonky but I liked his little face. Maybe next time I’ll write something worth reading. Sorry – I’m a little rusty.

One day I was drawn to the beautiful orange color of my prescription bottle and I decided to paint it. I had a small 5x3 plain journal that I thought I'd make into a medical journal – we don’t really use it but it sure is cute!

I LOVE journaling - I keep prayer journals, sketchbook journals, travel journals, and any other kind of journal that comes to my mind. Because journals are expensive I like making my own sometimes. Here’s just a small sampling of some of the journals I’ve made since we’ve been renting (I’m sure I have more than this they are just packed up). I use ALL kinds of methods when making my journals. Sometimes I use plain journals I’ve bought at a store and add my own art work to the front.

Others I use pages torn out of old books I find at a local used bookstore and apply them to the front and back covers. I use all kinds of books – children books, animal books, dictionaries – anything that draws my attention and is cheap! I just apply the torn pages with glue – sometimes I add tape over the picture because it has a look about it I like.

Front cover of a journal I hand bound with hand torn watercolor paper.

I used the opposite page in the book and it created a fun front and BACK cover.

This is a color chart journal I hand bound with hand torn watercolor paper. I covered cardboard I cut from a box lying around with two pictures from a children’s book. The pictures made fun front and back covers. I just punched holes in the cardboard covers and the paper and tied with ribbon – very easy!

This next one I took pictures from an old bird book and dictionary. I layered the pages and then cut out letters from another used book to form the scripture for the cover. I wrapped the map around the cover so it would show on the inside cover. There were lots of pages I wanted to use from the bird book so I decorated the front and back cover (inside and out).

This cute kitty cat journal I made from one of my own paintings. I really liked the painting and tried a new printer to make some prints but they weren’t up to my standard. I couldn’t use the prints to sell but I sure didn’t want to throw them away – so this is one way that I reused a “throw away” print. I just cut it out and glued and taped it on a plain journal. You could do this with kid’s art, junk mail, or just about anything!

Here’s a small one (about 5×5) I made (again I think I just used cardboard as the base for the cover) and I covered it with an envelope from a friend in Africa. I loved the color and the stamp. I used scrap pieces of ribbon to connect the front and back cover and a simple rubber band to keep the book closed. For the back I used some black and white photo copies of some writing and bird. I have a box I keep in my art room where I throw any kinds of scraps, stickers, paper, envelopes, pictures, etc for use on things like this. I am constantly digging through that box using scraps for things.

This last one is one of my favorites and it was very simple! The cats and birdie were cut out of the same children’s book as the rooster above and glued onto the journal. I painted the little bird-cage around the birdie because I thought he’d look cute just hanging above the cats.

Here’s just a little look into another area of my art work and life of journaling. Wow – that may have been my longest post ever and it took me FOREVER because I’m quite rusty on posting. Hope to be back on here soon to share some of what we’re doing with our new house!

I came across this really neat sketchbook project that I’m really excited about. Whether your a professional artist or a stay at home mom you can participate. When you sign-up they send you a sketchbook to fill and you send it back sometime in December (I think) and it goes on tour across the country and then will be displayed in the Brooklyn Art Library, where it will be barcoded and available for the public to view. If you are interested just click on the image above and it will take you to the site for more info. SERIOUSLY – you don’t have to be an artist – you can fill it with whatever – you could even get your kids involved. I think it’s going to be a fun project.

When you sign up you pick a theme – I picked “Inside/Outside” because I think that captures on a large scale what I paint – things found inside and outside. When I received my sketchbook in the mail it was dented a little on the front cover which I was thrilled about – it helped me get over “messing” the cover up – it was already messed up! The rules say you can do whatever you want to the book as long as it stays the same dimensions. So since I paint with watercolor I unbound the book and rebound it with watercolor paper. I included some of the original paper to make notes on and describe the painting.

The inside of my rebound book

I’m going to use it as a SKETCHBOOK which means there won’t be finished perfected pictures – it’s kind of like a doodle book . I haven’t painted a single sketch in it yet – I’ve only finished the cover – but I hope to start painting in it today. I’ll do posts along the way and record what I’ve been painting in it. You can also go here to see my sketches along the way.

I thought I’d do something I’m comfortable painting for the cover – a bird. I’m not sure why I’m comfortable painting birds – I just am. I love painting them! Because I painted the cover in watercolor I’ll have to seal it with wax so moist hands don’t disturb the paint. I also got some great new letter thingies – I’m not sure what they’re called but they are made to punch/press letters into leather (my brain has stopped working – I can’t think of what this process is called – no funny comments about how my brain is never working ). I used them to press (or whatever you call it) my website into the cover. I like how it turned out and have used this method in my sketchbooks to record the date – I like how it’s kind of subtle. Ok, enough, here’s my cover – click on it to see it larger…

Let me know if you are signed up for this project or plan on signing up for it. Here’s another artist who’s participating – I really like her blog (scroll down to her 4th post to see her Sketchbook Project).

Looking...

Sniffing...

Touching...

Tasting!!!

 Today is Grady’s birthday!!! I just thought I’d take a moment and share a little about why I love my man so much. He’s the BEST husband EVER – way more than I deserve! He’s smart, insanely handsome, funny, fun, humble, selfless, loves me like crazy, always puts others first, a great provider, a great fisherman, a great skier - actually he’s great at everything he does, did I mention how good-looking he is??? I love you like crazy Grady – I don’t deserve you at all but am so thankful to the Lord that He gave you to me. May we have many more blessed years together! I hope you have a VERY BLESSED DAY!!! (He’s NOT going to like that I put these pictures of him on here ).

Mr. Paul is our next door neighbor and the cutest old man you’ve ever seen (he probably won’t like me calling him old – sorry about that Mr. Paul – how about “older” – but I would love for you to be my grandfather!). He’s as sweet as he is cute. Cooper (our new pup) is quite taken with him too. EVERY time we go out to use the bathroom Cooper is straining his little head to see if Mr. Paul is working out in his garden.

These first two paintings are of harvests from Mr. Paul’s garden that he has shared with us. I’m always so excited to get something from him because not only is it yummy but it’s always something fun to paint. Like those squash above – they were the prettiest yellow and green striped squash I’d ever seen. He asked me to paint them for him. He’ll probably read this post before I have a chance to give him the painting (I still need to get it matted for him). I love how it turned out – it just speaks summer.

I’ve also painted many other things associated with Mr. Paul. Above is his house and blue truck that is always parked by his house. I’ve painting the field that’s behind both our homes (below).

And this last one was really fun to paint – his garden and shed. I actually moved some of these things around – his shed isn’t actually that close to his garden but I used my artist license and put it there .

One of these days I’m going to have to paint Mr. Paul because he wears this great old straw looking hat when he’s out working in the garden that I just love. Mr. Paul, thanks for all the inspiration – you’ve given me LOTS to paint! Don’t forget you can click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

to our family – Cooper! We started looking for another dog about 6-7 months ago. Grady thought since we were buying property we needed a bigger dog – I jumped on the chance to get another dog. So I started researching larger breeds that don’t shed (since I have bad allergies) and that are laid back – I didn’t want a large spastic house dog. We came across a rare breed that seemed to good to be true. Cooper is a Korthals Griffon – also called a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. They are hunting dogs that are low shedding, love people and children, and are couch potatoes.

Before we got Cooper I took my niece and nephew to the pet store to pick out a toy to give Cooper (they’d never been in a pet store so they were fascinated). Of course Hannah would have bought the whole store for him. Here she’s giving love to the “snake dog” she picked out for him and Aidan liked the “snack” aisle (that didn’t surprise me ) and thought this would be a great treat for Cooper. That’s NOT what we ended up getting for Cooper though .

We have fallen head over heals in love with this little guy. He is a snuggle bug and a lover boy – he loves kisses, rubs, and snuggling. He’s VERY laid back! And he is beyond cute – seriously good-looking.

The breeder lives in Iowa and were kind enough to meet us half-way. So Saturday we hit the road and met up with them at a rest stop (the happy new parents below). We were on the road ALL day (5:15am – 6:30pm) but it flew by for me . Cooper slept in my arms the whole ride home. This breeder is top-notch and has 3 more pups (it was a very large litter) if you’re interested let me know and I’ll hook you up with them. You can click on any of the pictures to see that cute little face larger. I’m sure you’ll be seeing paintings of this little guy soon – he seems to like to pose for the camera and hopefully for his artist momma. This little guy is a real blessing to us!

Well, we have some exciting news… we’ve been looking for a house or some land for a little over 4 1/2 years – WAY too long in my book, but in God’s book – well, let’s just say He’s got His own plans . So 4 1/2 years later we FINALLY found some land to build on! Yahoo!!! We are SO excited! In stretched out fashion, we’ve actually been working on buying this land for 6 months now – it’s taken forever, but we finally closed on it last Friday. It’s been quite a journey since we sold our house but well worth it for this property (I’ll tell you a little bit about it in a minute). Last summer we sold our house – in one day – which was a miracle in this market – but we couldn’t find a house fast enough and had to move into a rental. That was NOT what this “nester” wanted to do, but again, I realized we weren’t following my plans but the Lord’s. So we found a great little house that got Grady a little closer to work and we settled in… for 3 months.

The week of Christmas we got a call from the rental agency saying the owner of the rental house let the house go into foreclosure and it sold at action and we had to be out IMMEDIATELY. The rental agency said we could have to vacate as soon as 24 hours – I totally freaked (that could even be an understatement – you’d have to ask Grady). Thankfully the Lord had mercy on us and He gave us one week. But over Christmas we had to find another rental (again the Lord had mercy and allowed us to find one fast) and pack – we moved 2 days after Christmas. To make it even better, the day of the move Grady woke up with the swine flu and I had to do the move by myself. It was an exhausting day! My Mom was a blessing from the Lord because she took care of my sick husband and helped me clean our old rental.

So after all that we finally found a place to live – an amazing place – more than we would have ever thought to ask the Lord for. I’ve always wanted a little bit of land out in the country – just something private and we found just that but more. We just purchased 20 acres out in the country – but still just 20 minutes to Grady’s work (that was the whole purpose of this move – to get Grady closer to work) and 25 minutes to Hendersonville where my family is. The land is beautiful and even has a pond on it with a walking trail around it and a boat dock. We’re beside ourselves with excitement. We start the building process this week. We’re going to build a small new/old farmhouse. We’re calling it that because we want it to look old but it will be new. I’m going to use as much salvaged/vintage stuff as I can find – sinks, doors, fireplace mantels, windows, etc. It’s been a while since I’ve posted but we’ve been pretty consumed with this land thing and building and one other thing that I’ll post about next week.

Since this is a bird post I wanted to take the opportunity to share another Christian artist who I stumbled upon lately and was BLOWN AWAY with – seriously you’re going to love this guy and the symbolism that’s in his paintings is over the top good. This is one of my favorites - PLEASE click on the link (the high lighted words) and check out his interpretation of the last supper – read the symbolism below the painting – go, do it now!… ok is that good stuff or what???!!! Here’s his website if you’re intersted in reading and seeing more or purchasing some of his work. I know 2 of my friends who will LOVE his work – Susan and Tina this will bless you I know!

You probably won’t be too intersted in seeing my stuff after looking at all his great stuff – I’m not even intested in seeing my stuff after looking at his! But here are 3 more sketches I did in my bird series.