Paint your Paint Rack Carrier

We have a great design for our Paint Rack Carrier.  Julie Polderdyke has a free download pattern for the extra cute “Brushes & Bubbles” design.  You’ll notice that Julie has painted the inside of the carrier white – no, she didn’t get her brush in there to do the job, she sprayed the inside area with white spray paint from a local discount store. 
The Paint Rack Carrier holds 81 of your favorite paints – mine holds the ones I use most often, and I have them arranged by color so that I can just grab the right color and go!  And, if you need more than 81 colors in front of you, the Paint Rack Carriers look great placed side by side, or if you turn the handles to the side, they'll also stack!
Take a look at Julie’s cute design, as well as the other 14 new free downloads under projects on the Artist’s Club web site.

1 comments - Posted by MaryJo at 1:22 PM - Categories:

Create this Cute Giftbag

This cute gift bag was created using our Canvas Lunch Sack and DecoArt's SoSoft Paints.  I adapted a design found in Laurie Spelt's Simple Sampler book.  This was my first real painting project on canvas.  If you remember I did stencil kitchen towels in an earlier post, but this was really my first actual painting project on fabric.  I did have a little trouble using graphite paper, so I ended up free-handing the cupcake outline using a regular pencil.  You do have to load your brush a little heavier than other surfaces, and paint does go through the canvas a little so make sure you have a cardboard inside the sack.  I found shading while the paint was still wet a great adaptation for the canvas.  I used Laurie's Swirls and Stars Stencil for the darker blue background and some other stencils we had around that worked for the flower, leaves, and "celebrate!" which made the project super fast.  Laurie's Alphay Stencil would be cute on the lettering as well.  When stenciling don't forget to use Stencil Tape to block those things that you don't want or you may end up with a boo-boo.  Since Laurie's original design was meant to go on wood, not all of her choices of DecoArt's Americana paints crosss over to SoSoft Paints, I had to do some blending of the browns to get the color I wanted.  Here is the list of SoSoft Paints that I used: Mocha, Warm Neutral, Dark Chocolate, Ultra White, Buttermilk, Lamp Black, Baby Pink Deep, Fuchsia, Dark Burgundy, Light Hauser Green, Green, Santa Red, Ocean Blue, and True Blue.

And just in case your mouth was watering when you saw these delicious chocolate cupcakes that Lisa made for our chocolate celbration day (her birthday and my anniversary), you can make these delicious Dark Chocolate Rasberry Cupcakes too.  Lisa does something a little special, she adds a layer of Ganache before the Vanilla Buttercream frosting.

0 comments - Posted by Anita at 8:00 AM - Categories: Painting | Finished Projects | Staff Projects | Inspiration

Fun Friends Pins

It was love at first sight!  I spied these little critters as I was flipping through Shara’s Funky Folk Art 2 and knew I had to paint them!  They have such wonderful personalities that just looking at them makes me smile.  They were a breeze to paint up—I easily completed all of them in a day—so you get instant gratification.

Don’t wear pins?  Try framing them instead!  

I picked up a frame, took out the glass, used some batting and fabric and ended up with an adorable wall hanging.  You may want to grab more than one set because the cuteness level will have people begging you to make one for them!

I think the black cat looks just like my Rowdy, complete with green eyes.  Don’t you agree?

0 comments - Posted by Laraine at 9:00 AM - Categories:

My first landscape painting in long, long time.

When Linda Lover’s new book Brushtiques Fundamentals came in, her landscapes drew me in! I am not typically one who paints landscapes, but there was something about this book and I kept going back to it time and time again. With a little push from other staff members, I decided I had to try and paint a landscape. As I looked through the book to make my selection, I stopped on the fall landscape with its bright, eye-catching colors and instantly knew this is the one I was going to start with. I chose to paint on our Oval Plaque with Insert, Linda’s pattern fit perfectly; I didn’t even have to resize it. So, with a little hesitation, I set off to paint a landscape that was way out of my comfort zone. With each tap of the brush, it just seemed to come to life, and in a matter of hours it was finished.  I am very happy with the way it turned out, and am now thinking I may just have to give one of the other seasons a try.

0 comments - Posted by Diane at 6:05 AM - Categories:

Here's Linda Lover

“Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely, light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end of the day”….Sir Winston Churchill.

Painting has the capacity to bring joy not only to the painter but to the viewer as well.  The beautiful and appreciated works of art that move us usually focus on the ordinary things that are around us every day.   So that which inspires an artist to create often begins with their vision.  Through the years painting has truly made me a keen observer of my surroundings.  When I look at the sky, it’s more about color and mood than it is about checking the weather.  In the fall when I rake the leaves I find myself enjoying all the bright colors of gold and red that have drifted to the ground. I find myself studying shadows and contrasts as well as depth and distance.  Then when I sit at my painting table, I rely on all the things I have observed to help me create my painted scenes.  Touching the brush to a surface opens endless possibilities to tell a story in paint or rekindle a memory.  It seems the more I paint, the more I am inspired.

I feel quite fortunate to find myself very busy with books over the past several months.  Recently my book with simple landscapes was published.  It illustrates how to get more out of designs simply by adding, exchanging, or cropping details or adapting the colors of the seasons.  I truly enjoyed stepping out of my comfort zone of landscapes to create with flowers.  I’ve always loved gardens and, of course, the colors were like painting from a rainbow.  This book will be published later this year.  Also awaiting publication is a book with clay pot and saucer projects that were designed to be decorative, useful and even good for gift giving.  My work in progress currently is a book to celebrate the timeless joys of winter.

Painting has been an amazing gift that I’ve given myself and one that I have truly loved sharing with others.

0 comments - Posted by MaryJo at 10:25 AM - Categories: Artist Bios

I love to paint Shara Reiner designs!

Shara Reiner’s designs are so much fun to paint, and can easily be adapted to fit a variety of surfaces. In her latest book, Shara’s Funky Folk Art, Vol. 2 she has so many designs that I want to paint. I just loved her stacking boxes designs and can’t wait to paint them all. After looking at the patterns, I realized that her farm design would fit perfectly on our rectangle tray. I left off an apple tree and added the flag to the long outside edge, but other than that, no resizing was required. I just loved how it turned out, and can’t wait to paint her wild animals design, I wonder what surfaces I can find in my garage. I hope you will love Shara’s book as much as I do…now on to the next project.

Happy Painting!

0 comments - Posted by Diane at 7:30 AM - Categories: