Old Suitcases are Some of My Favorite Things

Of all the crazy things I've scavenged, the old suitcases are one of the things I like the best...

 This white one is one was $4.00 at the flea market...

Look at that amazing color on the inside !

I found some old stationary and envelopes in this one...isn't that cool... !  Remnants of someone else's past life...


is else's a real word?

 The postmark says 1952...

I love this old brown suitcase too, I like the stripes on it... it's been through alot in it's life...  I found it at the local recycling center

(the dump)

there is tape on the handle, and watermarks all over it...

 The big one at the bottom was scavenged from the "recycling center" too...

the suitcases are actually very functional  
this is where Mr. Fracturedfairytale keeps his guitar/music stuff

when he went to his family reunion at the beach this summer,
he just snapped it shut, grabbed his guitars and he was good to go!

an old hippie with long silver hair and a vintage suitcase... 

i think that's cute... 

I just love him to death...

 I wonder what ""Le Rouge Et Le Noir" means... ?

it's probably something like - 
50 ways to clean dog puke from carpet-  

but in french, it sounds so romantic...

The story of the three suitcases...

I wonder about all the places they've been...

The End....

Color, Texture, Light, What Makes a House a Home ?

 A rumpled bed...

Pink....

A nose for kissing,  matted mussed up fur, and a joyful greetting every time, even if i'm gone 30 seconds

Texture, wonderful linen...

Sparkles

 Green... the color for life and healing...

 A magic little message from the universe...

The ocean, any reminder of the beach...

More sparkles....

Light and crystals...  

 

Maybe our spirits and our energy are like crystals, sparkly and bright, reflecting and refracting and bouncing light off of everything all around us... 

The end...

New Painting, Beginning, Middle, and Almost Finished...

 A little baby watched over by a loving mom...

Here is how they started, just a rough rendering of an idea

This is when i wonder, what the heck was I thinking... 

This is when i brush on, and often wipe off and start all over again....

Now they begin to take shape and form and personality... I'm still wondering if this will be another wasted canvas....  But I decide to stick with it...  I have so little time for hours wasted

A few more hours, and now i feel like they are becoming what i envisioned...  

I decide to let the strokes be loose, and the color be interesting by adding blue... and of course pink on their dewey noses...  and here and there....  

I feel like this one is close, and maybe i'll just stop for now... maybe it's finished ....

Although no painting is ever finished if you can get your hands on it.....

And they lived happily ever after....

the end

I'm So Excited, Miss Mustard Seed Posted About My Painting.... !

I am so excited because Miss Mustard Seed featured my cow painting today on her blog.   And, i guess the best part of all is that she really really loves the painting.  I never know for sure when i do a painting for someone if they are really  going to like it or not until they actually see it, so I was really a little nervous...

But she totally did, and oh my gosh she named her Eulalie!  How cute and perfect is that!

Of course I would love it if I could sell thousands of prints of her, so then i could finally get my ( insert really bad word here) car inspected because no matter what i do THE ENGINE LIGHT won't go off...!  

and then pay off my mortgage so that when i get older than i am even now, which is old as ( insert the worst word you're comfortable with here)  i won't be living in the homeless shelter...

and it would be even more cool if i could afford to rent a little beach cottage for a week each summer, and maybe have an old pink Cadillac with cream leather interior,  and send my kid off to college so that he dosen't live with me and Mr. Fracturedfairytale until he is 30... 

and the most cool thing of all would be if i would quit having anxiety attacks about everything, because i can't drive to my fantasy beach cottage in my fantasy pink Cadillac if i get panic attacks every time i go somewhere..

but i don't think money will fix that...   oh well...

The end...

A Couple of Ideas, Chairy With a Pink Pillow, and a Painting for Sale

Talk about a before and after!  

 

From  pile of sticks and twigs... these two little birdies did a complete makeover for absolutely nothing.  Notice the lovely and timeless touch of the little twigs on the left extending well beyond the initial nest bowl... What a creative and imaginative use of the maple twig.  I'm sure soon birdies everywhere will extending wisteria vine and honeysuckle twigs in nests everywhere!

Chairy with a pink pillow from K Mart and Daisyboo's zebra toy.  How many of you have dogs who love toys.  She's my first, and I love it that she loves her toys! She leaves them everywhere, just like a 3 year old!

Ok, here is a meadow painting i did a while back, it's a pretty large painting, and it's so plain that i keep thinking i need to add cows or sheep, but then whenever i start to, I decide I like it just the way it is...

My friend found this old chippy frame at the flea market for practically nothing... It's huge... and so i grabbed the painting to see if it would fit, especially since framing stuff costs more than the actual piece of art half the time!  

Anyway, the frame is a little too small, but the whole canvas can be pulled off of the stretchers, and put on smaller stretchers and totally be made to fit this frame for a few bucks... So, Watch For Frames at the Flea Market!!  This would make a great mirror too!

 

Isn't this frame just awesome!

and as you can see, the integrity of the painting is not affected by taking a little off the sides... 

(you can see the hanging wire in front because i just set the painting behind it for a quick look)

Cool little tablecloth at "The Elegant Relic" in Mebane, NC

And look what Lacy, the clever and amazingly talented woman at the Elegant Relic did... she took one of those wooden crate thingys you see everywhere, like grocery stores, i don't know what you call them.. Anyway, she hung it on the wall and put vintage birdie prints on it... this is soooo cool!

Here is an original oil painting of Peonies I did.  It is for sale for $350.00 plus shipping, just email me if you're interested.... 

A Story With A Happy Ending...

As you guys may know, I work full time, and paint paintings on the weekend.  

  I love my job, but it can get pretty frustrating when i feel the creative urge come over me, and I'm not able to get to a canvas...  I wish i could afford to work 4 days a week.... and have more time to paint on the weekends....

For the last 3 years I have been selling paintings at this adorable little shop in Hillsborough, NC where I live. 

 It was wonderful, my paintings sold so quickly there, and i had a little following, and it was so rewarding.  Recently that opportunity ended, and i was so sad and disillusioned about it all.  I even lost the urge to paint.  I don't want to, nor do i have the time to go to flea markets and stuff like that to promote my paintings... i just don't like doing that.  So, i tried to think of another way, a way i could sell my work, a way that i enjoyed.  

Then one day, Miss Mustard Seed, an amazing, multi-talented  and well known blogger, blogged that she wanted  a cow painting.

So, i wrote her, and said i would paint her one!

 

She's a very busy and popular blogger, i didn't even think she'd have time to write me back!... But she did,  and said she would love one of my paintings of a cow, and so I painted one for her,...

and now my very own original cow painting is on her blog! and in her beautiful home!

 

I am so excited and proud to be represented on such an amazing site as hers. 

Now, so many more people will see my work, and I've had so much positive feedback already.

Once again I feel encouraged and inspired and full of new ideas...

 She told me how much she loved the painting, and it made me feel so good...

I felt myself light up inside again....

So, Thanks to Marian for the wonderful opportunity...

and thanks to Amy at Maison Decor... 

she's been my biggest supporter and confident and friend...

Now I'm feeling like maybe I have found a new way to sell my work and to bring paintings people will love into their lives. 

I also want you to know that I understand it is hard to afford artwork.  If you want a painting or a print, and feel you can't afford it, don't think that!  

don't hesitate to email me about a price, we will figure it out. 

 

And if we have too, i'll help you paint your own!

 Watch for Miss Mustard Seed to do a post with her new cow painting soon !

Here is a little preview taken right from her blog... !

The end....

Chairy in Her New Dress!

I FINALLY got my two chairs slipcovered... YAY!!!

and heeeere she is....   a little wrinkly from being in a plastic bag, but very cute still...

 Here are both the girls all dressed up...

here is Chairy's other sister,... Chairy

Here is the before...  not so bad considering that one of the chairs was $19.99 at the thrift shop, and the other one was free!

 Looks like entering the gates of heaven here... where all chairs are slipcovered... but it's really just dark in the kitchen

 Chairy again with a rumply throw

 Ok... want to see a sort of progression from when i first moved in here?   Here is my darling gold sofa, that i drug out of the dump, and actually dearly loved...  

So I had this dump sofa and 2 cute little pink chairs that i bought at a consignment store for $100.00 for both

you can see "Moonalisa" over the sofa, and she's waaaay to small for that spot... 

i'm trying out plates on the wall to balance her out...

sorry for the bad photos, but you get the idea...  This was way before i knew anything about blogging...

 then i found this cream vintage sofa at habitat for around $100.00, and i wanted a cream sofa, so my daughter inherited my good old gold sofa...   you can see here i am trying  out the white one...

see that rug, drug it outta the dump too, it's huge, and it weighs 20 tons, but by god, i got it by myself, and stuffed it in a little nissan sentra... which i'm pretty sure should have been impossible

ok, so far Mr. Fractured Fairy Tale hasn't commited murder suicide yet...

so theeeeeeeen....  I found this to die for vintage purple sofa, 

so in it came.... 

even though it didn't match anything i owned, and there was no way i could afford to recover it... 

... there she sat....

 see that little desk... drug that out of the dump too... 

you probably thought i was kidding when i told you i was a dump diver...

well my daughter can attest to the many times she sunk down in the passenger seat of the car and hid because i was at the dump tossing stuff into my car...

that might be part of what's wrong with her

 

 THEN, i was online one day and accidentally ended up at a blog called Theoldpaintedcottage,  and my jaw dropped to my feet when i saw Jennifer's before and after.... 

And so i emailed her, and set up a phone consultation with her, and sent her photos...

And she came up with a plan for me!

It was an amazing plan!

we decided i would find a sofa on craigslist and have it slipcovered...

She sent me links to all the sites where i could find things, and stayed on the phone with me  for over an hour.  Not only that, she's FULL of a million ideas, and she's FUN and easy to talk to .  I totally love her.  She told me to paint all my walls the same color, recover my sofa, get some white Ectorp chairs from Ikea,  get a seagrass rug,  darken the banister,  get those natural blinds (which i haven't done yet) and hang my rods higher, and lose the purple sofa... and on and on... it was insane it was so cool!

She gave me direction which i soooo needed

it was the best money i ever spent, and it was waaaay too little for what she did

if fact if she still charges that much,  she's crazy, but you should call her if you need help

 she had so many suggestions that i'm still working on the plan she gave me over a year ago

I don't think my house is all perfect or anything at all, but it is so much better than it was...

And once i let go of some "stuff" and recovered my sofa, everything started to fall into place...

the end...