Paint Party Friday (a day early ;))

I finally have it all together enough to once more be part of Paint Party Friday!  YAY!  I've missed visiting all the amazing artists and seeing what they've been up to, but I never want to comit until I know I'll be able to visit 80+ blogs!
Anyway, here I am and I have my pages for Angie's journal finished.

I ended up using two quotes instead of one- unusual for me, but what can I say?  The muse told me to, so I DID!  I extended my page so both quotes would show when the spread was first opened, but not all of the painting.

 And here it is fully open.  It probably doesn't look like I changed much from yesterday, mostly, I added more butterflies and expanded on the roots, but decided to leave them white.

Be sure to stop by Paint Party Friday tomorrow- always SO much to see there!
That's all for now,
Stephanie

Round Robin still goin' Round and Round.....

I'm almost ready to mail Angie's journal out for the round robin we've been doing.  I can't believe it only has two more stops before it will be on it's way home to her- amazing how time has flown!
Anyway, for Angie's (beautimous) boook, I wanted to feature a cherry tree with keeping on the theme of how we're all connected.  This led to the blossoms becoming butterflies (which she uses a LOT in her work) and here I am almost done!

I think I will change the roots to a dark blue-black and make them more distinctly into 8 separations to represent the 8 of us in this group.  Also still adding butterflies....but for the most part, it's almost done.

I love using quotes in my journal pages and I've been searching high and low for the right one to go with this page- I finally narrowed it down to three:

Always remember your roots, but don't forget that you were born to fly..."
Unknown

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
J.R.R. Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring

"Like branches of a tree, we grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one.  Each of our lives will always be a special part of the others."
Unknown 


On a side note, I have to add, that while I was on my blog travels this morning, I stopped by to "see" Cheryl at Healing Woman and she just used one of her poems in a painting that also speaks of roots and growth - I LOVE these kinds of connections!!

That's all for now, got to finish Angie's book so I can get it to Maggie on time!
Hugs,
Stephanie

A little peek into what we've been doing in art class......

We're actually rounding up on the fourth week of classes, and to be truthful, I feel lucky to even have pictures to share.  That's how scattered I've felt lately!  But I did take pictures, and I actually have a moment to share them with you guys!
We started this project by drawing butterflies onto card stock and them tracing them in rows- which I then masked off into strips...

 

 Then they chose two colors next to each other on the color wheel and 

proceeded to paint fragments of their butterflies....

 

 pulling the tape off and remasking until it was all painted

finishing them off with a border using a tint of one of their colors to frame the quote, "If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies!"

NOTE: I plan to have Colson go back over her letters so they show

 

That's all for today- gotta get ready for class!

See ya'll soon,

xx

Stephanie

And ANOTHER Three Weeks have passed.....

So here I am once again- no, I didn't fall off the face of the Earth!  Right after my last post, everything went full speed ahead to getting Emmie and Garrett stocked up on their school supplies and everything else that goes with getting ready for back to school...THEN it was time to get Caroline ready to fly from the nest, off to college!  Granted, her school is only about 5 miles away but there was still so much to do to get ready.  Plus, I will admit to feeling a little melancholy about the whole business and really not wanting to post about it in case Caroline was to read it on Facebook...  So anyway, here I am with one out of the nest and the other two back in school.  My art class has also started back up, but more on that another time!
Now, I'm playing catch up in the blog world.  My main creative endeavor this summer was to switch EVERYONE'S bedroom and paint them all.  This probably sounds a little crazy but two of of bedrooms are in the attic and one is much smaller than the others.  Since Caroline was moving out we decided that it would be fair to move her into that room- after all, she'll only be here on holidays and occasional weekends.  BUT it quickly became a huge puzzle with me trying to create as little chaos as possible, like one of those slidable puzzle games where you move the pieces around and around until everything is in it's place! 
BUT, I got it done, and I've actually managed to get pictures of the two downstairs rooms to share!
So here are a couple pictures sharing the before of my new room:

Wanting to encourage her creativity, I allowed her to paint a mural on one wall of the room.  I will admit that I didn't expect the paint to extend all the way over the baseboards and onto the floor.   Nor did I think about drips- they used drop cloths the first couple of times they worked on it and then threw caution to the winds.  Bill and I spent a LOT of time with primer  for the walls and paint remover for the floor.  BUT we got it done and then I was ready to paint the walls (my favorite part- I HATE prep work!)

 And here it is after:

The reason we decided to move OUR room too, is because of our HUGE bed!  Our new room has one wall without any windows or doors so we can center it in the room.  The old room (which I don't have any pictures of) had a window behind our bed which I hid with a wall panel.  But I LOVE sunlight and I adore having two windows in my new room, one of which I can enjoy my garden from!

For Emmie's new room, she and I did lots and lots of pinning ideas on Pinterest and came up with a really cool design.  If I were 16 going on 17, THIS is the room I'd want too!

So, no befores, but here's the after:

I'll have to share the attic rooms another time- I think has become long enough!

For now, I'll leave you with the promise that I'm loking forward to playing catch up in blogland- I've missed you ALL!

xx

Stephanie