Alaska art

I'm back from my Alaskan trip, and it is bittersweet. Of course I am happy to be home but I also miss the pitterpatter of little feet from my grand children. It was such a fun time and I am lucky I was able to spend as much time with them as I did. I was gone 7 weeks. That is a long time. I missed my studio!

I did have a chance to do some art while I was there, and do some art with the kids. First I am posting one of favorite projects and one of my first projects when I started painting furniture.

This is a bench my son made and then I painted it about 8 years ago. I don't know if I even used primer on it. I used craft paints, Deco, Folkart, and Americana probably. I did put 3 coats of poly on it and I am amazed at how well it has held up. It takes a lot of abuse and still looks great.

I used a gold paint pen to outline the backgrounds....probably because I had one! Sometimes I just want to use a special pen or a color, luckily it looked OK in this case...

Below is a canvas door hanger. I just took a piece of primed canvas, you can get at an art store. Mine was on a roll that I bought to make a floorcloth with.  If it is not primed, you will need to tack it down to a board and then prime it. It will buckle up if you don't tack it down. This actually stayed nice and flat since it was already primed, and I just used craft paints, because that is all I had up in Alaska!  I use craft paints a lot on canvas here in my studio also, but I like to use my artist paints along with them (acrylics) because they are so much more brilliant and saturated with color which really brightens the picture up. You can't see it in the picture, but I have folded the top over and made a little sleeve which I slipped a dowel into.

The round dowel can be found at pretty much any home improvement store. I then tied a narrow ribbon from end to end on the dowel and that is what it hangs on.

 I will post more soon of a couple of other projects I completed while I was there. Thanks for visiting my blog and I welcome any comments or questions. If you want to receive an email alert when I post something new, sign up for the email notification on the right side of the blog. 

 Remember,  "Every day is a canvas, paint your life with bold and brilliant colors."

  Ta ta for now.Carolyn