Before and After

Desk Before Tea Set Design Finished Tea Set

Once again my blog has been put on a back burner. Again it is not for a lack of creating. Just lazy and busy and focused elsewhere. My friend Alexis asked me to paint a tea set for her to give as a baby present. I had in mind something formal and could not get myself going. Once it was decided that we wanted whimical I jumped on it with passion and excitement. I am currently taking a watercolor class without a lot of excitement which shows me how much I need to be motivated to create and then I always default to knitting, probably because it is the easiest outlet for me.

I love the bright colors and not shown in the photo is a good luck charm painted on the inside bottom of each piece. I love painting ceramic pieces. My sister-in-law, Marci made me an amazing lime green super mug with a pink poodle theme so of course Gary needs his own custom mug. High on my list of to do projects. Just like his sweaters he has input and then we work out what he wants along with what I want to do and we are a great team. He is a wonderful muse, fan and critic. I always value his input even though he doesn't want to interfere with my creative process. I have not been too excited to paint watercolors but like most things I do I figure things out myself making up my own rules. Watercolors are unforgiving and not meant to be painted too far outside the basics so this class has been wonderful to help make things easier and help to do things in the right order instead of what I want to do, limiting myself in the end.

I want to practice my watercoloring as we are going to Italy in October and it would be great if I could take my paints and capture things live rather than from a photo. I am very excited about our trip and know there will be artist beauty every where. Most of my photos are of people I love. I am not wild about scenery that I have not experienced myself. The two exceptions are both of the Alexis'. LA Alexis is an amazing photographer and San Diego Alexis posts the most wonderful blog photos on her blog, a lot of them nostalgic.

So we are off to a trip to visit LA Alexis and hopefully will be able to squeeze in