Chalkboard art!

Custom calendar for an Etsy order! It's shipping out this morning! Turned out cute, just needs wiped, seasoned and put into it's frame!

It's time for me to go get ready to play with the little ones in the studio for fingerpaint day, but it's shaping up to be a BUSY weekend for me!

Hope you have lots planned for this labor day weekend!

(If you haven't checked it out yet.... something cool is happening soon! Sign up here to be in the know!)

Grand opening day 1

So the night before my opening I went over to check a few things right before I went to bed, kind of assess and see what needed done in the morning etc...
and the lock on my front door jammed and it took over a half hour to get it closed and locked. For real.
In the pouring rain.
Yay.

It was the only half hour ALL DAY it rained but it got locked.
So I came home and called the maintenance guy who authorized a locksmith for me and then I called not 1, not 2, but 3 different 24 hour locksmiths. None of which answered their phone. Awesome huh?
I left a message with all 3 and only one got back to me first thing yesterday morning. He met me at the studio at 9 and got it all fixed but I was having a mini freak out and it set me about a half hour behind. Everything went off great though.

My sister made amazing cupcakes...

Aren't they beautiful? They were even MORE delicious!

She's really creative too! :D I think she needs to open a bakery.  Hmmmm..... maybe a future project.

One of my best friends came and did some facepainting

The kids did some chalking out front too!

I had a steady stream of people coming in throughout the day to say hi, be supportive and check things out! I'll get more pictures of the studio all done during Day 2 of my opening...
Everyone have a great day and thanks for coming on this journey with me!

Chalk Tangles.

You're never too old to play with chalk... though you might feel it the next morning! :D
ow.

So much fun! I hope you are having a great weekend and you are creating some awesome things!

Chalkboard art...

I have a large number of chalkboard areas in my studio.. so getting my quotes and chalkboarding just right is high on the list of things to do. There are a couple that I'm doing permanently (because they'll be up high.. and I'm short) so I especially want those to be right.

So lots and lots of practicing.
I love the look of mixed fonts though, so I'll keep playing til I get it right.  I like this one but it's not just right.

I love the way wet chalk stays n place once you put it there! :D

I like the way the letters turned out but it was only for practice. I don't like all capitals on it.

I have a ton of quotes, yet I feel like I need more... because I haven't found one that is PERFECT so if you have a favorite quote or inspirational saying please feel free to share!!!! I'd really appreciate it.

Moonlight and Zen....

One of my favorite effects in Zentangle is the glow of white on black. It's the basis of my Moonlight and Zen class.

I know I SHOULD have a set class format that I use for each class, but I often find myself reinventing my wheels so to speak, because there are JUST SO MANY FUN THINGS TO DO!!!

So, I played around and here are some of the things that may make it into tonight's class.
Including a BRAND NEW just announced today pattern by my friend (and CZT) Mabel Yap!
It's called Palmer and it's so much fun!

So that's a little sneak peek if you happen to be joining me tonight, and if not... and you live in the area, maybe you'll want to join me another time!

I hope everyone is having a nice week, the weather has finally broken here and the sun is shining and it's "warming" up enough that outside is an inviting place. Almost. It's still chilly.

When the weather gets nice, do you find yourself inspired to create outside?

Creative weekend.

I got some new tools this weekend and I've been having so much fun with them.
I wanted to share some of what I've been doing in the interest of beating my perfectionism as well as just to let you know how much fun I'm having... and isn't that what the whole creative thing is about? Having fun with it anyway? None of these are my "usual quality" or really anything I put any REAL effort into. And that is kind of the point of this post.

So I got 2 sets of Aqua markers, which are watercolor markers. I've not really played with any like these before, and it's been a lot of fun, but I didn't use watercolor paper so I had a lot of pilling, which kept things from going clean and the colors didn't photograph right... so there's that.

I also spent less than 10 min on each of these, cause I'm just seeing what they do. :) (I tell people all the time, just do it! Don't hesitate to post it! Just DO it!)
Neither of these is any good (can you hear my inner critic??? She's a loud mouth isn't she?) and yet I really love both of them, mostly because while I was making them I was having so much fun just PLAYING with my markers. I wasn't worried about making art, it was making itself, I was just having fun.

Earlier this weekend I posted about my spiral art set, which I just love. I've played with it ALL weekend!
And then my I did this with my spiral art set... again... just something really quick to see how it worked.
Again, not more than 10 minutes and it was after midnight when I did it!

Then our other project was creating homemade ice chalk. (and erupting ice chalk!) It's finally going to be gorgeous out and we love chalk here so we thought we'd try something new.   I didn't take many pictures because we were still experimenting... but I will share some of our creations if it worked out right.. and if it did I'll do a post on it. (NOT my creation ... and I will find where I got the idea originally to share with you as well!)
I did snap this shot as I was mixing 1 batch though. Isn't that gorgeous?

Well... What did YOU do this weekend?
I hope you are doing something great!

The rest of my day is going to be spent playing with erupting ice chalk in the driveway with the kids and then making ribeye and shrimp kebabs... YUM! so I think my art with take a backseat today, although I will probably be posting the recipe for my kebabs on my other blog if you're interested. I don't post there very often, but I try and post fairly easy, really tasty food.


In case I don't post tomorrow, Happy Memorial day.
Memorial day is... well... I'll post about that tomorrow ok?
Please remember what the day is about and take a moment at some point to remember.




Only a few days til the challenge kicks off here! Do you want the details in advance or should I post them on the 31st like I was going to?