Abstract Art

This is an acrylic abstract painting from a school project a few years ago. It's not SUPER abstract as you can tell what it is, but abstract art doesn't have distinct rules...at least that I'm aware of. If you take an image and abstract it from it's original form, then it's abstract...that was this assignment. I think this was from a perfume ad...it must have been...those are always sensual. Here is how you can get ideas for your next abstract painting.

View my online art gallery HERE. All the paintings and drawings are mainly student work from college.

Butterfly Watercolor

This is a watercolor butterfly painting I made for my friend this last Christmas. Who says you can't give an awesome gift on a budget? I found a butterfly photograph online, I think it might have been corbis to use as a reference and bought a matted frame at Micheals. Not only was this gift affordable, but it was from the heart and I knew she was going to love it. You don't have to be a great artist, just find an image you like as a reference...or if you are totally new to art, even trace the drawing if you want to focus on practicing you painting skills. In my college drawing class, we would often trace an image to get that part out of the way so we could focus on shading and other techniques. Give it a try! If you use watercolor and need to preserve light areas in your painting, learn how to mask a painting HERE.

To see more of my artwork, visit my online art gallery HERE.

Keepsake Gift for Grandma - handprint

Handprint Photo Gift

Framed handprint and photo!   

I made this keepsake for my mom's birthday. This is a really simple craft that you can pull together in no time, but it is so sweet and will be cherished for years! Click here for instructions!

Make Your Own Wedding Bouquet

It's amazing how much money you can save on your wedding when you do the flowers yourself. To stay within my budget, I ordered roses from the Costco website, which turned out to be some of the most stunning roses I've ever seen! We made a party out of it, all the girls in the wedding came to my mom's house and we all made our own rose bouquets for the wedding, with my mom's help. (She taught us how to do it, the woman who seems to know how to do everything!) and if you wondering from the pic above, yes, I was almost 7 months pregnant at the wedding! Our wedding was 2 months before our 6 year anniversary...I guess that's what happens when you wait that long to tie the knot!

Lady Bug Cupcake Tower

This was for my daughter's first birthday. I made the cupcake tower in less then 5 minutes. Made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes as normal and decorated them with Martha Stewart's Meringue Buttercream Frosting, seperated into different bowls with different colors of food coloring. For the ladybug smash cake on top, I used a cereal bowl to bake some of the vanilla cake batter in. I crossed my fingers and it worked out great creating the body of the lady bug. For the head, I cut a chocolate cupcake in half and just stuck it against the frosted body, then added the eyes with frosting. Black licorice was used for the legs and anntenea. This was SO much fun and has really sparked my interest in cake decorating! For full instructions on making this cupcake tower, click HERE.

Decorated Wood Name Letters

This was a fun project I did for my 1 year old girls' room. Unfortunately, living in an apartment, there is a limited amount of decorating you can do. That's why I loved this craft because it was simple, fun and made her room so much cuter. I think it would look even better if the wall behind was painted a different color like yellow or green. I had ithis project almost finished during one nap session! I started out with basic wooden craft letters that I picked up from Jo Anns. Don't forget to sign up for emails and print off coupons to take whenever you go there, you never know what idea you might come up with while you are there!
For instructions on how I decorated these letters, click here.

UPDATE: See this project featured in our segment on Dallas Evening News, which was picked up by more than 100 other stations!