Rainy Day Helps Pumpkins Grow!

What a dark rainy day!  Held off on the trip into town for the plywood and worked with what I already had started.  I put a base coat on the pumpkins to block out the woodgrain and began to paint!  I have the front of two medium pumpkins complete and I love them.  I said complete and that's not quite true - they are painted!  I still need to add the wire for hanging and add some of those adorable little curly cues.  The back is now orange and the stem painted and I'm going to add the face decals later tonight or tomorrow.  With the rain I want to let the pieces have some extra drying time.  They're in my craft room, but still, really dry is very important.

I headed out to "manland" to help Bill for a few minutes and here came another downpour, so I cut out a couple of small pumpkins to make pins!  You know for your coat or jacket.  I think they would be super cute on a blue jean jacket!  Bet you get to see one modeled soon!  Right now they're drying - got them painted and now I wait!

I learned something else today!  A life lesson of sorts.  My mom loved to sew and my cousins do too!  Judy, who will be here in just a few weeks for the quilt show loves to sew and she has fabulous machines.  I would like to love to sew, but just don't.  I can do it and I used to do it well, but it just doesn't give me joy.  I bought a felting machine a couple of years ago (quilt show) and thought I would use it constantly, but it's not what I thought it would be, no joy!  But, today when I turned on that saw and began to cut out these little pumpkins, I suddenly knew how Judy feels when she sews!  Guess all that time in my Dad's workshop as a little girl set this in motion, but I just love it.  I love the smell of the wood as it's cut,  the sawdust, even the sound of the saw as it cuts through the wood! And painting well, that's the real joy of my life!  I love the feeling of God moving my hand across the paper or now the wood!  To God be the glory for through Him comes true joy!

I did two small 3.75" x 5" watercolors - one represents abundance - okra (freezing the extra at this point) and a cornucopia of veggies - representing Thanksgiving - my favorite holiday!

I'll be back soon with the back of the pumpkins and hopefully the large pumpkins painted!

It's All About the Candy!

Well I've been a busy lady!  All of that equipment my sweet husband added to my workshop has me working, working, working.  I've completed the witches shoes that I cut out.  The picture on the left is one freshly cut out and the picture on the right my first shoe. I'm not terribly fond of this one,  but I am keeping it for myself.  The next two I like soooo much better because learned from my mistakes and change up the number of polka dots and the stripes on the shoes and I used orange instead of green!


I took one of the orange polka dot ones to a meeting to show a friend on Wednesday and sold one!  So I currently have one shoe left and we'll see how long that one sticks around.


The next thing on my project list  -  the witches legs!  I cut out three sets of legs and I've got all three done.  So far two sets are sold and I'm keeping one for my front porch.  I was going to just stick them in a flower pot, but found a great black caldron at the Party Store and so I'm going to fill it with dirt and stick them in it.   This picture makes them look like too bodyless witches standing around talking, but when they're on display the legs are upside down, giving the appearance of the witch having flown into or fallen upside down into the pot.  I saw something similar on Pinterest.  They had used mannequin legs and I didn't' have any so I just drew out a pattern land cut them out of 1/4 inch plywood and striped them with black paint and Halloween orange duct tape.  Added gold buckles on the shoe, made the opposite end pointed to go into the ground and I will post the finished look as soon as I have my pot filled and it's on the porch!  So much fun to make these, but three of each is just about it, for Halloween items!

My next project is pumpkins!  I cut out two large and three medium and one little bitty one for wreaths for my front doors.  Yes, I said doors - I have three front doors!  Don't ask - we didn't build the house, so I have no clue, other than it's sort of handy except when it comes time to decorate!  But this year for Halloween I will have the shoe on the main door and a jack-o-lantern on each of the small doors.  On November 1,
I will take down the shoe and put up my new large pumpkin and I will take the two medium jack-o-lanterns and flip them over to show their autumn/thanksgiving traditional pumpkin side!  I actually have a beautiful wreath left from last year, but just have to do this pumpkin thing.  So here's my start!  I put my little one on top of the medium with it's base coat complete and set them on top of the large one so the size difference would show.  I painted the little one just to get some practice doing a pumpkin.  I like the little one so now I just have to duplicate it on the larger sizes.  I have an extra large and medium, so may save them to paint until someone says they want one.  Will see how it goes since I have to do the faces on the back of the medium ones.  I found some really cool jack-o-lantern decals at Joanne's - they're Martha Stewart and so I may use them for the cut outs instead of painting!  Seems like it would save a lot of time, but we'll see!  It will be a little while before I have those ready to post!

I'm heading out to get more plywood in the morning - I have some great plans for some Christmas door hanger - can't really call it a wreath - but I think it will be cool.  Lots of fun items will be appearing here over the next few weeks.

Mixing Up the Mixed Bag Even More!

It's a really good thing that I settled on the name Bev Ann's Mixed Bag!  Because here I go again, changing directions.  I just simply love to do too many different things!  I guess if I would do them all on one piece of art at a time, I could call it mixed media and be done, but I'm way too scattered for that. Ha Ha  That would be much more simple, but not me!

So this month I will be saying good by to Stampin' Up! as a demonstrator.  I should have made this decision a long time ago, but just couldn't let go.  When I lived in town I had such a great group of ladies in a stamping club.  It was a blessing and I sold enough to make it all worthwhile, at least it paid for most of my stuff!  I was never a super seller demo like some of the women I follow, but it was fun.

Now I live out in the country too far from my ladies and so it's just me.  I have too many other interests now to spend my money just on stamps and paper, so the end comes on the 30th!  I have begun selling retried stamp sets on ETSY, with great success, so I'm also paring down the stamping stuff.  After all, there's only so much room and I need to add my new tools!

For as long as I can remember I wanted to cut out wooden decorative yard pieces.  I got the chance to do a few last December, when I made the awards for the winners of our neighborhood lighting and decorating contest.  I made a tree and a Christmas light bulb. I really want to do farm animals - sheep, cows etc. to scatter around my back yard, but before I get to that here come some Halloween decorations!

 A week or so ago I saw a cute witch shoe wreath and some witches legs in a pot  on Pinterest and decided to try and make some.  My amazing husband took me to get the plywood and I drew some patterns and I started to cut them out when he said, "Do you want to go in town and get a jigsaw that sits on a table so you can feed the wood and not be balancing it and holding a saw in your hand?"

 I said, "Yes".  So we closed up the garage, jumped into the truck and headed the 25 miles into Lowes!  We got a scroll saw and got home, only to realize that I really needed that jig saw.  So we jumped back into the truck and he took me back and got me the other saw too!  I told you I had an amazing husband!!!!!!  He added in a palm sander and a few other little treats and we headed home to set up my work area in "man land".  Guess it's "couple land" now, but I'm not saying that to him!  Just thankful for the space and to be working with him so close by.

Sunday after church I began to cut and before I knew it I had three sets of legs and three shoes all cut out!  And my arm didn't feel like it was going to fall off from holding that vibrating hand saw.  The funny part was I used all three of my saws on the legs!  It's not a very good picture of the shoe, but I'll have more pix next time.

So for now I close! I've got painting to do and I want to have these ready in time for Halloween.  I've got other projects going right now too and I'll be showing some of them soon.  As I said at the beginning, I chose the perfect name for my blog!  I know some of you follow me just because of Stampin' Up! and I will be sorry to lose you, in fact, I hope I don't.  I hope you will enjoy my new adventures and look forward to the surprises over the next months!  In fact, this isn't my only new equipment, I got a Silhouette Studio a few weeks ago too, so new projects are everywhere!  Wow, I sure wish I had 36 hour days! Bet you do too!

See you soon!