Art I Like - Emily Jeffords

Emily Jeffords Sunshine Meadow #2

Technically, I am not allowed to be looking at art.  My mom made me swear I wouldn't after we spent the better part of a week wrapping up all my frames, prints, paintings, etc. for the Big Move.  But this is purely for blogging purposes, 'K Mom? And maybe a little inspiration...

Just look at that happy sunny landscape above by Emily Jeffords.  It makes me so happy! She does it using so few brushstrokes, it amazes me as well.  I love the soft airy way Emily's landscapes feel, and the bright colour palette she uses in her works.

Emily Jeffords Mid-Summertime

Emily Jeffords Rise & Shine

I have always had a fascination with clouds and must have a few hundred in my iPhoto albums from various trips and sunsets.  Emily's landscapes almost always have a really low horizon line and lots and lots of sky.  I think that is part of what attracts me to her work.

Emily Jeffords After the Dew #3

Emily Jeffords (Commission Painting)

If you feel like her works might be familiar, it is probably because of the enormous amount of press she has received lately.  She is currently working with Minted, West Elm, Etsy, Shoppe, and Great.ly and has been featured in Domino Magazine, on Design*Sponge, Babble, Decor8 Blog, Huffington Post and many more.  Based out of South Carolina, Emily has two young daughters that spend a lot of time painting in the studio with her (which makes for some super-cute photos).

Photo by Paige French, who needs a whole other blog post!

I have been dabbling a bit in painting lately, and this past weekend I had a chance to go up to a camp near Edmonton and spend all day just playing with paint.  It was marvelous.  While I tried to do some paintings based off of photographs, and a pure abstract, most of the time I tried to copy Emily's Paintings in an effort to understand her style a bit more.  It is definitely easier said than done.

My copy, based on Emily's Driving to Greenville

My attempt at Emily's Sundown

This one was more of an attempt at copying Michelle Armas, but is nowhere near!

I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to painting subjects and style that I would like to try here, if you want to take a peak.

You may wonder why I don't just paint my own thing, why I am trying to reproduce someone else's style - which is a fair question!  I feel that by trying to recreate an artist's work, I can get an idea of how it was made, how it was built from the darks to the lights, what values are where and how it all comes together.  I only wish I had a photo of the original landscape to see how they read it into the painting!  I love watching YouTube videos posted by artists that show them doing a painting in real time, or sped up, so you can see how it actually works.

As I was saying to my husband, who was seeing dollar signs floating in the air when I came home with these paintings, there is no way I would ever try to pass these off as 'mine'.  Some super-nice Facebook friends who were very supportive when I posted the fruits of my weekend away may get an early Christmas gift... as long as they don't claim it as an Emily Jeffers OR Lisa Mackay original!  It's all in the spirit of learning, and I am very inspired by Emily's paintings.  After enjoying myself so much this weekend, I have signed up for a painting course starting in January, so hopefully I will be moving on to my own originals soon enough!

Back in it with Waterlogue

So, my Blogger dashboard tells me that I last posted December 9.  That's a while ago.  I won't go into too much about why, where I was, or what I was thinking - there are some great posts that sum it up so well by Grace Bonney, Jen Flores, and Janice.  Suffice it to say that it became a lot of work, a big time investment, and I was just not that into the new 'direction/professionalization' of blogging for myself.  I like to just throw stuff up that I think is pretty.  I include photos of my kids.  I don't really fit in a niche, and, having tried, I don't really want to.  I was all set to "take this thing to the next level" with a new Word Press site, fancy hosting, plug-ins, SEO, bla bla bla... and then I just stopped.  Stopped writing, stopped reading blogs, stopped spending all my waking hours looking at the computer.  I have read a LOT of books in the mean time!

But I kind of miss it.  I say 'kind of' because I don't really miss all the techie stuff, much as I liked it. And I certainly don't miss looking at my numbers, that stresses me out.  And I don't miss all the emails asking me to review things, blog about things, let other people write on my blog, etc.

I miss having a place to post stuff I like in a more thoughtful way than pinning it on Pinterest (which I still love).  When I post things here, I am forced to ask myself why I like it, and what about it speaks to me.  And here I can post about design, products, apps, crafts, colours, fashion, environment, music, you name it - it's my freakin blog!

So if you are with me, awesome, I love you, and I am grateful for your company.  If you are no longer feelin the love, that's cool, carry on, I'll be around if you change your mind.

But now, on to the main event, the reason I opened up this posting thing again: Waterlogue.

I know it's cheating, but hey, so is Instagram.  I know I am not actually a fabulous watercolour painter artist-extraordinaire, but I get to imagine how awesome I would be if I had the skills.  Just like with Instagram, I get to feel like a real photographer, capturing magical moments in time with just the right je-ne-sais-quoi. (On that topic, you must watch this hilarious video: http://youtu.be/5i9wUa8ofvE)

You will see from my heading at the top I have a huge love of watercolour.  Watercolours happen to be very "hot" right now - the loose impressionistic aesthetic is similar to the current rage for hand-written fonts over structured typefaces.  The artistic, the individual, the one-of-a-kind is refreshing in a world of cookie-cutter everything.

The irony of this is that you are no doubt going to see Waterlogue used EVERYWHERE now - your Instagram feed is about to go all David Milne.

This is my son at a recent Toronto Symphony Orchestra student concert (field trip).  I am just so blown away by the treatment of this app, the fidelity to real watercolour techniques and effects.  The photo above looks like it could be an illustration in a kids book.

So there you go: Waterlogue.  Best $2.99 I have spent in a while! :)

Thanks for reading. xo

Bright Bobbie Burgers Colour

It has been a while since I have done a proper blog post.  You know how you miss a day or two at the gym or skip a few runs, and it isn't so hard to get back on track?  But when you miss a week, suddenly you feel guilty for not going, but don't go.  Then it's another week and you aren't sure how to ease back into it without hurting your knees, so you don't go. Then people start to say things like "remember when you used to run?"  Yeah that's how blog posting has gone for me lately (and the running thing may or may not be personal experience...).  But here I am, ready to get back at it.  Perhaps it was this gorgeous room in the weekend's Globe and Mail of Bobbie Burgers's living room that did it.  I love it SO much, especially that incredible painting.

DIY whiteboard coffee table

I have to say, while not being the most aesthetically-pleasing of projects, this guy has to be one of my favourites, based purely on the fact that it is a raging hit with the boys.  It could actually be a very beautiful project, I just didn't have the optimal bones to start with, since I found the coffee table on the street on garbage day.  The table looked pretty solid (it was damn heavy) so I squeezed it into the back of the car while taking the kids home from school one day.

The run-of-the-mill heavy machine-turned legs are not really my style, but the price was right, as was the shelf underneath. It was in pretty rough shape, with peeling veneer, chipped and cracked paint, and creaky legs.  It looks like it was someone else's up-cycling project at one point, but they must be even more impatient than I am (I didn't think that was possible) because it definitely wasn't sanded or cleaned before the paint went on in glops and dribbles.

I sanded the table for the better part of a weekend - next time I would definitely try to scrape off more paint before the sanding stage.  Then I filled in the cracks and split veneer with wood-filler, and tried to fill in the routed "detail" on the top.  I also hammered in some nails around the legs to secure the wobble.  It was at this point that I hit a creative roadblock - should I just leave it white?  Paint it with blackboard paint?  Get the fancy expensive white board paint?  I tweeted about my indecision and was surprised and thrilled to hear back from Steven at Smart Wall Paint.  He offered to send me a tester of their white board paint and I jumped at the chance!  When it arrived by DHL, the cost of duty was as much as the paint would have been from Home Depot, but I was excited to try it.  It was also a great chance to make use of the Scotch blue tape I had been sent.  I painted the bottom a light grey with the paint left over from my bathroom redo, and there was just enough smart paint for the top.

The paint was an interesting process - you have to mix part A with part B (much like DIY hair dye), make sure your roller passes over every section 5 times, wait 5 days, and then use.  We had to open part B with a knife as the top wouldn't come off, and it was pretty stinky stuff.  I carefully followed directions and waited patiently to use it.  I don't know if I didn't clean it off properly, but I was disappointed that the surface wasn't a smooth glossy finish - instead it has lots of little tiny bumps - but the kids don't seem to care and you can't really see it.  I call it a win.

The table has been in heavy use since the moment I put it in the sunroom.  I had bought some whiteboard crayons a few years ago to go with a book Will had, and they work perfectly.  I also bought some washable whiteboard markers, imagining every shirt and bit of exposed skin being covered with ink, but the crayons give better colour.

We have had roads, towns, shapes, words, animals, and games drawn on the table.  My favourite was the whole zoo they made with Děda, complete with a polka-dot hedgehog!  They each have their own collections of cars and trucks - the table is the perfect height for driving - and I have been keeping them in white Ikea baskets on the bottom shelf. Looks good and functional: score!

I do wish it had more modern lines, but all things considered, it doesn't look too bad in front of the sofa.  As a bonus, we now have somewhere to put our feet up and rest a coffee mug (when we're allowed).  So what do you think?  Have you used white board paint before?  I love that it fits in my favourite colour scheme (white and wood), and am contemplating a whiteboard wall in the kitchen...

*Thank you to Steven from Smart Wall Paint for reaching out - gotta love social media!
*Thank you to Laura Stratton for the Scotch Blue Painter's tape - it's awesome.
*thank you to Katrina at Pugly Pixel for the photoshop templates!

Basement update: the rug arrives

Notice I didn't say it was installed, but at least it arrived and my nervous little eyes got a glimpse of it.  I like it.  The wall colour I am not so sure on - sure looks blue more than grey.  But at this point I would settle for a finished basement of any colour.

In-laws arrive in two days... well, one and a half really... no worries... I have faith!

Would you or wouldn't you: Rattan

I may or may not have blogged about this site before, my apologies if I have!  However, driving down Dupont today I noticed a big sign on an antique store advertising a content reduction sale on YouBidLocal.com.  It is a great online auction site of local stuff - a fabulous mix of eBay and your local auction house.  Sadly this sale has since closed, but in perusing the current auctions, I found this set of rattan chairs - 4 of them - for a current bid of...$11.  Sure, it will go up before they are sold, but...just to contemplate that gives me the auction tingles.  How amazing would these look sprayed and cushioned? Like, say, these:

via

The dresser project: let there be light!

I am happy to report that one item on my project list has been checked off.  The new school year filled me with energy and enthusiasm, and one day I found a drop cloth, took out the drawers on my big dark dresser/toy cabinet, and got busy.  No time like the present, right?  I sanded it all down with my rotary sander and by hand, and removed the hardware.  There was a LOT of hardware.  Each drawer actually had four separate pieces, and they were screwed and nailed down.  This thing was built to last!

I then primed it with STIX Bonding Primer, using a 2-inch angled brush and a "velvet nap" mini roller. I wasn't messing around.

My biggest hurdle was choosing the colour - I am not what they call "decisive."  I got so many great suggestions from you guys and on Twitter, and really dithered about this.  My poor Para colour deck got quite a workout.  Finally, I went with my gut and chose a creamy white - Desert Sand to be exact.  I dug out my coupon for a free gallon of Para Ultra paint that I got at Blog Podium (thank you Para and Blog Podium!) and headed to the local paint store in the Junction.  I have to say, I normally just whip up to Home Depot and choose the cheapest paint I can get.  Having this certificate forced me to find a Para paint distributor, which happily was West Toronto Paint.  I had the best service, loved supporting a local store, and don't think I will be going anywhere else for paint any time soon!  They gave me great advice on how to go about it: many thin coats ("as thin as you can get") with a light sanding in between.  This is quite a departure from my usual glob it on thick to avoid too many coats.  And sanding in between? Yeah, right. 

This new-found high standard approach made for a lovely smooth finish, and many many days of chaos.  Also, I became a little obsessive about it, constantly feeling for any drips, bumps, or nicks.  Did I mention this baby is seven feet long and has nine drawers??

So you can imagine my dismay when I put it all back together and the doors in the centre wouldn't close.  I took them off again and laboriously scrapped off all my meticulously-applied paint from behind the hinges, and on the doors.  I have managed to jam them together, but can't quite figure out why they won't close.  My mum suggested that maybe the moisture from the paint swelled the wood itself?  Argh.  Double Argh.

Whatever - moving on.  Maybe I will eventually plane them and repaint. (As if...)  I put the half the hardware back on, after polishing it all up.  The original drawer face configuration just seemed too heavy on the lighter background.  Plus, I didn't want to cover up all my hard work!  I also left the three middle drawers (behind the doors) as they were.  Call it strategic, call it laziness.  I like it.

The result pretty much rocks my world.  SO much brighter and lighter in there!  You may have noticed I also moved the dark brown sofa from there and switched it out with the little blue one.  I am thinking of adding another project to the list - recover the blue sofa!  I do like the smaller size and lower back as it also helps open the place up.  So there you have it.  Dresser = Done. You like?

PS. Can you spot Cam in the after photo?  :D

PPS. All the lovely arrows I had so much fun using in Photoshop were a free download from the ever-amazing Ez at Creature Comforts.

My Dresser Project - Any Advice?

One of the projects I am most excited to get started with is this dresser I got a while back on craigslist.  I know that painting it will make a drastic difference to the room.  But I am having trouble deciding if I want to go stark white or light grey.  I am worried that the white will be too jarring, and I am worried that the grey will just look like dingy white.  Here are a few colour options I have picked out from Sarah Richardson's Para Paints collection:

Promise - yellowy grey 

Powder - bluey grey

Bisque - warm beige-y white

Snowfall - pure white

I am thinking I will keep the brass hardware and maybe polish it up a bit, so I think I need a warmer colour to go with that.  Help a girl out - what should I do?

So many projects...

OK TEAM!  Vacation time is over.  We're home, we're starting school tomorrow (WAHHHH!), and I have been looking at my place with fresh eyes.  GAH!  So much to do.  After a month by the sea, this place seems so dark, with so many kinds of wood going on.  I need to freshen it up, paint things out, and there's no time like the present!  In no particular order, here are some of the things on my list:

Project #1 : The second-floor doors. For some reason, all the doors were left unpainted in the centre, on both sides.  Plus, the paint that is there is yellowing and dingy.  It will be no small task, but I would love to paint them all out a fresh white colour, with tiny colour surprise.

Project #2: While I was home I got another spool bed for Cameron at an auction.  It isn't quite the antique mahogany gem that William has, but it wasn't too much $$ and I am itching to give it a fresh coat of paint.  I have an idea for Cam's room, but will save that for a further post.

Project #3: The dining room wall.  I have had a bunch of frames sitting in the basement for months and months, but I think I finally know what I want to put in them.  I got some stuff at Ikea to put in the boys' room to display their artworks, so these are moving upstairs and the frames are going up here.  Hopefully it will clean up this area a bit.

Project #5: When I got home and looked around I swear this awesome dresser I got on Craig's List was sucking the light out of the room.  I am going to paint this guy too, either a white or a light grey - any votes?

Project #6/ Project of the century:  I am doing it.  I am painting out our gumwood wainscotting in the entryway.  I have dithered, I have debated, I have searched my soul, and am going with my gut (and Sarah Richardson).  I may leave the door frames wood, and probably the newel post, hand rail, and steps.  I was going to get it professionally done, but who has the cash?  So I will chip away at it, bit by bit, until it is done.  And maybe my Aunt Daphne will stop by some time... :)  I would love to replace the tired carpeting on the stairs too.

So just a couple of little projects... I am excited to start getting my hands dirty!   Plus I have been mulling over a business idea... more on that later.  Nothing like a change of season to get energized! :)