Brushes

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Hasty 

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I literally just finished doing this. I’m still covered in paint and am finally out of a cross legged position only to find myself pinned down by The Little.

  
 Might as well make the most of it and do a post while I’m unoccupied. Thank goodness for mobile blogging. I was going to do a post about the ugliest cheese cake known to man. 

  
My husband got me a kitchen aid stand mixer. It’s marvelous but there is a reason I don’t do food blogs. I love to cook and it usually tastes great but that doesn’t mean it’s pretty. Thus was the story with my improvised salted caramel cheesecake. Essentially a basic cheesecake with brown sugar and a smidge of salt in the crust and a gooey caramel topping with salt sprinkled on it. 

It was hideous and only lasted two days 

On to much prettier things. 

  
Our bar is a giant white monolith and our kitchen doesn’t have much character what with being all black and white. I’ve introduced little pops of red inspired by our China which was  handed down from my husband’s great grandmother. It’s wonderful paired with my mom’s Avon glass collection she passed on to me.

  
And we have somehow managed to have a chalkboard theme in the kitchen… It’s on mugs & glasses, picked out by Mr. Smith but I ran with it and got canisters and even have the theme  in the pantry. 

  
So now that I’ve got the breakfast nook furnished and stools for the bar we’ve decided to expand the red and chalkboard theme 

  
(Ok, admittedly the nook still needs some curtains. It’s one of the only rooms that will get them.) 

After prepping the area with tape the brackets to the bar got the red treatment. 

   

  
I thought it looked better even after one coat 

  
About four coats later 

Here is a tip, if you happen to get paint on any hard surface (laminate, hardwood, tile, stone, cured paint)  you don’t want it on, magic erasers will take it right off even if it has dried.

  
After a little clean up our bar is looking pretty great. 

  
I’m going to wait a couple weeks for the paint to cure before we start doodling on it 

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Experimentation

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After the little paintings I did a few weeks ago I thought I might experiment some more with painting on canvas. I should preface this with the fact that it was an all around bad idea

  
The problem is I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to painting canvas. I can paint on faces,  you will get to see more of that next week but paint and canvas baffles me. 

  
I’m not sure what brushes blend well, as was the case with this first experiment. I’m pretty sure the brush I used was too stiff, so I got some strange brush strokes going on. 

  
I’m not really sure what order to put colors down in, this was  also a problem with this painting.   Hint; don’t try to put the blue of your sky over the yellow of your sunset or you end up with a strange green sky.

So the whole thing has been a process of learning through experimentation. 

But you guys are allowed to see my failures as well as my successes. 

  
I also experimented a bit with watered down acrylics the technique was cool even though I really had no control over anything

  It’s not terrible, I just don’t really like how the little cartoony mermaid subject looks… I should have known I’m just not good at figures. I’ve still got four canvases to play with so if anyone has any tips or blogs they recommend they would be greatly appreciated. 

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Something New

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I have been rummaging through my craft closet, trying to clean it out and trying to find some new things to try. 

  
When it comes to crafts I tend to impulse buy. This is whether I know what I’m going to do with something or not. So when I came across the mini canvases I got a while ago I figured it was about time I got out of my comfort zone and give it a whirl. 

I really had no idea what I was going to paint on them, or for that matter how to do it. I’ve only ever painted on canvas once before and that was in an instructed class. 

  
This is the fruits of that labor, it now happily hangs in my fancy new bathroom which you can see here.

But you know how people say “my three year old could do that” of any abstract painting they don’t really understand. I figure what’s the worst that could happen

  
I just started by blending some colors I liked together, then I got this notion that it might be easy to give it some texture with a brick pattern. 

  
I found a little ampersand image and decided I could paint something like that… So I did… Or at least I tried. 

  
Then I realized I don’t have any kind of sealer or glazing medium, I don’t even know if I need such a thing. But I thought I would try this stuff instead. If nothing else it would give it more texture 

    
Or not… it just gave it a gloss. 

  

Two more mini canvases to go. This was the project of “suck it up, get it done, quit worrying about failing” it was rather cathartic in the end. 

I saw a saying about a house built with love

  
I decided I better build my house tentatively, so I sketched it out first. 

  
So I had love and an ampersand, what goes with love?

  
In this house that’s the only appropriate answer

  
After I did pretty good with the “house of love” (bow chika bow wow) I was kinda disappointed in my shenanigans (needs more malarkey) maybe I’ll redo it when I get more comfortable with this paint stuff. 

Really it turns out the painting part isn’t that hard it’s the inspiration part that bites, I don’t know what to paint or if I do I automatically think I’m completely incapable, so right now it’s baby steps. Oh and any inspiration would be greatly appreciated. 

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Friday (Kinda) Favorites

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This has been one of the most chaotic weeks of my life… (Said the woman with no kids) So instead of some fancy tutorial or renovation blog I’m just going to show you what things have been making my crazy life a little easier and more relaxing of late.

I’ll start with what helped me out a bit with my (thank goodness it’s over) bathroom remodel

This marvelous triangular brush is Ah-May-Zing. I (and my cat strangely) have a thing for brushes. If you have the right one it does most of the work for you. This is true with makeup and painting, and this brush was excellent for getting tight edges around tile work and molding.

Can I just say “Why didn’t I think of this?” These shower curtain hooks are genius. I love the little metal hooks with the rolling cylinders at the top but I hate the way they pinch shut. I also hate trying to get a liner and a curtain on them, especially when the curtain doesn’t have grommets. Enter a sturdy metal double hook. One side for the liner one side for the fabric shower curtain.

Ok on to pampering awesomeness, I’ve needed this as stressed out as my week has been.

I’ve been trying out some new cleansers, and new cleansing methods, I’ve used a Clarisonic and purity face wash as my evening cleanse for the last year and a half but with everything in my bathroom being packed away in boxes I downsized to these little sample sizes and a Konjac sponge. The sponge has been absolutely amazing, especially in the morning for a quick cleanse/rinse and the Fresh Soy Face Cleanser is wonderful once you get used to the somewhat odd smell. Dr. Brandt’s Microdermabrasion is absolutely wonderful as well. I generally steer clear of microderm partly because my skin is very sensitive and because with a Clairisonic I’m getting manual exfoliation on a regular basis already. Unlike most microdermabrasion washes this has a very creamy and hydrating effect and is not at all drying or irritating even on very sensitive skin like mine.

My everyday makeup drawer (which you may have seen here) got an overhaul as well. I managed to weed out some product and find room for my everyday skin care, which is nice because it gets used even on days when I don’t use makeup.

First off is my Mario Badescu Rosewater spray, I use that after every wash simply because it’s very soothing. Then in the mornings I just pop on some Renewed Hope in a Jar from Philosophy and call it good. It works great as a standalone moisturizer and works wonderfully under makeup. As you can tell by the amount of product in there, my night time routine is a little more extensive. After my rosewater spray I go in with Clinique Smart Serum… I’m not a big fan of Clinique skin care, it’s always been very harsh on my skin but I absolutely adore this serum. Then I go in with my all-time favorite night cream Korres Wild Rose Night time Brightening Sleeping Facial (Believe it or not that name used to be longer). Those two things have been really great at helping my acne scars to fade, helping minimize pore size and improve tone and texture. Just as a testament this is about my 5th jar of Korres and my 2nd bottle of smart serum. They are definitely repurchasing products.

I do have a couple of new things in there one is Dr Brandts Needles No More… OMG!… It works… It possible works to well. I put it on my smile lines a couple nights in a row I went to work and low and behold, I had no little makeup creases in my smile lines anymore. So maybe it doesn’t work to well, but frankly I like my smile lines, those are the good kind of wrinkles. It shows that I don’t always have resting bitch face.

I’ve also been trying out Nars latest foundation … this is supposed to be a post about favorites… so I’m not going to talk about Nars latest foundation

A few new things in the makeup department too, Urban Decay’s Naked Flushed in Native. I know I’ve bashed UD before… and I stand by not liking their eye shadow pallets. But this face trio is actually pretty wonderful. As is the wonderful Stila Window to the soul pallet that my bf got me (because he is just that amazing)

And if you were wondering The necklace in my featured image is from Etsy Shop owner VintageWonderlandGA who makes custom jewelry from vintage pieces. And of course the display piece was made by me a couple of weeks ago for this post here. 

Let’s move on to my favorite things that I don’t have. Like for example ….

this ENTIRE ISLE at target… I mean really, have you been there lately? They have chalk paint!!!! Target needs to pay me (in product) for marketing… OMG pillow forms, seriously I just noticed that, I legitimately need those. Going grocery shopping is so hazardous to my wallet now.

Also my new bathroom needs a mascot and I think it shall be this little guy

He can be found at ModCloth if you were wondering.

Ok thank you for reading my random ramblings, I’m hoping to have something closer to my usual up some time next week (an excuse to go to target?) since I’ll have a more manageable schedule.