If at first you don't succeed . . .

Hello again dearies! I am back with another fun project. This project was a whole bunch of everything: the good, bad, & the frustrating.

I was feeling rather crafty (& had a Hobby Lobby giftcard from Christmas), so I headed off to the wonderful store. I found a wood canvas  & some great colored string. I don't know about you, but I scower Pinterest for ideas & I kept seeing all of the creative string art projects. Of course, being me, I see those and think "Oh, I could totally do that".

Well, I am here to tell you that I have a great respect for those people! I quickly realized that this project was more involved than I ever thought. While I like my end project, I had many moments where I just wanted to quit & throw it away. BUT, I refused to give up. . .. I just changed it a little. ha.

I decided to do a picture of the Tennessee outline & the words "Home sweet home". I looked everywhere for a fun font others had used successfully in string art. This is my planning for it.

I was pretty pumped about it & started right away. I think my hand still hurts from hammering all of those little nails in.

I started with the string I picked out for TN. Then, I started with the word sweet. I quickly realized that you could not really see the letters like I wanted it. I was DEVASTED! I am big planner & I like having an idea in my mind of how each piece will look before I started. I realized that my plan wasn't going to work out, and I lost faith in the whole thing.

In fact, I left it like this for weeks. I thought about just throwing it away or tearing it all apart, but I just couldn't do it. I was so excited about his piece & was heart broken at the thought of giving up on it completely. So, there it sat for weeks.

Eventually, I decided it was better to regroup & make it great. I decided that I  would take out the nails for the words at paint them. ( I LOVE painting words, so this change just felt right.) 

Here is the finished project. Pretty great, right? haha. I am still debating  adding some little doodles or designs in white, but I kind of like it how it is now.

So, here you go, the piece that I almost gave up on. Thank goodness I didn't give up.

Good luck crafty friends. I would love to hear about your projects, too. So send them on or leave any tips you have for string art. :)

                                                                                              

Finding the rainbow on a rainy day. . . . .

Hello again! I love rainy days some times. There is something wonderful about a rainy day stuck inside with craft supplies & Netflix. My last project was spur of the moment idea sparked on just such a day.

I love lions and have always wanted to paint one, so I went looking for a picture of one I liked. (BTW: isn't it wonderful how easy it is to find anything you want on Google these days?) Anyways, I found a few different ones & started sketching. Each picture has parts I liked better, so I took what I liked from each one.

Since I have not practiced drawing lions, I wanted to make sure it would look right when I did it. I focused on the proportions of the face, mostly. Once I felt pretty confident, I sketched the idea I had on my canvases. ( I used two small canvases because that is what I had lying around, but also because I like the effect.)

  

Now it is time to paint! I started out with a basic color coat. I used acrylic paints & mixed the colors to get the different shades I wanted.

 I decided to start with the face being red & moving in the rainbow colors as I worked my way to mane. I made sure to very the shades each color a little to show the different strands of hair in his mane.

Next was adding depth and shading/ highlighting to the picture.

I again began on his face and moved outward, varying how they are shaded.

I then outlined each strand with a black pen. This helped define each strand.

This was the most fun part for me. I loved thinking of new designs to make the strands. Some strands were left alone to show the color and some had line designs in them.

My next obstacle was his chin. I wanted it to look real/ soft, but also to be outlined to match the rest of the painting.

Here is what it looked like with all of the designs. So, the only thing left is. . . .

To paint the background!

I wanted it to be black for 2 reasons: To make the lion really pop off the canvas & because I used every other color at this point! haha!

Well, there it is friends. A fun painting (a great use of time when stuck inside on a rainy day!) I plan on painting different animals in the same manner to make a set.

Now it is your turn to get crafty!