Painting Class 4/26/10

This is where I go on Monday evenings, over the last six months it has rained three times and snowed once! But somehow we ladies always seem to show up. I think it's mostly to share our talents and work off the stress of the day. This is one of the girls working on a new project. The canvas is blocked her painting with acrylic first and then with oil. This will be a beautiful daffodil when she finishes!

Here we have an out of the box idea..the Tetons with Carousel Horses!

Here is one of the TA's working on a minitature painting, see the magnifining glass she uses as an aid to see those tiny strokes! On the back right is my painting of tomato's and my landscape trying on a frame for fit.  I still need to give it a coat of poly acrylic to seal it before securing it in the frame. I will post that when I get that done.

Here is a cute little painting of a birds nest with an egg. Isn't this cute! This is done with water based oil. I kind of like the look of the water based oil compared to the pure oil I use. It was pretty exciting at class this time as the instructor gave us a lesson on how to frame our pieces. There will be a fair on June 12, on the town green and we are encouraged to have pieces ready for show and tell.

Salsa Skirts

I seen this pattern on the McCalls website and thought how cute this would be for my three granddaughters! I just had to make these skirts for them.  After reading the pattern guide and adding up the yardages required I had second thoughts since I knew this was going to cost me a pretty bundle for the three skirts.  Then I threw caution to the wind and ventured out to find the nine co-ordinating fabrics. My first stop was at Walmart and I don't usually shop for fabrics at Walmart but as luck would have it , while passing by the spring fabrics that was just put on display I found a section of color co-cordinated childrens fabrics!  I was in shock that I actually found all of the colors needed to make these cute little skirts and the best part the fabric was only 1.99 yard!  

I bought eight 1/2 yard pieces of each of the fabrics I wanted for the strips and 3/4 yard for the upper tier for three skirts. I then looked in my stash for jumbo rick-rack and found I had enough red and green for the bottom tiers but had to buy another eight packages of blues, yellows and orange. The cutting went quickly using the rotary cutter and mat method. I sewed the 1/2 yard strips together then cut each 1/2 yard into 2.5" strips then stacked and sewed the strips end to end. After ruffling and sewing the tiers together I finished the seams with the serger and sewed the rick rack on. These skirts came out so cute! You can see two of the girls have them on and they fit perfectly!   

This is my latest finished acrylic 8 1/2 x 16. I still need to overlay this with polyurethane. This is a painting of a reserve in Burnt Church, New Bruswick Canada. My mother was born there and her family still lives there . My Uncle was a Chief there until his death and now his son's my cousins serve on the council. Burnt Church is located on the northern most coast of the Atlantic and the water you see in the picture freezes in the winter and the locals can go ice fishing and drive trucks out on the frozen ice. Starting in April through July the native people have lobster traps and have fishing boats for the seasonal catch.