My Painted Gallery Wall

This year my husband and I celebrated 10 years of marriage.

These ten years in many regards have just flown by, but there has been so much growth and changes that we've gone through together. When I think back to our early days, as newly weds, the time seems like forever ago.  

Isn't that life?

Last year when we purchased our home, we moved into a new master bedroom with lots of huge walls and blank spaces.  I was excited to use this space for a personalized gallery wall that I painted for my love.

This painting is definitely my favorite.  

This is the painting of the Salt Lake Temple where my husband and I were married for time and all eternity.

I painted it in oils and it took me about two months to complete.

Here's some iPad photos from my progress.

Here's some of the details.

I absolutely love the Salt Lake Temple, besides being married there, we used to live about five minutes away and visited there often.  It is beautiful and so special to us!

This is my second favorite painting. 

 I completed this painting in water color.  It is a minimalist painting of the beach.  For our honeymoon we went to San Diego, so it reminds us of that time spent there. 

 Plus the beach has always been a favorite place (California girl, you know). 

 The parts in the painting that look brown-ish are actually gold and shimmer in the sun.  It's a little harder to photograph.

This is my simplest, Love YOU painting.  It was done with acrylic paint, with the heart and You painted in my shimmery gold.  It was done on a small wrapped canvas.

This was a fun painting.  It is loosely based off this piece of art.  

I painted my wrapped canvas first all in this mixture I made that was blueish-greenish.  

Then I painted on the words and added the flowers around on the edges.

The Eternally is painted in with my gold, though it's hard to tell.

Lastly I added one darling photo from our wedding day.  

Photographed by the lovely Lemon Peel Studios.

What a fun project! 

I love the way it all came together.  

My husband really loves it too.  

Honor Bee Art

As I've mentioned before I work with the young women at Church.

It is a wonderful calling and I'm honored to see such wonderful examples of what youth now days are capable of.

Recently one of the young women in my ward completed her Honor Bee. 

 Besides being able to hand her, her honor bee medallion, I wanted to give her another little something special.  I thought about it for a while before deciding on a nice little piece of art, for her to remember the hard work that went into completing both her personal progress and her honor bee.

I sometimes forget how fun and quick painting with watercolor can be. 

 A couple years ago my husband got me this fancy watercolor set, where you squeeze the paint out of the tubes and add water to use it.  It's always really fun to paint with.

I loosely based my beehive off of this darling art from Rifle Paper Co.

I really loved this quote, "The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others." St. John Chrysostom.

I added it to the small frame.  It really exemplifies what it takes to earn the honor bee.  You must read the Book of Mormon, then perform 40 hours of service for others.

It brought me much joy to give this to that special young woman who is such a great example to others.

My Family Peg People

Are you a goodwill shopper?  I am very occasionally and more than not I return out of the store empty handed.

Well, I was looking for something very specific (for the second time) one Saturday and let my eight year old play in the toy section.

When I came over to retrieve him, my heart stopped (probably) as I saw this Gorgeous Castle from Melissa and Doug.  I flipped it over to see a $15 price tag and snatched it up as quick as a lick!  Not only was it the castle, but it included furniture pieces. I was thrilled!

Now, mind you it was dirty and dusty to pieces.  But nothing a little elbow grease couldn't solve.

As I came home beaming to my husband about my new purchase I quickly added, "You wouldn't mind if I spray painted the whole thing white and repainted it all....right?"

He somehow convinced him that this would not be the best use of my time and that it was cute enough, as is.  

So we settled on the idea of me just painting some peg people.  That seemed to make everyone happy.  (And as I was finishing painting the peg people during nap time an hour before she was to open the present, believe me I was happy with this decision.)

So, as you know I've made peg people before.  I casually asked my daughter which kind of dolls would be funner for a castle, for example-- Kings and Queens, or like Princesses, or like dolls of the family?

She let me know dolls of the family would be quite fun.

Thus:

So, I painted our cute family.  And as I've explained to the family a few times, it's everyone's likeness, meaning, no, those aren't actual outfits we own.

The three kid peg people came from JoAnns.  

The two adults and the baby peg people came from Michaels.

These little people and castle really lend themselves to some really fun playing.

This has been such a great toy that has been played with almost every day, even the boys really like playing with it.

Who wouldn't want to play with a little peg version of yourself?

The Family Travels map

About a month or two before my husband and my's wedding anniversary I came across this post from Cut, Craft, Create where she shared her Personalized Photo Map. 

I thought it was such a good idea and couldn't wait to put my own spin on it.  My family loves to travel.  I often put our trips into little printed books and we always get magnets from where we've been.  My husband loves to look back at all the places we've been and discuss it. I knew this gift would be right up his alley.

So here's what hubby got from me this year to celebrate 9 years of bliss!

 

Want to make your own?

Here's how:

STEP ONE:  Gather up these supplies.

I got my map from Amazon here. 

I picked up a simple 24 x 36 frame from Michaels.

I printed out all 4 x 6 photos from Sams club.

STEP TWO:  Lightly trace each state out on your tracing paper.  

STEP THREE: Roughly cut each traced state out.  Place each traced state onto your photo and cut out together.  

For the larger states, I just used multiple pictures until that state was covered.  Another idea would be to print out the larger sizes for your photos to cover an entire state.  Texas would take an 8 x 10.

STEP FOUR:  After your state is cut out, place as many pieces of foam tapes as you need to hold your picture in place.  Place your photo in place.  

Repeat with all other states.

All done!

This made a really fun gift!  

My husband really loved it and all the kids love to look at it and talk about where we've been and more importantly, where we need to go next!

I had a friend ask me if when I went to Hawaii, if I was going to cut out little pictures of each of the kid's heads for the different islands-- sounds like a plan to me, ha, ha.

Printable Valentines for Sell!!

Remember the Star Wars Valentines I made last year?

Well, literally the day before Valentine's Day I decided to make these.

And they were super fun.

Well, we've had some free time on our hands this winter break since the POLAR VORTEX (intense, huh?) entered our part of the country.  Thus my boy had three extra days of no school.  So with that extra time we started thinking about some new valentines we wanted to make early this year.  

We had so much fun last time we knew we wanted to make more.  

The trouble was narrowing down what to do?

Well, why make one set of Valentine's Day cards when you can make....7?

I decided to go all out and put these in my shop, but here's a preview of some of the cards I made to give you an idea:

Up first and probably my favorite are the Peg People Avengers that I painted two years ago.

 Then we have some real Action Figure Avengers.

Then I made some cards using these cute squishy dinosaurs.

Then for my Hot-Wheel-Loving younger son, I made these Hot Wheel Valentine's Day Cards.

Next up some Transformer Valentines.

It was then that I realized that everything I was making was very boy dominated.  So I decided to make some cute girl cards, too.  Enter, these adorable Little People Valentines.

Up last I used these darling Zoo puzzle pieces to make my last valentines.

Pretty darn cute Valentine's Day Cards, right?

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Enjoy!!