December Paintings

My friend Diana asked me to do a painting of her sister for a Christmas present.  She sews quite a bit, so I thought it would be fun to do an exchange.  

I did this painting of her sister and she made a quilt with pictures of my family on it for me for Jake's Christmas present.  I didn't think the trade was equal as far as cost of supplies went, so part of my side of the bargain was to pay her for all of the fabric and other things she needed to buy in order to make the quilt.

We had a tough time choosing which picture of her sister to paint, there were some of her as a kid, and some great mother and child shots of her as well, but finally we ended up choosing one of her walking through the streets of Tallinn, Estonia as a base.  I researched for more pictures of Tallinn's streets and ended up creating a picture that included a skyline and a few more buildings than the original, because I thought it made the painting more interesting.  

Here is Jake's new quilt.  I asked Diana to choose the fabric based off of the painting we have hanging in our living room, and to make sure and use purple because that is Jake's favorite color.  It was so much fun to do the trade and surprise Jake with a personalized gift.  

When we were in the process of deciding what to paint, I was looking through photos on their family website and came across a childhood photo of Diana with her brother who has since passed away.  I thought it was so sweet and decided I wanted to paint it for Diana as a surprise and send it when I sent the other one.  It was Saturday afternoon when I decided to do it, and I needed to get the other painting in the mail on Monday, so when our church was cancelled that Sunday due to snow, I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening painting.  

This is how it looked when I finished.

Since I am posting gifts, thought I'd throw this one in too.  Jake's dad is always the hardest person on our list to shop for.  Last summer he took the kids on their first fishing trip and I went along to take pics.  He has always seemed to really love the photos so we decided to pic our favorites and change them to black and white and create a story board for him.  Thanks to my friend Jeremi who is a photographer we had templates and knew to have it printed on styrene.  We didn't get to see the final result as we had it shipped directly to Grandpa, but we heard that it turned out great. 

Win a Puzzle

Some of you who visit this blog, may not frequent my family blog...

so I wanted to post a link here.

I am having a contest and giving away one of the puzzles I designed.

If you are interested, please follow this link

Thanks!

Random

I am getting a few more things organized for my portfolio (on my website)... this is the easiest way to get the items I forgot to put on the original disc to my friend K.  

FYI - this is a painting I was hired to do last Christmas for a friend.  It is her husband as a boy with his little sister and late father.  I really was happy with how it turned out and would love to do more stuff of this sort.

These are a couple of nativities I painted - just to show difference in color.

A while back

Ash and I did a photo shoot this summer for the M family.  We looked at them on Ash's computer and she saved them on a disc for me... but today is the first I have done any editing.  I want to use some for my new website, so while I am at it, I thought I'd put some of my favorites here.

Mostly Cut-Out Cakes

Teri asked me awhile ago to post all the other cakes I've made. So, here ya go....this isn't all of them, but most. I included the beach ball cake that I forgot to include in the fondant cakes. The rest of these are not made of fondant. I frosted the majority of them with White Mountain Frosting and decorated with candy. A few have store bought or buttercream frosting. The Winnie the Pooh and Scooby I have made more than once, they are made with a mold pan. I probably should have just put my favorites, some of these cakes are not so good. Some pictures aren't the easiest to see, either, but anyway here they all are. Most of my ideas come from my kids and what they ask for. Which ones are your favorites?