[Whimsical Willow] on the Water

I just finished this painting today. It's sort of like a willow tree on the edge of a little green river with a forest on the opposite bank. I liked the pink accent color against the greens so I added some flowers.

We raided Ulduar last night, wiping for three hours while trying to kill Thorim on Hard Mode. This allowed for a lot of downtime so I set up my little easle in front of my second monitor and painted while raiding.


You can actually see the forest background better in this picture. I thought it looked awesome before I painted a tree on top of it, but I had to put some sort of object in the painting. It's actually really easy to paint trees like this. I start with a solid green background and let it dry. Then feather in some black around the edges on top, then mix some green and black and slop on some vertical lines like trees. Before it completely dries, add in lighter shades of green to create depth (highlights) to define individual tree trunks. I used a similar process when I did that purple Night Elf forest painting a while ago.

Putting Crafts to Work

My push pins that I made a while ago out of glass marble rocks and scrapbook paper have made themselves useful at work. I often have notes and Post-Its all over my desk so it has been helpful to use tacks to paste notes on the wall and clear up desk space.

I've had this little box for a long time and I think it has gone through at least four different color schemes by now. I decided to bring it to work and fill it with stacks of Post-It Notes, headphones, glass wipes... all sort of things that had been hiding behind my monitors. Now they are out of sight but still within reach when I need them!

Painting [Cherry Blossoms]

I haven't had a lot of time to work on crafts over the last week but I did manage to do a little painting. I'm not sure that I am done with this one or not, but here's what it looks like so far! I feel like I need something on the top, but I'm not feeling inspired right now. Perhaps I will come back to it later. I like the color combination of aqua and red though.

Somewhat Abstract

So I had this huge tube of metallic silver paint and wondered how it would look as a background color. I slapped some on, then grabbed some eggplant color and it sort of grew organically from there. I love this color combination.

Painting the Spring

I ran out of mounted canvases so this was painted using acryllics on canvas paper. Mary Blair's artwork served as inspiration (it was an easy transition from Eyvind Earle since both painted Disney animation concept art). I really like the combination of orange and aqua blue, so after starting with an aqua-colored background I decided that had to be sky, so why not have a blossoming orange tree? I also felt that the clouds in the sky were a little lonely without a few white doves frolicking in the breeze.

Tree in the [Grass]

I received a request from a friend to do a tree painting for her using the elements she liked from my previous tree paintings. So this is what I came up with based off of the following criteria she presented me with:

- whimsical like the Eyvind Earle trees
- mysterious (not obvious) background
- light-colored background but not too light
- "green is good"

Having learned a lesson from my last painting, I started this one by painting the background. I liked how subtle vertical stripes fading into the background color can look like trees in a fog, so I started with fat green vertical stripes blending into a yellow background and then painted over them with another layer of yellow.

Next, I added in the grass in several layers of shades of green but decided that the grass really should be the foreground, so after painting on the tree silhouette I repainted a lot more grass over the bottom of the tree. The nice thing about grass is you can keep adding on as many layers as you want and it keeps giving the illusion of more and more depth.

Etsy Favorites Promotion #4: LovingLeeCrafted

LovingLeeCrafted was one of the first Etsy sellers that I added to my favorites because of these whimsical fairy doors. I think it would be a lot of fun to turn a backyard garden into a mystical fairyland by adding doors and miniature fairy furniture among plants and stones so they look almost like they grew there.

The paint job and details on these doors is what makes these stand out as a work of art. Lisa also sells paintings and other wooden pieces like buttons (which would be a gorgeous natural accent to a piece of clothing or a purse or even rustic home decor), but where her painting and woodwork comes together is where you can see that real magic happens!


Imagination and love, two most important ingredients in any craft. I believe I capture both in everything I create. I use a variety of techniques from carving, painting, wood burning, crocheting…the list goes on and on. I try to make every item fun, friendly and decorative. Most recently I’ve indulged in the art of making fairy doors. I spent many years as a youngster reading and dreaming of the faerie folk but then grew up. I missed the mischievous, innocent, honorable people. I invited the fey into my life and it has improved immensely so I'm offering the same opportunity to you! Many of the fey folk will bring with them luck, good wishes and a happy helping hand. Provide them with a door into the mortal world. Keep a look out, I’m always creating something new and exciting and most importantly, something I can be proud of. - Lisa
pictures by LovingLeeCrafted

Into the Woods of Teldrassil

The enchanting forest home of the Night Elves was the first area of Azeroth that I encountered when I began playing World of Warcraft.

This painting has been sitting on my easle for over a week now. Today I managed to finally add the last touches and get it to a finished state. I'm not completely happy with it but it was fun to paint on two different canvases and I think it at looks pretty good from a distance at least.

I painted this using acryllics on primed canvas with an in-game screenshot for reference.

This [Card Box] takes the cake!

This weekend I finished another one of my wedding craft projects. I made a box for cards that looks like a wedding cake!

Materials:
1 set of 3 hat boxes
1 roll of 1.5" blue organza ribbon
1 roll of 1" blue satin ribbon
2 feet of wired blue ribbon (optional)
1 tube of ivory acryllic paint

Tools:
- hot glue gun
- Craft knife
- Scissors
- Sponge paint brush

Basically I got three round nesting hat boxes from Michael's, cut holes in the tops of the bottom two boxes and a slot in the top box, painted them with acryllic paint, hot glued them together, then added decorative ribbon using double-stick tape. It was a fun, fast, and easy project.


3/24/09 Post-Wedding Update - The wedding cake-shaped card box served as functional decor at the gift table in the foyer as guest entered the church for our wedding. We received a lot of cards!


Picture by Siang of Lightphoria - www.lightphoria.com