"Troisième Presenting" a Canvas Diptych - Peacock & Ballet Inspired

Good morning everyone!  Today I am very excited to show you a painting project.

My daughter is my biggest fan to say the least. She makes me smile, giggle, feel loved and I adore her like any mother would. I have been wanting to do an art piece for quite some time for her room that she could keep forever. We are military so painting her walls is something she can't keep with her.

"Troisième Presenting"

An Acrylic Painting with Pastels on Canvas

Troisième Presenting 2' x 4' (Click on image to see larger)

This painting was inspired by my daughter, her face, her body, her eyes and her passions. She loves to dance and for almost two years now she has loved peacocks and everything that has to do with peacocks. It started with a Peacock Princess Costume for Halloween in 2012. Then her love for the bird and colors moved into making Peacock Ornaments for her little Christmas tree she gets to keep in her room. I started to see a trend in her clothing choices from pink to peacock colors as well. In 2014 her birthday party was an international theme with the focus on India and the colors of a peacock. Now we have moved to a new home, in a new state and one thing we did for the kids was let them redecorate their rooms to help them get excited about our family's transition. Can you guess what she chose? She calls it...

 "Vintage Peacock" 

Troisième Presenting Diptych Piece #1

Troisième Presenting Diptych Piece #2

This painting was created to go in her room, solely inspired by her. It is called "Troisième Presenting" because her arms are in the third position for ballet (bringing in her love for dance) and the representation of a peacock plumage in all it's glory with the hair, peacock feather stencils from The Crafters Workshop, the colors chosen and the peacock feather in her hair.

Close Up of "Troisième Presenting"

My daughter had input through almost every step of the process this piece went though. She even made the suggestion to lightly color in the eyes to match hers, a beautiful light blue.

"Troisième Presenting" close up of half of face

The peacock thing has gotten out of control here, but out of control is how we have fun in our family. I too went as a peacock for Halloween the following year using her tail we extended with longer feathers. I have made a Peacock Tutu Halloween Costume with coordinating hair piece. I have made an adult sized peacock tail for a local art gallery owner. Her peacock costume inspired an entire altered dress, pair of wings and a peacock crown that was created for +Elena Lai Etcheverry at +Charity Wings for the Live Stream from CHAW (The Winter Craft and Hobby Association Trade Show). The Peacock Couture Outfit was again used during the CHA Gift Lounge at the 64th Emmy Awards. It is currently entered into a craft awards called "The Craftys". You can go vote for it there though the 26th of May.

I created this piece while taking two online Bloom Girl classes from Jamie Dougherty. They were her Bloom Girl Workshop 2 class and her Bloom Girl Elements class. I highly recommend +Jamie Dougherty 's classes. She gives thorough instructions and support. She teaches how to use acrylic paints, PanPastels, India Ink and other products properly within her project.

Thank you all for your time. If you desire to learn how to make such a project then please check out these classes. I would love to know your thoughts about this project as well, please be so kind to leave me a comment below and follow me here on my blog or on Facebook on my artist page L. Grace Lauer Artist.

Mixed Media Artist and Paper Crafter
Coordinator for Party Time Tuesdays Challenge Blog

Peacock Crafty Couture - Altered Dress, Crown, Wings & Articulated Tail

What better way to make a statement then a Peacock Couture Dress? There are so many parts and details to this Crafty Couture project I can't even try to share them all with you. This will be a fun photo heavy post so enjoy the eye candy.

The Dress

Tulip Fabric Paints, from I Love to Create were sued to distress the dress and to create a henna, mehendi inspired motif.

  

The Sash/pendant was created with May Arts Ribbons, Prima Marketing Flowers and peacock feathers. Held together with Helmar Adhesives.

Finished Sash/Pendant

 

Close up of the sash/pendant on the dress.

The Wings

The base of the wings were created with PVC piping and a custom harness so they float on the back of the person wearing them, they are not tied on in any way. Makes for a comfortable piece that is able to be worn all day without any strain on the shoulders, skin, or even back.

The harness was created in two parts. One part is very easily built into any dress or corset. This harness base is padded and can be worn all day. The second part is what the wings are build off of. This part slides into the base for a quick and easy dress/undress with the wings.

The wing decoration was created mainly with  May Arts Ribbons (some hand cut into gold feathers), feathers and Prima Marketing Flowers.

This photo is the back of the wings.

 

Details of the center back

Here is the front.

 The Articulated Tail

The tail was engineered with my own design. It moved freely to be fanned out like a live peacock on display then to lay down the back of the dress in a resting position like a dress train. It works with the pull of two strings. It was created with up-cycled items, netting, hardware and over 300 peacock feathers. Accented with May Arts Ribbons, Prima Marketing Flowers . 

 

Close up of the details on the back of the tail when open.

Close up of the top of the tail with the many smaller feathers.

 

The Crown

The crown consists of bits of metal Prima Marketing  findings, some Prima Marketing Flowers and a few wisps of gems on a string from May Arts Ribbons. 

 

Photo of the crown while adhesives were drying prior to shaping. 

 

The Entire Peacock Couture Creation: 

 

The outfit was created for Elena, from Charity Wings Art Center. She hosts a Live from CHA show every CHA event! 

The work being done over at Charity Wings Art Center is fantastic please make sure you check out their webstie and join up as a member for online classes and to help support the arts!

I hope you enjoyed this post and project details Have a wonderful day!. Have a wonderful day!

Please go vote for this project at The Craftys under Home Decor/DIY category. Don't forget to enter your project today, there are many categories!

 

Please see more of our costumes in the following links:

Angel Warrior with Articulated Wings
Jack Skellington  - Disney's Nightmare Before Christmas Puppet Costume

Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope Wedding Gown Tutorial

Moon/Lunar Fairy - with articulated wings

Tron Lightcycle
Peacock Princess with articulated tail
Iron Man - 3D
3D Paper Doll Ballerina
Literary Work of Art

 

Coordinator at Party Time Tuesdays

Result of the Bloom Girls Online Workshop

I would like to introduce one of my new pieces of mixed media art. These are inspired by the Bloom Girl series from Jamie Lynn Dougherty (jaylynnscraps) who taught the class I have been taking online this month.

She teaches you basic human drawing skills and has through step by step videos to watch either live or if you cant make the live streaming class then you can watch the uploaded video.

This is my version of the class project in the next few days (one posted Saturday and one next Monday) I will be posting a couple more of these beauties. (To see the Second Bloom Girl click here)

Of course the mixed media flowers and embellishments would not be secure without the use of my Handy Dandy Helmar 450 Quick Dry! Liquid Scrap Dots worked great to angle the barrette away from the wooden board it's painted on.  It's the only thing I trust to use on something like this.

Meet Nadia...

Please let me know what you think! Leave a comment below.


Certified Helmar Educator

My Mom

My Mom started me scrapbooking when I was just in Highschool. She has been there for me year after year. Mom's are like that ya know. Anyway, due to being married to a Military man I have found myself living far from her company. I created this layout because she has been on my mind so much lately. This one's for you Mom. I love you and hope I can be there for you anytime you need me.



It is simple as one to three to make your titles sparkle. P K glitz makes it that way.

Step 1) Cut your letters out of Sticky Paper, you can do this by hand or with a machine.

Step 2) Peel backing off and sprinkle with some P K Glitter Glitz.

Step 3) Adhere to your layout or card.

Simple isn't it?



To make the layout or card complete throw some glitter on an object or two some where else on the layout. On this one I glitzed up a die-cut butterfly.


Don't forget to leave a comment on my 100 followers Celebration post... click HERE you just might win a CRICUT cartridge!

Happy Scrapping!
~ Grace ~

Four Year Old Princess

Happy Monday Everyone! I am so excited to show this layout to you. Like all of the layout I show you on Mondays this was inspired by a sketch from Liz over at The Scrappiest Blog. This weeks sketch was so much fun to create from. Though as I have said before I usually am not inspired by geometric shapes. I found this block style paper and got completely inspired. I was influenced by challenge from an online cyber crop over at Scrapparie.com. This challenge was to make your own patterned paper.
This is a photo of my sweet daughter licking the bottom of her candle from her birthday cake. Though the lighting in this photo is a bit off I love the photo itself. My daughter has been asking me to make her a pink page so I decided to do it monochromatic style with some influence from an Scrapbook News and Review publication call for May.

Journaling: (done in a pink Stampin' Up! marker)

Trinity is four years old. You call everything and everyone "Poppy" and you always have a "NooN" idea. You love to dance to Hawaiian music and practice rhythmic gymnastics. When in trouble you always give big hugs and kisses to get out of it. You are very expressive and have an explosive personality. You love to sing your own little made up songs. You zoom everywhere, my little social butterfly.

Ok so lets get rock'n on this description... it is going to be a long one!

Background: I started off with a white piece of 11 1/2" x 11 1/2" cardstock. Now I know it might be hard to believe but I did not have a light piece of pink patterned paper for this. So I created one. I know I said this was a monochromatic pink layout but ... hang in there here is what I did to create a pink bubble texture on this white cardstock. Note: Protect your counter and table by placing down a craft sheet or a protective table cloth.

1. I took a medium sized flat kitchen container about 9"x 7" and about 2" deep.
2. I added one cup of warm water
3. I added 1/2 a cup of liquid dish soap.

Yes yes I know ... you are thinking I am crazy on this one... stick with me here. I got this idea from a Crop Suey video. So you now have a dish with water so soapy you can wash dishes for a week. I then added several drops of red food dye.

4. Gently mix this in together.
5. I took a straw and blew into the water throughout the dish till they are about to over flow.

This created massive amounts of bubbles. Word of caution. Please ware eye protection...the bubbles pop and can get in your eyes. Once you have an almost overflowing dish of bubbles...

6. Take a paper towel and wipe it over the bubbles without touching the water at the bottom of the dish. This is to test the color of your water.
7. Let it dry. It will not take long and this will show you the true color of the water. Do not pop the bubbles on the paper towel either. Let them sit and pop on their own.
8. Add more color if you need too. Or water to lighten it. If you need to do this step test it again.

Once satisfied with the color then you will want to repeat steps 5 and 6 over and over (with the cardstock not the paper towel) till the paper is covered with the bubble texture. Try to add another color if you want to. Play around with this I loved it. I felt like my Mother was about to scold me not to blow bubbles in my soda, like when I was a kid. I even let my children play with this when I was done.

Taking a dark pink polka dot paper from Cosmo Cricket's Girl Friday line. I cut it into 4 - 1 1/2 " strips and punched one of the long sides with a Martha Stewart scalloped edge punch. I then adhered them to the back of my white bubble splattered cardstock. Making my finished edge 12" x 12". This also left me over 1/2 a sheet of the polka dot paper to use else where on the layout.

The next three layers were two DCWV (Die Cuts With a View) papers and one more of the bubble sheet. The back square layer (a medium pink) was cut at 9 1/2". The bubble square was cut at 9" both were then punched with a Martha Stewart edge punch. The block print patterned paper was cut at 7 3/4" and then gently inked with a pink. Center each layer on top of the other an place it off center and closer to the bottom of the large bubble background.

The Photo: This was printed as a 5"x7" and I cut it down to be a 5" square. I backed it with a square of the dark pink polka dot paper. Here is a tip. Knowing I wanted a punched edge only on one side I cut the height of the paper first. I had a piece 5 1/2" high by 12". I punched one of the 5 1/2" sides with my edge punch I used around the background paper. Then I measured and cut it square so I was left with a 5 1/2" square with one side punched. I did it this way because the edge punches cut off about 1/4" - 3/8". Punching first let me cut the width of this piece exactly the way I wanted it.

I embellished this photo with some glitter rub-ons on the corner. For one reason. My wonderful daughter had already stained her shirt and you could see it... so a rub on here and a rub on there. Tada! no more stain.

Embellishments: I used some glitter and bling pink flowers to be the main embellishment focus. I backed them with excess papers and cut them out. Then I also used a couple of Prima flowers to do back them also. I added some Prima bling and a some glitter rub-ons. As I was layering them up in the corner I decided to save a few of the small glitter flowers and one of the large ones to embellish the title.

The Title: The "FouR" was created with Colorbok chipboard covered with DCWV paper. I then glitter glued the different shades of pink in the patterned paper with pink and iridescent glitter glues by Studio G. I sanded the edges and colored it with a pink Stampin' Up! marker.
I stamped the "Year Old" in black on the excess bubble paper and colored it in with a Stampin' Up! marker and added iridescent glitter glue. I popped these up with pop dots.
I added the rub-ons thorough out the page and doodled on the flowers with my black fine point marker to tie in the black in the rub-ons and title a bit better.

I am all about making my own stuff I love how unique it makes my pages... either when I am making paper or creating my own embellishments.

Well thanks for hanging in there with me... phew! That was a long one. I hope you have the time to play with this extremely fun bubble technique! Let me know how it turns out!

I would love to know, in the spirit of creating my patterned paper it made me wonder if any of you have you ever created your own and if so how?

Enjoy the Little things - Mother's Day Gift

Happy Hump Day Everyone! I have an exciting project to share with you all today. I have been working on this all week. I hope you enjoy the little things with in this mini album. I created this for my Mother for Mother's Day ... good thing she never reads this blog... lol. It pays sometimes to have a mother who hates technology. I can only get her to learn one new thing online every few months or so. Anyhow, this was the perfect project for her. I just love how it turned out.
I created this mostly out of one of the beautiful April kits from Coordinates Collections. This is the Petals kit for April and OH ME OH MY I loved every inch of this paper and the embellishments in the kit were so fun and adorable. I don't have time to go into all the details of an entire album but if you see something and want to know how it was done please feel free to post a comment an ask. I am happy to answer.

From This Day Forward

Okay I finally broke down and forced myself to open my box of wedding photos and pic out one of the precious moments from that day and scrap it.... yes I put sticky glue all over the picture, front and back! I know some of you are gasping... Oh my!!! But to calm your nerves and mine... lol. I used a duplicate and I have the negatives. This is one reason I chose the photo I did. Now, the anxiety I had about beginning this project stems from the importance of this event. It was one of the happiest days of my life and I still seven years later tear up as I look through these pictures. I did not plan this but I finished this layout the morning of our seventh year anniversary. The date on the LO though is for our formal wedding in September not the Justice of the Peace one we had in March. Technically we have said our I Dos three times and I joke with my hubby that we should renew our vows in every state we live so we can collect the licenses... hehe if they would issue them to us that is. Lol. Well with out much further adieu here is the layout that begins a very large project for me and opens up my scrapbooking world to the elegant, romantic and sophisticated side instead of the playful, childlike youth side.

I created this for the monochromatic challenge for the Coordinates Collections March Madness Cyber Crop I attended this past weekend. I was shocked when I was done to realize I used only two.. yes TWO pieces of Cardstock. No patterned paper... just cardstock. I did lost of new techniques in this and I will be filling you in on those in a minute. The trick in my opinion with a monochromatic layout is to balance texture, patterns and dimension. I will go over these in a bit. Lets get started on the juicy details.

Background:
Ok this is an easy one... white cardstock... NEXT... just kidding I actually have to type techniques in the area this time. So here it goes. I took a thick cardstock scrap and cut a diamond out of this. I used it as a template to create the cream colored diamonds with Stampin Up Cream Craft ink. I did this about 1/2 of the page leaving the few diamonds in the center of the page to fade into the bottom right half. This is best seen right above the upper left corner of our wedding photo. After waiting for this to dry I took my piercing tool and my hole template and poked holes all along the edges of the diamonds. I threaded cream DMC floss through these holes and added one iridescent bead to each stitch. This took forever! Literally ... about 1 1/2 to two hours. But it looks great and it is so elegant.
Out of the cream cardstock I used the cricut to cut a 4" damask type pattern. I created this three times to back or mat the photo and to add a pattern and texture to the right side of the page. I took my white pen and added some doodling on top of this die cut patterns. I adhered them to the page.
Lastly on the main cardstock I took my Tim Holtz mask and used it along the bottom of this page. Once in place I used a cosmetic sponge (they are cheep at the dollar store) and applied versa mark ink around the mask. Once this step is complete I quickly removed the mask and sprinkled an iridescent glitter embossing powder. Heated it up with my handy dandy heating tool and wow... I love the result.
Embellishments:
Upper right: of the layout I have a journal box that reads "To have and to hold from this day forward." This is from a pre-printed wedding embellishment pack from Creative Memories... it was part of my old stash. I added some dry embossing onto this piece of paper and edged it in gold.. up.. you guessed it ... my gold Zig Painty Pen.. which by the way is dieing and drying out... I don't know what I am going to do. I think I got it from Stampin' Up, I cant find them in the stores. Sorry I just panicked there for a second...lol. Back to the subject. I embellished this box with an American Crafts chipboard shape I edged in gold also and some cricut die cuts from the Home Accent cartridge. The little heart with the DMC floss stitched around it is a punch from Martha Stewart's Valentines line. Last but not least.. a prima flower centered with a pearl, in the corner. I popped this up off the background cardstock due to the thickness of the beading. I used the foam squares to do so.
The Bottom Left: The main focus of this cluster is the large 4" damask pattern behind the embellishments. All of them by the way are the same as the upper left. This pattern is the same as the ones I used behind the photo, however it is cut out of white cardstock. I finished this one with spray adhesive and Stampin' Up's clear micro beads. I lifted this off the page with foam squares cut into little pieces due to the intricacy of this design.
Right side: The rhinestones are prima say it with crystals. After putting the photo on the page over the cream damask pattern I also added the shear ribbon along the right of the page. Placed the crystals over all that and embellished more along the right with the cream velvet ribbon, cardstock hearts and flowers. Some of the hearts are stamped with versa mark with a toile type design from Stampin' Up. I also added the frame embellishment with our wedding date in it. Again this was a cricut die cut shape cut in white cardstock and backed with the cream.

Thanks for looking and sharing in this huge step for my scrapping. I feel better knowing that I can scrap this event and I like the result.