Dr. Seuss Illustrations Inspired Night Stand and Table - Hand Painted Chalk Paint

Hello

Been busy this week working on some pieces that are Dr. Seuss inspired! I am having so much fun being brought back to my childhood. Reading books over and over... for visual reference of course. LOL! These are some Seuss--ified pieces all right!

This first piece was done with Folk Art Chalk Paint - Imperial (red), Shabby Paints - So Serene and Licorice.

The Before & After shot...

This next piece with a before and after image of a thrifty table find I stumbled across years ago and I a just now getting around to redoing it.

Just to prove it's not clipart here is an image of my daughter sitting on top of the table.

Hope you enjoyed these projects. Keep any eye out for an online video class on how to do this technique.

Over on my Uniquely Grace Blog there is a bit more about the Truffula Trees and the Window Display at +Books on Broad  all these fun pieces went into.

Now that is ALL GUSSIED UP!

Find me on...
Facebook: Uniquely Grace
Twitter: Grace Lauer Artist @gracelauer
Instagram: @gracelauer_henna_artist
Pinterest: L. Grace Lauer

Illustrated 3D Rocking Chair - Chalk Painted Furniture Flip! Looks like it came right out of a book!

Hello

Hello Readers! I am excited to share with you yet another Illustrated Chalk Painted piece of furniture. Done up in a cheerful color of yellow (the hand made Sunflower Chalk Paint mixed with Alamo White by Shabby Paints) and shaded in a Sunflower color. The line work was done in Licorice from Shabby Paints also. NOTE: I tried the DIY Latex recipe... poor coverage, ruins brushes, costs more over all, and drips a whole lot, takes longer to dry between coats and over all I just didn't care for it like I care for my Shabby Paints Acrylic Chalk Paint. Adding Alamo White to the Sunflower helps on the lighter color but it still had a lot of issues and took me longer to finish this piece then I would have liked.

This chair would be so much fun in a Nursery or Child's bedroom.

Or perhaps a Library or Classroom with a reading rug and story time!

Maybe it was meant for that perfect photo shoot for a photographer prop to have for their clients.

Hope you enjoyed this piece. Please check out our other posts and find us on Facebook at All Gussied Up Southern Home Furnishings & More.

NOW THAT'S ALL GUSSIED UP!

Leave us a note in the comments below! Do you like this color? technique? Where would you put this chair?

~ L. Grace Lauer

Find me on...
Facebook: Uniquely Grace
Twitter: Grace Lauer Artist @gracelauer
Instagram: @gracelauer_henna_artist
Pinterest: L. Grace Lauer

Jack Skellington Handmade Costume - Nightmare Before Christmas Movie

Our Jack Skellington Halloween Costume was created for my son with a puppeteering design style. Jack's head is a bobble head adding life to his glare (see video), his neck is connected to a helmet so it turns left and right with my son's head. I hope you enjoy this post. We have so much fun making all our costumes DIY for Halloween.

Handmade Jack Skellington Costume 

Jack The Pumpkin King Costume Video 

Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas and all though the house, 

Bits and pieces of Jack laid all strewn about.

His clothing was sewn by a seamstress with care,

In hopes that children would soon be aware.

Jack Skellinton is alive and moving about,

Don't be afraid, don't scream, don't shout.

It's Tristan under there like a shadow he sneaks,

Transformed from 4' to 6' trick-or-treating he creeps.

Jack's head a bobbling from left to right,

A life sized, moving Jack Skellington, oh, what a fright.

His hands are pose-able with fingers of cold, cold clay,

His arms move like puppets, right to left they sway.

Knees bending and feet walking along with Tristan's strides,

Jack the Pumpkin King no longer hides.

Now Jack sits and guards the remainder of the Halloween Candy. He may just stay around for Christmas.

Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. I hope you enjoyed this costume, video and post.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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

An Obsession...er... WarCraft Paladin

OK this is a hard one for me to post. I have something to say about myself now...
"Hello my name is Gracenstar...er... Grace and I am a closet gamer" There I said it. (Gracenstar is my character's name). Now let me answer some questions before you even have to ask...

• Yes, I went to a Geek fest convention about video games ....
• Yes, I dressed up as the main character I play... and competed in a contest in front of 13,000 people *yikes* (but I made the crowd explode as I bubble hearthed off stage... you would need to play WoW to understand.)
• Yes, I have played now for years... I even leaded groups of people to their deaths online... umm... I mean to kill the Bosses so we can get gear for our characters...lol.
• Yes, I actually am admitting this is part of my life and and I am entering this into two contests... * Breathe Grace ... it is OK... they will still like you* - and I got overly excited lifting this secret off of my shoulders and posted it in all the challenges I am in to "share"... I am crazy... hehe.

Well Enough about exposing my deep dark secrets... lol. Lets get down to the details.
First I think this qualify s as a Hybrid LO. I did most of the BG design work on the computer on a 12 x 12 word document...lol. Well counts as digital right? Anyway this is the most I have ever done for one LO on the computer. Though I am a huge fan and on most of my LOs you can find some little thing from the wonderful inviention called... a PC.
The Background:
Started with a plain black CS paper and took the gold paint I used on my costume and lightly brushed it over the top and bottom. The Ribbons were layered on with the same goldenrod CS paper I used in creating the crown (helm) for the Paladin costume. The Background picture is one of my favorite spots in the game... Nagrand at Night. I took the screen shot of it a long time ago and had it as my Computer wallpaper for a bit and now I got to use it here. The nice thing about printing this is I was able to add the word Obsessed and all my journaling in on the computer and then print it out and stickle the title "Obsessed". I then took a silver pen and colored the white boarder around this layer and used a black fine point pen to doodle on the corners and make mitered corners.
The Photos:
Here I used a photo we got taken at the Blizzcon Convention as my main photo. I love using word rub-ons on my negative space of my photos so ... you guessed it here it is. This time with a bit of bling. I also did the silver and black over the white boarder here. It created a "metal" looking frame like the three Tag Pics at the bottom. These I stickled the edges and placed a single bling on the upper right corner. I used two shades of blue. The small pics are as fallows left to right: My face in Tyrael's body from Diablo, Me on the Lych King's Ice Throne with the Frostmorne and his helm at my feet, and finally this is an in progress pic of my shoulders for the costume.
The Embellishments:
I will start with the sword since that is the main one... I backed it with the blue ribbon I used through out my costume and took the image of the sword from my Wrath Collectors Edition Art book. I then scanned, stretched and printed it up onto a gunmetal grey paper. I took my black pen and a blue and brown marker and doodled and colored all over it. I finished it off with silver stickles and light blue bling in the eyes of the skull. The flowers are Prima except the red on that is silk from Walmart's Christmas line. I took my stickles and accented all the flowers and used bling brads in the centers of some and sticky bling on the one folded in half. The black flourishes are from the Cricut home accents carriage. I added silver ink and stickles to them.
I entered it into the fallowing Scrapbook.com challenges and here is the criteria:
The Feb BOM Obsessed challenge and The ABC {xyz}:
X- 10 - list ten things about you
Y - you and only you in the pic
Z - Zany something about this LO needs to be Zany... UMMMM... let me see.... ME DRESSED UP AS A FANTASY CHARACTER...lol

TFL!I hope you had a good laugh... lol.

~ Grace ~