Hey there Handsome...

I wish I could do a Windsor knot...

Wine gift bag made from a boys shirt sleeve by yours truly.

Cork board

As I said in the previous post...I had a garage sale. One of my neighbors brought up a gigantic fish bowl full of corks they had saved over the years to put on the sale. My mind started whirling right away. I knew I could make something from both the corks and the fish bowl.

I had to buy it.


This afternoon my girl and I went to work. I brought out an old frame I had in the storage room. I set her to work painting the backing black while I applied some crackle glaze to the wood frame. We were in the sun so everything was drying super quick. I had my girl squeeze 4 nearly empty jars of burgundy craft paint into a yogurt cup while I cleaned my brush. The crackle turned out quite well. Not so much crackled as just distressed...which is perfectly fine with me.

After I'd finished I called up yet another neighbor to come over and check out my handy work when...



We turned around and this is what we saw in the neighboring yard.  She looked so thin...either it's a yearling that lost it's spots or a doe with young fawns?!? still nursing maybe?  I'm just speculating but it was so odd to see in the middle of the day...lawn mowers buzzing all around. Beautiful but odd.

Wine Journal

As soon as I finished Wine 2.0 I just knew it wasn't going to work for me. We've used it a bit anyway since I'd put so much time and effort into the piece.

I'm sure this one is going to work really well for our journal.
It is an old 3-ring binder cookbook with a dozen dividers so we can arrange and rearrange our labels and notes as much as we want.
We even have a "black listed" section for truly awful wines. Ones that under no circumstance do we ever want to have again.

Wine Art

I found these bowls at my folks house and asked if I could have them. I didn't mention what I intended to do with them. I'm guessing I wouldn't have been given the blessing to take them if mom had known I'd be breaking them.

I put on a face shield and went to work over the outside garbage can with my tile nippers. Cutting up dishes is a messy job!

I started with the Merlot bowl since we don't like Merlot. It was my trial piece. I was able to figure out how the bowl would break without ruining the ones I intended to use.

I knew I wanted to use this frame.
It previously looked like this. It hung by the front door for several years but now my collage frame hangs in the spot. That meant it was time for a makeover.

Wine 2.0

We found that we wanted to record more info about the wines we've tried than would fit in the previous wine label book. This book is 5.5 x 8.5 twice the size of the old one. This should give plenty of room for details.

I still need to order bigger O-wires for the book but these will do until I get around to it. I also will make dividers to separate the kinds.

It's funny because even as I finish this one I am thinking of Wine 3.0 ...I think the next one will be a 3-ring binder type. Maybe an old cookbook.

Fixed it!!

I got some good advice on perspective and fixed my painting. (sorry the lighting is a little poor)

I had originally put the table in sort of wonky because my previous painting that also had a table always bugged me a bit as well. It appeared to be too flat like it was trying to climb up the wall. Now I know what's wrong with that one as well. Not sure if that one would be as easy to fix.

Finished painting

I finished up my painting this morning.

I still need work on perspective. The table is bugging me because it seems like it is tipped up too far.

Anyone have any ideas for me for perspective...should the angle be bigger or smaller to make the table look flat?

Starting a painting

Just thought I'd give a sneak peek at what I'm working on.

I haven't done any painting for quite some time.

There are lots of layers on this canvas...I just keep painting over the old with gesso and starting over. Talk about getting my money's worth out of this canvas!

Wine label book

I've wanted to make this book for a very long time and finally got around to it.

It will easily allow us to keep track of the wines we've tried and leave comments to remind us about our thoughts. No more wasting money on a wine that we've tried and didn't like.