Creative Moments

I've had a couple of creative moments recently...I haven't done much painting lately, so these were fun to do!

A couple of weeks ago I needed a gift bag for a friend and all I could find were several plain brown bags. I got to thinking about how to decorate it and realized the bag would be fairly easy to paint. I took my inspiration from these really cute Thank You cards a friend recently sent me (you know who you are! Thanks!) and although I didn't copy it exactly, the end result was very pretty.

The finished product...I used brown packing paper for the "gift wrap".

And then today, Miguel brought home some things from another family that's moving, including a frameless rectangular mirror. I got to thinking about what to do about the mirror and remembered that I had an old watercolor picture in a wooden frame that I thought about about the right size. It turned out that the mirror was just a tad bit too small and looked funny with spaces top and bottom. As with many of my projects, they evolve as I go along...I decided to use the matting from the picture in front of the mirror and it looked really good. Except it needed some color! That's when I decided to paint the matting...I love circles! Not sure why I love circles so much, but I had fun painting it while talking to my MIL who was in the kitchen making a cake...and I really like the way it turned out! (talking about the mirror, not the cake, although the cake was tasty...) With the lighting and my little camera, it was hard to get a good picture that truly represents the colors...this first one makes the reds look darker than they are.

Self-portrait...