I've been back in the studio over the last few months working on new paintings. Now that I'm using acrylics, I've actually enjoyed working more with texture since the paint dries faster than oils. It's much easier to build the paint up without the colors mixing which has been fun to play with. You can see these new paintings create various layers of solid colors in contrast to my previous blended works in oils.

Next week is Staff Appreciation Week at my daughters' school so I treated our Magnificent & Marvelous 4th grade teacher to some M&M themed door decor to show how much we appreciate her! I hope she loves it as much as we love having her as our teacher!

I love supporting creative efforts at the school so when my 4th grader's teacher decided she wanted to throw an Ocean Animal Fashion Show, I signed up to help decorate the stage. I gathered a bunch of pool noodles, wire hangers and tissue paper from my local Buy Nothing group and added a few items I already had on hand like cardboard boxes and wood skewers. I spent the weekend crafting this "coral reef" decor that we used to flank the stage. I'm already getting requests to borrow my creations for 6th grade party, an end of year staff lunch, a birthday party and general use by our neighborhood pool! Maybe I should start charging for rentals ;)
As for the fashion show, it was so much fun seeing all the work and creativity that the kids put into their costumes. The show was such a success, teaching the kids about ocean animals, how to get creative with upcycled items and how to think outside the box!

My dear friend Deena Kong recently wrote a children's book! I wanted to make her a gift to celebrate this huge accomplishment so I turned her personal brand logo into a cross stitch pattern. This project was a bit of a learning process as I haven't done cross stitch since I was a child and I've never created my own pattern before. I'm really happy with how it turned out and my friend was really touched by the gift. Please check out Deena's debut book, Grateful Being Me at deenakong.com

Bet you didn't know I also sew! When I say "all things creative", I really mean it! I learned to sew in 7th grade Home Ec class and I have always loved it. I haven't really sewn much since, but not surprisingly my youngest daughter takes sewing classes so we have a sewing machine at the house now. Recently during a room makeover, she asked me for a taller headboard and instead of buying a new bed, I decided to build her a new headboard. With a few wood planks, some batting and some shimmery gold fabric, I took her boring plain white, low profile IKEA Malm bed and turned it into something a little more fancy. She also asked me for gold pillows which for some reason are incredibly difficult to find. Good thing pillows are just about the easiest thing to sew!

I'm back to my new favorite creative outlet – door decorating! I decided to be room parent for my 4th grader's classroom this year. My 6th grader had plenty of volunteers already but the room parents reached out to me to see if I could help with the Halloween door decor. 
I love using alliteration and fun with words so make sure you read these closely :)
​I'm not super happy with the placement of some of the Smarties but I was experiencing some difficulties with my glue gun so it is what it is!

I've had this giant canvas collecting dust in my studio for 2 years now. Last week was Spring Break for the kids and my lovely in-laws offered to take them for the entire week.
Painting is one of my favorite hobbies but it's messy, requires a lot of physical space and most importantly time for me to get into the right mind space too. I tend to paint late at night which doesn't work well when you have kids and lots of activities going on.
Almost everyone I knew was out of town so with the entire week free, I was finally able to get into my true creative mode. I created this new painting in just one night which shows what can be done when I'm free of distractions! I'm really happy with how this one turned out and I even have the perfect blank wall to display it in my home. 

My daughters' elementary school has an annual Fun Fair. The Cake Walk is one of the most popular games but due to COVID, they decided homemade cakes might not be the best idea. So this year the game was changed to the Candy Clock and they asked families to create candy wreaths as game prizes. Take a peep at the sweet wreath I made!