Vintage Silhouette Girl

Hi there! How are you?

Well, 2014 is off to a good start here. Both Grace and I are using our studio and have been busy creating. We even ventured out and enjoyed a local art center where we both got to dive into our creations. So much fun!

The piece I’m about to share with you had been lying around forever. It started as one of those super cheesy Hallmark-like plaques from the 1980’s that I found at the thrift store for 99 cents. It needed some love, so I gessoed it and proceeded to collage it with vintage papers. I added washes of color with my Gellatos and water. Love these little tubes of color! *tip* use pretty paper that you love to figure out your color palette. ;)

I then continued to layer paint, doilies, washi tape and scrapbook paper. I also ran my brayer through white paint and rolled it over the piece a couple of times. What is hard to see here is the texture…it actually (accidentally) ended up with a faux encaustic look due to the thick layer of Heavy Gel medium I added thinking it would dry just how I wanted. It didn’t. I panicked. I ended up scraping most of it off, cursing and then smoothing the whole layer using wet fingers. I thought I had totally screwed it up. But nope. I ended up loving the effect and discovering a new way to use gel. Yah! I LOVE when a mistake turns into something beautiful. It happens a lot in Art – if you can just push past that immediate panic.

(You can see the texture better in the pictures I took with my Big Girl camera below these iPhone pics.)

Vintage silhouettes have always appealed to me, so I incorporated one into this piece instead of painting a girl. I found this silhouette here. Considering my art nouveau obsession, I couldn’t just leave her be – she needed a lovely headpiece and flowers too!

Here are some better shots of the finished work with accurate color too. The doodles and hand lettering came as a bit of a surprise to me – being outside my box – but it just felt right and it was fun to experiment with the boldness of the black ink and contrast of the white gel pen.

I’m excited to try another silhouette piece and you should too! No drawing necessary! ;) Let me know if you have questions.

Thanks for letting me share my work!

Much love to you all.

xo,

Ivy

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Inspiration Vintage Magazine

Hello all! How’s your Monday going? We are getting crazy wind and rain here! So, I’ve been puttering around the house, cleaning, reading and avoiding my artwork. I decided I needed a little space from it all.

I must give a huge “THANK YOU” to you sweet readers that left such encouraging and understanding comments. Your words truly touched me and were extremely comforting!

A beautiful and exciting distraction came along last week:  the latest issue of Inspiration Vintage magazine, which I had the honor of contributing to! This issue is bursting with stunning pictures, delicious recipes and loads of vintage beauty! Check it out here.

My article is about my love of vintage ephemera, antique books and French perfume labels! I had a blast photographing some of my pretty old things.  Of course, not all of the images made the cut but I thought I would share them with you…

   

Thank you again for all your support! I promise more art is to come. I hope you all have a wonderful, inspiring week.

xo,

Ivy

Vintage Treasures

Hi everyone! Hope you have all had a lovely weekend.

Last weekend, I spent the days treasure hunting! A dear friend and I hit the Portland Antique Fair plus some vintage shops and flea markets. Hard work but so much fun! Here are a few of the pretty items we discovered. I will be listing them in the shop this week.

Love this sweet, Farmhouse style kitchen scale! It’s rare to find this color so I was thrilled when I came upon this one!

 

There is something so homey about these lovely soup bowls. You can imagine filling them to the brim with a delicious soup while the rain comes down outside. I paired them with these stately antique soup spoons too!

Mail isn’t as pretty as it used to be but we should still have a beautiful place to hold it right? Love this silver tone, vintage letter holder. Very Art Nouveau.

I’m so drawn to lavender glass. It’s romantic, nostalgic and looks so gorgeous when the light passes through it. This antique wasp catcher is missing its cork but still remains a lovely, rustic piece.

Okay well, these are just a few of the pretties we found. Hope you enjoyed them.

Have a wonderful week!

xo,

Ivy

Queen of Flowers – A mixed media collage

Hi all! How have you been? I’ve kinda gone off the radar this past week because I have been desperately trying to fit in some creative time to paint, draw and just play with my plethora of art supplies. I have been taking Jeanne Oliver’s latest art course and I can’t get enough of watching her videos and learning new techniques. There is something about watching her paint that makes my hands itch for my own paint brushes. Often, I find myself day dreaming about my next piece so it gives me great pleasure to finally spend some time creating in the tangible world!

Mother’s Day weekend was the catalyst to actually getting my hands dirty and creating. I found myself alone in a hotel room with nothing to do. So I made a cup of tea, flipped on the fireplace and got out my collage box. (I assembled a small box of collage materials so I can easily pick up the box and go anywhere with it. Highly recommend doing this!) And so the her majesty was born…

I began the process by layering vintage paper elements into a patchwork onto the back of a vintage book cover with Liquitex Matte Medium.

Then I glazed the background with sepia and cream acrylic washes to unify the papers.

Using a model from an Anthropologie catalog, I found my muse and glued her down. Then using various pieces of scrapbook paper I created her gown and painted over the model to create my own girl. A die-cut crown was added to confirm her royal status and I inked over her to add definition to her form. More strips of scrapbook paper in deep pink balanced the piece. The sweet bird was printed onto tracing paper and then added. A few pieces of washi tape completed my composition.

Lastly, I stamped a tree image on the back of the book cover. It kinda smudged but I rather like that it is imperfect. :)

I had so much fun creating this that I started a second one. I will share that one with you soon. Who knew the back of an old book could provide such a great canvas for some art – plus the size is manageable and approachable.

Thanks for letting me share this process with you. Please let me know about any creative projects you are working on. I would love to hear about them!

Have a fabulous day!

xo,

Ivy

A Cup of Spring

Hi there friends!

How was your Easter? We had a fabulous time visiting the gorgeous Brasada Ranch in Central Oregon. I have so many pictures to share with you but they need to be processed, so while I’m working on all that, I wanted to show you some pretty pics of the recent teacup I found. She’s a real beauty and so perfect for Spring.

She is a lovely example of 1940’s lusterware by Royal Halsey and has a beautiful pearl like shimmer. The sweet clusters of rose blossoms go from petal pink to deep garnet and are paired perfectly with swirling gold embellishments.

She is in the shop now just waiting to be loved.

Hope you are enjoying all the beautiful blossoms of Spring!

xo,

Ivy

Still life.

Hi all! How are you? We just got back from a weekend away in the Oregon Wine Country and it was blissful. I will be posting some pics from our trip tomorrow.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a little still life I photographed last week. My sweet husband had picked up a whole box or beautiful, organic, California mandarins for me when I was desperately needing the Vitamin C.  I couldn’t help but be captivated by their beauty. Paired with some of my antique, English ironstone plates they are still life worthy…

They taste as good as they look too!

I’m hoping to make this a regular column on my blog. I love setting up still life compositions and capturing them.

Hope your week is off to a great start!

xo,

Ivy