Often, when I come up with a new project idea, it comes to me in a flash of inspiration; like when I made this fun collage painting, and these clay ornaments, and these wooden eggs and magnets!
Sometimes it literally feels like a vision comes upon me and I can see the exact outcome of what I want to create.
Those are the fun times, and that’s when I truly know that I project is going to work out.
That’s what happened with this one.
my muses 🦋
Earlier this year I wrote about how much work we were doing on our two acres of land to turn it into a native wildlife habitat.
Unfortunately I haven’t been much help lately, largely due to the infamous back injury, but also due to the fact that I cannot comprehend how Mom and Riley have been working through the hottest, buggiest, most humid days of the year.
I got burnt out doing a lot of deep, grueling poison ivy work early in the year, and I found that I much prefer doing jobs like building stonewalls and building dead hedges.
new magical spot unlocked 🔓✨
I’m the kind of person who has the audacity to simply do what I want.
Have I ever built a stonewall before?
No.
Was I confident that I could do so?
Yes.
(and yes, this project happened before the infamous back injury)
we love our little stonewall, and we also love the baby shagbark hickory tree (Carya ovata) that’s growing just behind it 🌳
We finally did it: we gave our front door a makeover.
Years ago we painted it green, which was a big improvement all on its own. Our house is quite a bland and boring color (#beigemoms would love it), so painting the doors a bright color makes all the difference. But for some reason we never actually did it until a handful of years ago.
We enjoyed our green era, but the color was never quite right, so this spring we sat down and went through some paint chips and decided on what era we’d be entering into next.
of course I stuck with my classic floral design, which I’ve painted on so many other projects (like skulls, portraits, and mirrors) 🌸
You may remember seeing my DIY recycled denim patches that I shared in June. Well, I’m very happy to share that the patches have been quite a hit in my Etsy shop 🎉
Although I can always imagine the exact kind of person who will enjoy each new project that I make, I never know what projects will actually get found by those specific people, and therefore get the attention they need to be successful.
But apparently recycled denim patches are a highly-searched-for item.
(who knew?)
I sew each patch freely, so each one is truly one of a kind ✨
I recently realized that although I’ve shared my skull art with the deer skull, the coyote skull, the beaver skull, and the gray squirrel skull, I’ve never shared my full painted collection on my blog.
So I thought it’d be a good time to share some photos and the stories behind the more personal pieces of my collection ✨
I’ve had this little gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) skull laying around since last summer; it came from a squirrel who met an unfortunate end on the road in front of my friend’s house.
And now that it’s been almost a whole entire year since I got it, I figured it was finally time to paint it.
If you’ve never seen my painted skulls before, you can see the coyote, the deer, and the beaver skulls in these posts!
you can watch a YouTube short of this project here
I’ve discovered a new project, a way to use all of the scraps of denim that I’ve been saving! If you remember these cute denim bags that I made, you may remember that I made my own patches to sew onto their flaps. This made me think…couldn’t I create my own patches for (and of) anything with this same method??
The answer, of course, is yes.
And after seeing a few inspirational photos on Pinterest, I had a ✨vision✨
BUGS.
(because I’m clearly still firmly in my bug era)
I thought it was kind of a nice synchronicity that I made these right around the time that Noah Kahn came out with his new album The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs. I really think some Noah fans should find and appreciate my work
These came out exactly how I imagined, but better.
If you don’t know how to sew, you can now buy these in my Etsy shop!
If you do know how to sew, and you’re interested in making some of your own, here’s how I did it.
If you found yourself wondering if I’d skipped Easter, the answer is yes, and also no.
I didn’t do anything to celebrate (if I remember correctly, my family and I didn’t even wish each other a happy Easter on the actual day), which is a very common occurrence for holidays these days, but it’s also kinda weird when I think about it, because Easter used to be a really big holiday in our family.
Not because we’ve ever been religious (we have not), but it was always a day that my family and extended family celebrated together.
7-year-old Jordan Rae searching out chocolate in my Disney princess pajamas
One of my YouTube subscribers (and repeat customer) threw out the idea for me to design a bag that he could toss a few books into; something simple to throw over his shoulder, made from upcycled denim, with a touch of birds (yes, this subscriber found me through Riley Mae’s beloved bird channel).
At this suggestion, my brain instantly went 💡
these bags look small and compact, but are big enough to comfortable fit an 11″x9″ notebook into, as well as a few books!
