It's taken months of working and not sharing. Until today. The COTTAGE JOY FABRIC COLLECTION is officially for pre-sale. You can see the whole collection of 8 designs in 25 fabrics. My very first fabric collection!! Is that awesome or what?!?!

Who doesn't love flowers? Particularly roses. My faves are Cabbage Roses. Full flowers with lots of petals. For those of you who love flowers and painting here is a class for you. And it's for beginners so it goes nice and slow with lots of details to help you along. 

These are simplified cabbage roses using smiley and frowny face brush strokes, spirals, and ink work. It's a small little project (4" square) so it's pretty doable in a shorter time frame than a large project. And you learn the skills to make other projects. 

I put this class on Skillshare. Skillshare is an online community of classes posted by people like me. I've personally taken a dozen classes and am signed up for dozens more (when I get the time!) Since I had such a good user, customer, experience I decided to post classes and be a teacher. The great thing is that it's only $10 a month, month to month (or for a Premium membership you pay the $10 per month upfront for 1 year = $120) for any class they have. That's not $10 per class but $10 for ALL the classes. I totally recommend it if you like to learn. 

FYI • As a teacher I get paid when people take this class, do the project, and/or sign up for membership. Just so you know.

Besides the video tutorials, I have a class handout PDF with all the info too. I don't want you to get frustrated when trying this so I've tried to make it as easy as possible. Hopefully by the end of the project you'll say, "Look what I made!"

At the end of the class, I ask that you do a project. (You learn more by doing.) It's to make invitations for an upcoming event you have. Here are the project guidelines. I'm totally excited about it.

If you're interested in seeing the introduction video (for free) go here to Cabbage Roses 15 Step Watercolor Class.

The StudioHouse has a landing on the second floor that's about 6' x 7'. The crazy thing is that it has 5 doors leading to/from it. Yes 5. One of the doors we removed while remodeling or it would have been 6 doors. When you go up you wonder which door to pick. Door #1, #2, #3, #4, or #5. (Flashback vintage game show - "Let's Make a Deal". Web search it youngsters.) 

With so many doors (and the intended use, sometime down the road, being classes) I wondered how I was going to differentiate for students which door leads to which room. Should I have signs on the door? Different colored doors? Numbers on doors? What exactly? Then I remembered seeing something one of my sisters did.

The inspiration for my choice came from Creative Mommas. (They happen to be some of my creative sisters. It totally runs in the family.)  Chelsea built her own bookshelf and added lettering above it. I totally love the subtlety of the look.

See what I mean. There but not there. I wanted something that said what each room's use is but nothing that jumps out at me each time I go up there. I can direct people and even if they forget which door, they'll still be able to figure it out. 

The rooms will be for Sewing, Photo Shoots, Painting, Bathroom, and Crafting. We're busy people. 

These aren't the "before" or "after" pictures but the "during" photos. I've added captions to each of the gallery photos for how-to info.

8" chip board letters from Hobby Lobby @ $1.99 each
liquid nails
spacer piece

Besides Tina and Allen, what do you think? (They already let me know they did not approve. But I still like them :)

I made the call for contents of your purse on my Shannon's Studio Facebook page at the beginning of the week. (You should really "like" it and be a part of it.) Several people commented and many left a list. That's what I was looking for. It's part of a larger project that I'll talk about later but I needed to post this even though it's not done. 

This project is taking waaaaaay longer than I expected. I've been working on it all day and I started with the yesterday. I know it doesn't seem like much but believe me it is. 

You'll see by the text it's called, "Mysteries of a Mom Purse". It's a page with a flap and this is what it looks like closed.

And this is what it looks like opened. I took all the lists and tried to put everything listed into the drawing. I didn't have pepper spray and for the life of me could not find gum or hand sanitizer in our house, which I know we have. I find enough gum smashed into the floor. And at this very moment I realized I didn't put in the diaper. I've carried a diaper in my bag for so many years. I will remedy that. 

We used to call one of my purses, "the black hole" because it was so big and held so much stuff. I've since downsized since I don't have babies. Now, I need to do a count of what's in there. 

This is a close up of the front flap where I'm listing the people who contributed. (I just need to add Wade's name since he suggested 'weapons' if he had a purse.) I asked for their permission to use their names though they didn't know why. I may change it up a bit but this is the general idea. Thanks to all my Free-for-all-Friday friends you'll have to check what I added from your list. 

If you want to be part of the collaborative art projects then check in at the beginning of the week (monday or tuesday here or at Shannon's Studio FB page) to see what I'm looking for and check back Friday. It's that easy. And fun. 

Here's Free-for-all-Friday on Saturday. I didn't finish last night because I dated the Boyfriend instead. Hey, I have priorities. What I did realize is that I have to start FFAF on Monday otherwise life and dates happen. So, on Monday or Tuesday I'll post info for FFAF, that way I can work on it during the week and not wait until Friday. Have to learn as we go but I think that sounds like a good plan.

This is a painting that was started Thursday night at a meeting in which I spoke about education. In my mind, education is part of a larger formula...

Education is wonderful but put it with the addition of Experience and Enlightenment then you really have something powerful. 

Some of the ladies and girls added words they associated with Education. Then I added the words that some of you gave me online Friday. (Dang it! I just saw I misspelled humility. I do that all the time.) There you have it, our collaborative Free-for-all-Friday art project. 

Next weeks project - I need to know what's in your purse. 

Free-for-all-Friday tomorrow but you have to tell me what's in your purse today!

Free-for-all-Friday is here early this week. With a little help. I've wanted to try out what another painter does. He's Dave DeVries and he runs Monster Engine. He takes children's drawings and turns them into paintings. He asks kids to make monsters and then takes it to another artistic level. I'm not into monsters but love'd the transformative idea. To see what I mean here's some of his work.

Well, you can see where I'm going with this. One mom sent in her kid's drawings this week after I asked. I didn't ask for monsters because I didn't want to do that.  I didn't know what I'd get or how I'd do any transformation. I figured I'd just see what happened. That's what Free-for-all-Friday is all about - collaborative experimentation. This is nothing like I usually do but here you go... Eliza & my painting.

When I saw Eliza's drawing I just loved it. (Thanks Eliza for letting me experiment with your artwork.) It was perfect on it's own but I was excited to try this transformation out. I kept faithful to her drawing but added color and a story. I call the painting Me & the Moon - Our Midnight Celebration. Since I just ended my 50th birthday celebration last week this just seemed fitting. The photo's a little dark since it wasn't that light out this morning when I took it.

I kept the same dark color palette DeVries uses. The only thing I wish I did differently was to put a face on that moon. Which I leave the right to go back and do. This doesn't look like anything I normally do but it was such fun. I may have to try this again sometime. Do you think I should?

I got this photo early in the 50th Birthday Celebration and it surprised me that this one was sent in. It's not a high quality photo - faded and out of focus. Just a snap shot really but looking at it makes me smile because she loves it despite what it isn't. It makes me think of those moments when love is really good, despite what life is or isn't. And it's usually not the moments you think they're going to be that make you cherish them. So, I wanted to do this one even though I knew it would be hard to do, because I know that feeling.

Since it was a hard photo to work from I decided to make it a miniature. It's about 2" x 2". It makes it a little easier to deal with when there's a lack of clear detail. I don't think I've ever painted this small, and I've even tweaked it a little after this photo. But, this is the photo I'm posting until I take the for real photos of the paintings.