Author name: Karla Nathan

The last few weeks, my studio has become unbearable.  I was piling up messes as fast as I could make them, and was starting to lose my creative edge. I like my surroundings to be tranquil and pretty, so I took advantage of this awful, snowy weather to stay in and redo my work areas. 

My studio is a big open room that I can divide up with large pieces of furniture and hinged doors and shutters.  I was able to make certain areas designated storage for each craft that I do.  I also used a hand painted screen to make a hideaway for the biggest messes and storage of things not in use daily. 

Jewelry and soldering necessities went into the armoire. A lot of my collage papers and supplies went into a rolling cart that I can pull right up to the table when I am working, and when not in use, it goes back behind the screen. 

I lined the back of an ugly, $15 garage sale cabinet made of pressed wood and painted it a neutral taupe.  Then filled the shelves with things I liked to have within easy reach. Attractive containers helped cure the clutter.  Fairy dust (glitter) is in a cruet bottle, paint brushes are in flower pots and scissors are in an antique pitcher.

Fairy making supplies and more album and collage loot went into an auction dresser.  I bought it for a song because it was missing the bottom drawer.  After painting it a warm French Vanilla, I used the hole as a shelf to hold boxes of paper.  The boxes themselves are floral paper covered old drawers.

My brushes, paints, rollers (and boxes of junk) are behind the screened area.  I used an old door salvaged from our kitchen remodeling project as a wall by the sink.  The window is done with stain glass paints and lets in a lot of light.  This door was featured in Paint Magic magazine last summer with how-to steps I had written on making one yourself. My friend, Beth, made the apron for me to wear to craft shows and flea markets to carry pens and receipt books.

One of my projects for these cold months of January and February has been to organize all my photos and get some albums made up.  Of course, the first one I did was of my new granddaughter, Leandra Joy.  I call her Sugar Wings, so it was fitting to add wings to her pictures, here is my favorite.

Usually, I am a bit of a workaholic.  But for the last few months, I have been more of a putter-er.  I keep busy and keep creative, but haven’t been "working" so much as just enjoying making things pretty.  I’ve helped family repaint and redesign rooms and helped our contractor gut and redo our new wonderful bathroom.

The room used to be my son’s, but since he is out and has his own family, we knocked down the wall and turned it into a master bath.  The walls are chocolatey brown with tons of gold glitter mixed into the paint and the ceiling is the palest pink I could make. I lined the glass fronted cabinets with old sheet music and filled them with dried flowers, soaps, sea shells and apothecary jars.   Doing a lot of the work myself helped with the budget, along with scouring sales to find the best prices on tiles and supplies.  I also got curtains at the Goodwill store and remade them to fit the window.

After all the physical labor of redoing the bath, I was ready to sit down in my studio and get going on some scrap booking. When my grandma died a few years ago, I found an old album under her bed and after all this time, finally got it out and salvaged it.  I used her photos from the early 1900s as well as some pictures I had inherited from my mom when she passed away a couple of years ago. I hadn’t been emotionally able to go through hers and do anything with them, and felt guilty about stashing them in the closet.  So, taking advantage of a slow (and ice cold, here in KS) time of year, I made up an album in honor of Mom and Grandma, trying to reuse as much of the original album as possible.

I bought papers from hobby and scrapbook stores, one of them being a reproduction of an old ledger.  After I had glued these three photos in place on the page, I noticed that centered between them was my grandma’s name!!!  You can see it on this page "Mary Phillips", I have highlighted it by using an aging ink around the word and around the pictures.  Mary is pretty common, but put with Phillips?  I think that must mean that she is happy I am care-taking the album she started almost 100 years ago.

On my trip to Jacksonville last week, my brother, Randy, had me paint a pond on the floor of his craft room.  Every time I go to visit Randy, he has more for me to add to his "mural room".  We started about 10 years ago with a bottle of champagne, Phantom of the Opera playing on the stereo, and a crazy idea to add his friends to the wall of his guest room as fairies.  Over the years, and many bottles of bubbly later, the mural has grown to include  a sunny sky, an enchanted forest and a rock wall.  This trip was the most elaborate change, pulling up the carpet and painting the floor as a pond (with stepping stones in place for furniture to rest on of course!)

Here are steps to follow for a basic floor:

• Remove all traces of carpet (nail strips, fuzz, etc) and clean the floor well
• Prime with a water based bonding primer- use an extender poll on your roller or your back will go out before you even begin on the artistic part!!!
• Roll on your base color in eggshell interior wall paint (my fave is Behr from Home Depot-thick, good coverage, affordable)
• Using acrylic craft paint and artist brushes, add your creative touch. I recommend sitting on a short stool to stay limber while doing this, sitting directly on the floor is a killer.
• Top coat with a polyurethane of your choice, usually satin, but of course, it depends on what compliments your design. 

Steps to follow for a pond theme:

• Chose a blue/green you like for the base of the water
• Figure out where furniture will sit and add rocks or grassy areas, so the room doesn’t look silly with floating furniture.  Also add rocks in traffic patterns, and later observe how guests will always walk on the rocks, not the water of the completed pond!!
• Paint the rocks first with a tan color, add depth with 3 colors in a stoney hue that are dark, medium, and light and apply with a sponge for rocky texture. Splatter with all three colors after and don’t worry if spots land in the "water".  Little spots of rock colors will look like small rocks underwater.
• For grassy areas, paint a dark brown base, then with a 1/2 inch flat brush turned sideways, paint three colors of green in dark, medium, and light with quick strokes overlapping and going all directions, like clumps of grass.
• Using a darker shade of the blue/green mixed with a bit of clear glaze, paint shadows around all the rocks and grassy areas.  This is easiest with a sponge dipped into the paint and washed on.
• Start with the "deepest" areas of the water.  Use darker colors mixed in with some of the base coat to make fish and plants look deep.  Shadowey shapes and little detail are all that is necessary.
• Next paint the mid-level of the water, brighten up the shades you used for the deeper plants and fish, using less of the base coat color.  Still, use few details in your features.  Overlap your first layer.
• For the shallow parts of the pond, make fish and plants look closer to the surface with more detail and brighter colors, none of the base color mixed in at all.  Overlap this layer onto the other two previous layers. 
• Let the first three levels dry well, then mix white paint into a clear glaze and make "ripples" over the pond by washing big sweeps on with your sponge.  Make sure some of these ripples and waves overlap the edges of the rocks a bit too.
• Finally, add floating flowers and lily pads, once again, overlapping a bit of what you have already painted.  Add the white glaze mixture ripples around the flowers. At this point, some of your first fish might not even be discernible, but they will still add a sense of depth to the water.
• Let dry and top coat.  Keep furniture off for a couple of days.  If using a oil based poly, have plenty of ventilation and keep pets and small children out of the house, the smell can be overwhelming.

Happy Valentine's Day!  I believe in celebrating all week, filling  my house with fresh flowers and softly scented candles.  I thought this holiday would be a good day to start my blog, it is a day of warm feelings and beautiful things.  Surrounding myself with vintage or hand created items that are pretty is important to me. But even more important is finding them at bargain prices or making them myself.  I saw an ad in the Sunday paper for roses at $1 each, and bought an armful of sunny yellow ones with deep pink tips, and filled an assortment of flea market vases and rose patterned tea cups then set them around the house.  So  much more personal and pretty (and affordable) than my husband ordering a generic arrangement of red roses from a florist. 

On one old bottle, I tied a doily heart with a vintage rose cut from an old postcard glued onto it. I used this as part of the centerpiece for a brunch on Monday for my friends. 

This pensive little fairy is a mixed media painting I did.  I hope to make some more cards and get them listed on Ebay, along with my jewelry and what other little pretties come to mind.