textures, painting, befores but no afters

I'm musing today with the Muses about self portraits. I tried a number of things for this theme. I'm still not comfortable in front of the camera. However, after taking so many different shots, I feel a little bit more confident about setting up a selfie. Not sure I'll do any more, any time soon. Of course, I had to try some with textures. I used Kim Klassen's newest texture Stained Linen, on this photo, it's my new favorite.

Hope you've had a lovely long weekend (for those of you in the states). I've been busy getting ready for an outdoor sale where we have our antique booth. I've a number of small pieces of furniture I'm painting. I don't have any 'after' shots just yet, but here are a few befores.

I love the lines of that little blue table. I picked up both of them at yard sales for $3 each. I had a few more before photos but they are on my missing memory card. *sigh*

I now have 364,576,755 projects started. Hopefully I'll get most of them done by Saturday morning. I do have one painting tip to pass along. When it gets dark, stop painting. See. That one tip is so worth stopping by the Cottage right?

Another before. I was going to sell this little table. But once I painted it, I really like it.

It's on my porch with my vintage insulator collection on it.

Okay, this post is all over the place. Pretty much what the inside of my head is like at the moment.  Time to go pick up a brush again.

Don't forget to hop over to the Muses and check out my post and my other self portrait.

xo maureen

liberate your art

Kat, from Kat Eye View, is hosting a Liberate Your Art swap. Such a cool idea, you have postcards printed of your art. Send them to Kat, and she will redistribute them to the other participants, and send you postcard art from other participants. Sort of a chain letter thing without the hassle.

I've received all of the items and prints in the photos in this post from internet friends.

Exchanging photos and small trinket items with my blog and flickr friends is one of my very favorite things to do.

I have a growing collection of photos from my friends all next to my computer desk. It's like having my friends hanging out with me while I work. So much beauty, from wonderfully talented people. And some of the sweetest people too.

It's not too late to sign up, just click on the button  for more information and to sign up. It really is a cool opportunity. You just send off a packet of cards, and wait to be surprised by the beauty you receive in return. Go, sign up, the deadline is June 4. You'll be glad you did.

xo maureen

vintage fun with a little texture on top

On this image I used Kim's textures Mad Love, Create, Yesteryear, and Sweet Treat

Tuesdays mean Happy Purple Tuesday and Texture Tuesday. I love when I can do a two-fer. A photo of purple that I can also play with textures.
For these shots I rummaged through my new stash of vintage sewing notions again and pulled out spools of thread.

On this image I used Create, Yesteryear, Sweet Treat and Dusty Rose

I love the soft pastel colors. Next, I'm going to try to sort out some more buttons. This really is a good stash of vintage goodies.

I'm participating in Kim's Texture Tuesday link up. Hello! to those of you visiting from there. I hope to make it around to visit more link ups this week.



I had to do just one more. I used Kim's textures again, with the addition of  the post card texture that I found on flickr from borealnz.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great Tuesday!
xo maureen

tuesday purple and some texture

Happy Purple Tuesday everyone. I've been busy, busy with a number of things, but I did want to share a few shots I've taken lately. If you're new here {so very glad to have you visit} last year I started a flickr group called Happy Purple Tuedsay. On most Tuesdays I try to post something purple that I've found. And somedays it's a stretch, but always fun. And if  you are a lover of purple, I invite you to jump over to the flickr group and enjoy all the beautiful purple there. And I'd love for you to join us and contribute your purple photos.

I took most of these in a friend's yard, his front yard is nothing but one large flower bed! Overflowing with flowers, it's amazing.



Last Saturday I tried something new. My sister and I went to this wonderful little store full of nothing but beads. Oh, the amazing beads. It's so cool, you pick out your beads and they teach you how to make your own custom jewelry.  I made the bracelet above in memory of my nephew, who lost his battle against brain cancer last month. He was a student at K-State and and I'm honored to have his sweatshirt.

Do you love purple? I've been thinking of starting a linky party on Tuesdays for purple link ups so we can share our love of purple. You could link up from your blog or your flickr photos. What do you think? Wanna play? Leave me a comment and let me know. If there is enough interest, I'll look into the linky thing and try to set it up for next Tuesday.



Oh! I almost forgot! It's Texture Tuedsay at the Cafe. Lots of great texture work over there. This week the theme is vintage.  This is just a little bit of my newest stash of vintage sewing notions. I don't really need more vintage sewing notions, but really? How can I pass up this gorgeous stuff?

Thanks for visiting, have a great day!
xo maureen

magazine crate before and after and a winner

Ta Da! The magazine crate project {project A in the contest} was mine.

I hope you had fun with our little game, we had fun putting the idea together. Thanks for playing along and sharing in our celebration. It was cool to have visitors I didn't know, I discovered new blogs too. I hope to get around to visit all my new followers soon.

I picked up this crate at an auction recently. The price was right - free. It was part of a 'lot' that someone bid on, and they didn't want the crate, so they left it behind. I felt confident I could give it a good home. *grin* I brought it home with me, stuck it in the basement and promptly forgot about it. Until one night, probably late at night, when I was surfing Pinterest and saw this.

And I remembered my little find, languishing in the dark basement, forgotten. It was the perfect project for our fun celebration.

My crate was missing a slat at the top, so making a liner for it was perfect. I started by dry brushing some white paint on the crate, and printed out a label using my computer.  I've also been wanting to try creating the cool fabric rosettes I've seen everywhere on the internet. I had the fabric for the liner in my stash, all I had to do was learn how to make the rosettes. I watched a video tutorial here, and found another one here. The rosette was easy to make, except that I used hot glue as I worked and ouch. I think I'll try fabric glue next time.

Now for the winners. I had a total of 12 correct guesses for my project. I wrote the names on slips of paper and drew a winner for the copy of the Artful Blogging magazine.

And the winner is . . .



Yay! Brook, email me your snail mail address so I can send you the magazine. Don't forget to visit Anita and Suzanne to see if you are a lucky winner on their blogs.

Now for the Grand Prize winner.

But first, I want to take this time to thank all of you again for your visits and comments and emails over the last year. I really appreciate the time you take out of your busy schedule to stop in and offer your friendship.

Okay, okay the drawing.

My project was project A, so my commenters were numbers 1 - 38 for the drawing.

Suzanne's project was B, so her commenters were numbers 39 - 71.

And Anita's project was C her commenters were 72 - 104.

The winning number from Random Number Generator is

The winner is comment number eight on Anita's blog.   Stacey @ A Sort of Fairytale.

Stacy, contact Anita with your info so we can get the prize out to you.
Thanks so much for playing along everyone, we had fun with this and hope that you did too.

xo maureen

peony spring

Spring. ahhhh. It's about time, right? I haven't put in any flower beds here at the Cottage yet. There is only one thing that flowers in my yard.  I love when these appear, I love the anticipation of what comes next. I check them each day and watch them unfold and offer up their simple beauty.

The blooming season is fairly short. I cut fresh ones each day and bring them in.

And take photos. Lots and lots of photos.

And of course I have to play with textures a bit. I've been asked about the peeling paint background in this shot. It's an old door that my sister gave me after it was removed from a shed on their property. I love to move it around and use it as a background for my photos.

This photo was taken at a friend's house, we've had *surprise* rain again. I was less than happy with the light in this, so I decided to play with it a bit.  The shot above is SOOC {straight out of the camera} no editing.

First, I ran Pioneer Woman's Boost action on it. She has a free set of actions you can download from her website that work with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. If you haven't tried actions, I encourage you to try them out. Once click of a button and magic!

Here I've added Kim Klassen's magic scratches texture to it.

I love this Paris postcard overlay. This is from a set of French Laundry Photo Edges from 2 Peas in a Bucket. I used a layer mask, and removed a bit of the Magic Scratches texture on this image.

Another day, another peony photo shoot. This photo has too many textures to count. It was a bit challenging to shoot it light enough but not totally blow out the detail in the flowers. I ended up with a background that was darker than my taste. So, I used a number of textures that helped to lighten it up. I did use a layer mask to remove most of the texture from the flowers. The only texture left on the flowers and the jar is Kim's Magic Scratches texture.

This is a shot from last year, SOOC, because I didn't really know how to do much in the way of post processing.

Now this brings me to the pronunciation of  peony. My Mom called them pi-nees. I say pee-uh-nee, and I've heard others say pee-oh-nee. How is it pronounced in your neck of the woods?

Don't forget, there's still time to enter a guess in the

Pin the Project to the Blogger giveaway.

{comments are closed, winners announced on Monday}

thanks for stopping by!

xo maureen

it's a blogversary celebration!

Yay! Welcome to the celebration! I can hardly believe it's been a little over a year that I've had this blog. So much has happened in 12 short months. I've made so many new friends. I've become a Muse and I've been published. Whew! What a year. I'm not sure what this next year will bring but I know it will be hard to top the first one. Honestly, I feel really blessed to have had so much fun, and met so many wonderful people.

Way back when I first began blogging, my very first blog post had three comments. Today I'm good friends with two of the bloggers who left comments on that post. Anita who blogs at Going a Little Costal and Suzanne who blogs at Meridian Road. The three of us were all new to blogging at the time, and have been friends from the start. Not only do I love the creative ways they incorporate vintage finds into their homes, they are both incredibly funny and just plain 'good people.'

When we realized we had our first blogversary coming up, we decided to celebrate together. We wanted to do a little giveaway and make it fun.

Pin The Project to the Blogger

How well do you know your bloggers?

We each created a project for this game,

see if you can figure out which blogger created which project.

Prizes:The winner from my drawing will get a copy of the Summer 2011 Artful Blogging magazine. As usual, it's full of talented bloggers and gorgeous eye candy. Each blogger will give away one prize (for a total of three prizes) and there will be one Grand Prize of a $30 gift card to Home Depot/Lowes (winner's choice).

Rules:
You get one chance to win on EACH blog. Leave one comment on this post {make sure you can be contacted through your Blogger profile, or put your email address in your comment} telling me which project you think I created, A, B or C.


Comments will close Sunday night at 6 pm. I will randomly draw a winner from the correct entries on my post. And one GRAND PRIZE winner will be randomly chosen from ALL entries from ALL THREE BLOGS. On Monday, May 16 I'll announce the winner from my comments and the Grand Prize winner.
This blogging adventure wouldn't be nearly as fun without all of you visiting and taking the time to leave me sweet comments. I truly appreciate every time you stop by and every comment left.

Now, go, visit my blog best friends and leave a comment on Suzanne's  and Anita's post telling which project you think they created. And while you are there? Have a look around, they really have shared  some great projects.

Thanks for making this first year so wonderful and more fun than I could have imagined!

xo
maureen

monday, monday

Happy Monday. I like Mondays. Mondays are a new beginning. We are optimistic about Mondays aren't we? We start diets on Monday, exercise programs on Mondays, quit bad habits on Mondays and start projects on Mondays. I've started running again. See? Monday. Last year I said one of my goals for this year is to run a half marathon, and then in the fall run a full marathon. Well. I didn't stick with my training over the winter, so I wasn't ready for the half marathon I registered for that was held in April. The weather was a factor, lots of cold and rain this spring. But, I just didn't stay committed to my goal.  And I really didn't like the feeling of failing to meet a goal I had set for myself. This weekend, I spent some time looking at my commitments and reassessing some goals. I plan to be more diligent about my training, and make certain it's a high priority. I'm registering for the first Rock n Roll Marathon to be held in St Louis in October. My plan is to run a full marathon then. And then?  I can check that off  my bucket list. Have you begun something new today? I'd love to know.

I hope you had a lovely Mother's Day, with your Mother, Grandmother, your children or grandchildren, or  if you are really lucky, all of the above. My boys came over, brought me flowers and dinner and spent the day with me, just hanging out.

I did find time to work on a project this weekend. It's for a fun surprise I've been working on with some blog buddies. You'll have to stop by tomorrow to see the project and find out the details of the surprise I have in store. I think you'll enjoy it.

I hope you have a fabulous week, see you tomorrow.

xo

maureen

purple with a side of flare

1. everyday should be happy something day!, 2. morning glory {15 of 365}, 3. happy purple tuesday! (explored), 4. M o t i o n, 5. bogs on a bench 312/365, 6. Happy Purple Tuesday!, 7. I FINALLY GOT A 50 MM! :D ......edit, 8. purple robot, 9. Purple converse. Purple flare!

That's right, it's Tuesday, time for some purple. As usual, the photos above are NOT mine. All of these photos were added to the flickr Happy Purple Tuesday group. You can click on the links below the photos to go to the flickr photostreams of the photographers who took them.

I did take this photo, in my yard, where I have more of these than grass. My mother loved violets, she had them on almost everything in her house. They will forever remind me of her, and I have a hard time trying to kill them in favor of more grass.

And I have quite a few of these in the yard also

I have a new neighbor, she asked me what I was taking a picture of when she say me lying in the tall grass taking this shot.



I'm sure she is still wondering why.

happy tuesday

xo
maureen