A Nontraditional Baby Gift

One of my friends is having her second baby girl. This friend is not a traditional baby pink and frills kind of woman. Nor does she concern herself with what others think or say about how a nursery is supposed to look like.

I love that!

She really likes sugar skulls and the traditions and family stuff that go with the Day of the Dead.

I have no knowledge about this stuff at all. I really had no idea as to where to start when I wanted to paint her a gift.

So I took a good look at her bedding, did a little Etsy research and found some ideas and a starting point.

Here is her bedding.

And a couple of baby gifts.

You get the idea.

Vibrant and bold colors.

So I did some searching on the web for a cool skull drawing that would work to paint. Truly, while I hate stealing someone else's artwork to paint, I had NO frame of reference. I'm just thankful that there was something cool for me to copy!

So I took the drawing and drew it onto my canvases.

Then I used sharpies to color in the drawings. I made a truly rookie mistake here. I forgot to put a layer of paint down first! UGH!! I realized what I had done after I had already drawn all of the skulls. I was NOT going to redo this work.

I used 3 black sharpies and rotated them around in order to keep the ink flowing well. Sharpies work really well on canvas for a project like this!

Here are the canvases before paint.

Ad then I started painting. I painted one color at a time for the most part.

After painting the skulls, I went back over the black again to clean up the drawing portions.

And here is the completed set. I really, really enjoyed painting these. I learned a lot about the process and what I would do different should I create something like this again.

And here is what I did with the left over paint.

A photo posted by emilymclemore (@faithhopeandart) on Jul 19, 2015 at 3:34pm PDT

A photo posted by emilymclemore (@faithhopeandart) on Jul 19, 2015 at 4:02pm PDT

A little more my "style" huh.

but I have to say, I'm really thinking about painting another set of these skulls! Maybe make my own this time!

We interupt this program..

I just had to share my excitement about a hand-me-down from a friend! My friend and co-worker Jennifer gave me this morning the bedding that she used for her youngest child. It's not the same colors that we were planning, but it's so cute and FREE!!

God has provided a wonderful gift to us!! So please take note of the new colors :) Don't you just love those little birds!

Thanks again Jennifer!!

No baby name yet, but I have chosen nursery colors!

It seems like I get asked at least once a day about a name for baby girl and also about nursery colors. Well, we still haven't decided on a name, but I have chosen nursery colors! All of you scrapbookers out there will appreciate that the colors and patterns are from Close To My Heart Emporium papers :) Here is a close up of my favorite pattern. The colors are Cocoa, Sweet Leaf, Twilight, and Vineyard Berry.

Here they are in the catalog..

So here's my plan, I am going to take my pieces of paper with me to a fabric store and get everything I need to make the baby's nursery stuff. I am also going to paint our hand-me-down dark brown wood crib the vineyard red color. I am so thankful to have the crib! What a huge savings that was!!

Also, if our house doesn't sell, Lexi's bedroom will become Lexi and baby's room and guess what? The color of the walls matches PERFECTLY!! I will paint Lexi's bed the same red and we will bring in the large bookshelf from the den that just happens to already be the correct color :) It doesn't look so hot in the picture below, but you can see where I am going..

And that's all folks. I am feeling much better now that I have a good idea as to where I am going with the room situation. Now, yes, the goal is to sell the house, but I have to plan.. I am a planner. Everyone that knows me would attest to that!

That's why a name is so hard. I have to plan the sound, the look and the feel of the name.