The Ceramic Fountain Saga continues....

The Duncan Ceramic Fountain is still being assembled in the iLoveToCreate design studios, and we are getting close to being finished. The four faces of the seasons were glued to the crown today. These plates are absolutely breathtaking and the artist who painted them is Suzie Shinseki. Her artistic designs never cease to amaze me.

Another of our designers, Cheryl Ball painted the fountain title, "For Everything There is a Season." Her skills as a decorative painter are fabulous, and she's fast, too!

The brains & brawn of the operation is Sam Carter, one of our talented graphics designers. He is also a skilled cabinet maker, and has built a beautiful column as the foundation and also assembled the ceramic pieces and fountain. Believe me, this has been a team effort.

Here are some more shots of the fountain in progress...




Tomorrow is the final day for the fountain to get ready and ship to the CCSA Convention in Kansas City. Sam will be building a crate to house the fountain, and the delicate packing will take place. But not before Scott has a chance to get some photography of our piece of art. I can't WAIT to see it all together!

And the saga continues....

Shocking Blue Patio Paint

I was one busy girl this weekend, and I crammed all I could into the 3 days for Labor Day weekend. I finally got to attack this gawd-awful table that I've had for umpteen years, and spray paint it an electric blue for the patio.


This is how it looked before. I filled all the cracks and crannies with wood putty then sanded it, and sucked up the dust with the vacuum cleaner.

It took gobs of putty, but I stuck with it until they were all filled up. Then while it was drying I made the hanger for a wall hanging. You can see that DIY Wire Hanger project in the post below.

One of the things I've found that works best when I spray paint, is if I turn my project upside down and spray the bottom first.

Then when I'm finished spraying, it's right side up while it's drying.

I'm glad I picked up 2 cans of spray, because I used one entire can, and part of another. I'll still have some left to spray candlesticks or something to match later.

I love how it turned out. I also put new fabric in the director's chairs and added a couple of bark cloth pillows. The foot stool is an old crate with a pillow stuffed into it.

Now, where's my dirty martini??

Repurposed Plant Hanger

What do you do when you have a plant hanger on a pot that you don't want to hang?

I turned mine into a curly-Q hanger!

My good friend and amazing artist, photographer, and graphics designer Robyn Craxton, made this fabulous wall hanging as a going away present when we moved 3 months ago from Nashville to iLoveToCreate in Fresno. She asked 12 of our closest friends to write on the backs of these vintage style postcards, and then she put grommets and jump rings on them to group them together. I LOVE it! Robyn put velcro hangers at the top, but I've been shopping around for something cool to hang it with. Sooooo.... today when I bought plants for the house, it hit my creative nerve when I saw the plant hanger.

Here's a little tutorial for my DIY Wire Hanger:







Thanks Robyn, and all the gang in Nashville... I miss all of you....

By the way, Robyn also has a cute little ETSY Shop called Robyn Ruth you'll love to browse.

Ikea Bed Adventure

With the 3-days off for Labor Day, we took a little road trip to Sacramento for Gold Rush Days and to browse IKEA for household stuff. The Gold Rush Days was way fan, as we walked on the streets covered with dirt and cowboys and horses and trains and buggies everywhere. But the real adventure happened when we bought new slats for our Scandinavian bed. Ours had become quite flat, and we needed a new mattress to make our backs happy. Sooo.... as you see here, the best part about IKEA is that it's relatively inexpensive. But, the worst part is that it's always a DIY project.

The slats had to go into plastic pockets and then a fabric spine went down the middle. Scott took over and was determined to make it a fun project. It didn't take tooo long to get the first side done.

The second side got crazy when we lost count of how many skinny slats went in before the fat slats, and then the double slats, and so it goes. Counting, poking, and silly fun.

The mattress was rolled up tight, and weighed 75 lbs. It was amazing how much mattress was in an itty bitty bag. But, the DIY slats and mattress adventure ended nicely with my happy tiger sprawled out on a brand new bed. Z-Z-Z-Z-z-z--z-z-zzzzz--zzzzz z z zzzz

Ceramic Fountain in progress

One of the most challenging and exciting things about the CCSA Convention is that Duncan Ceramics presents a huge ceramic showpiece for the charity auction every year.... and this year I get to be part of the iLoveToCreate team that's designing it!

It starts from a brainstorming sketch that the designers collaborate on, and then the ceramic artists get busy. This year we are building a humungus fountain that is covered with ceramic flowers.

I've been scared to death that I'm going to accidentally break a plate and have to start over because they are so delicate. The ceramic artists really came through on these as you can see, I have a flood of flowers covering my design area.

I've been selected to decoupage the column with handmade papers in the background. Some of the papers have teeny little ferns and leaves in them. I love all the saturation of colors.

Each of the 4 sides of the column will represent a different season. Here is the winter side, that will hold the christmas florals. The Collage Pauge has been perfect for placing a coat of glue on the column and then covering the paper with a coat of the matte finish. The empty spots were drawn with pencil around the ceramic pieces and marked with the same code on the bottom of the pieces. You have to be careful not to decoupage where the ceramics will be glued to the wood, otherwise the glue will not hold the heavy pieces. Huge project, huge fun, lots of Collage Pauge Instant Decoupage.

Allee Marderosian gave me a hand on the "Spring" side. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we painted the wood first so the sheer papers would be more vibrant.

I know, I know... it's not finished yet. I just left the studio where I glued hundreds of crystals on the ceramic flowers... whew!

You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the rest... yep, what a tease :-)

Inspiria- cirque du CCSA!

Our trade show team has been working their happy butts off this week to prepare for the largest convention of the year for the ceramic arts industry in Kansas City next week. Our booth will showcase the latest in bisque to the attendees of the Contemporary Ceramic Studios Association and also have some pretty snazzy make-it-take-it goodies, too. And the designers on hand will be our very own Crafty Chica, Kathy Cano-Murillo and Traci Bautista to kick things off to a crafty good time for everyone.

I took these snappy pics of just a teeny few of the massive amount of bisque from our Duncan Ceramics that will be shown in the booth. How exciting! If you own a ceramic arts studio, you won't want to miss it on September 11 - 14th.

Alyson Dias, our Marketing & Communications Director at iLoveToCreate recently got a call inviting the Tulip brand to be a part of New York City's Fashion's Night Out event, and she just posted the announcement on FaceBook today. How exciting and outrageous!

She also announced that... "the ever-fashionable and totally talented Erica Domesek of ps-imadethis is using Tulip Fabric Spray, Tulip Stencils and Tulip T-Shirt Forms in a DIY event at Tia's Place at Grand Central Station in NYC on Sept 10!!!"

Woot-woot!