A New Dawn

Today I started a new era in my life - one I thought would NEVER come (for MANY reasons).  First of all, the story starts with my precious friend Sara Mincy.  She is a true artist, and her happy Kindergarten Chic decor-style captivates my imagination.  I'd love to be as brave as she is!!! (I really do look at it as true bravery, as you would see if you visited my bland-paletted, neutral home....)
Sara paints as I can only dream to paint.  Just look at some of her work!  It's great!  I feel so privileges to have two original Sara Mincy pieces in my home, and you should consider commissioning something with her, too.  The pieces are instant conversation pieces for company that visits, and add so much to the "feel" of my home!
Well, this week I was browsing around Prudent Baby and their post on apple pie with cheese made me remember a delightful little poem that a friend of mine used to tell me.... and I had a small canvas that I bought to do this project with (although we are still in the shape cutting out stage on that, so the canvas was still wrapped up...) so I whipped a few things out and started PAINTING.  Yes, me. I painted something artsy!  I did it! It's more of a miracle that you might be able to understand!
I started with a foundation in this WONDERFUL "Happy Camper" shade of flat paint from Behr - I had a little sample of it from an impulse purchase at Home Depot, and now I know that the color is really as GrrrrrREAT as I thought and I'm even more excited about painting walls this color one day (or gingerbread on my front porch?), but I digress.
So here is the foundation (three coats on the white canvas, and yes, I was painting on my washer, because my laundry room has the best natural light in the house during the little ones' naptime):

And then, since last week I happened to find some perfect and darling artwork on my newest blog discovery, CakeSpy (more on this later! :) and since I'm just hanging this in my own little kitchen and it's the first thing I've even desired to draw since about 5th grade, I tried to recreate their sweet loving pie + cheese with a pencil and my own little hand, and after about fifty tries, I DREW THIS and bravely (yes, bravely) re-drew it in ink on my fresh, happy-camper-green canvas, like this:

AND IT TURNED OUT!!!!  I still can't believe it. 

Is it perfect?
nope.
Do I like it anyway?
yep. And if I can't get over the imperfectly spaced letters, I'll just paint over it and try again.
(Who am I?)

Side note (just so you know.): Some people get sweaty and nervous when they speak or sing in public or parallel park or stand on a high ledge, but none of those things really bother me. HOWEVER. What does make me sweaty and short of breath and anxious beyond belief, is crafts.  Especially things like frosting cupcakes or (much worse) a whole cake, or even simple tasks like wrapping presents. But drawing?!?!?!  That creates dry-mouthed, heart-pounding inner panic unlike anything else in my life.  (Except spiders and oh, say, losing my three-year-old in the neighborhood for 10 minutes, but those fall into totally different categories, so they don't count in this context.) 

I still don't know what came over me, but I'm so happy it happened, and hope this is the start of something new....  I am blessed with a super-artistic mom and brother, and now as I'm trying to help my little ones be artists and appreciate the beauty around us in God's creation and in the ability He's given to human beings to create too, I've often wished to draw, even to just representationally copy something.  Well, here we are! 

I wrote my little poem on, and so now the next step is to paint the little cutie-pie and cutie-cheese.... So I'll be practicing that on my fifty or so practice-drawings and will show you the finished project, one day.... Let's just take it one step at a time. :)