Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Memories

My parents moved to Florida about 28 years ago. When they first moved they lived in a very small home in a "not so good" area, after about 2 years there they bought a home in a small town. When they bought it all those years ago they said they were only going to live there until by brother either started kindergarten or after he finished...my brother is now 26 years old and my parents just sold the house.
My house is the only HOME I have known my 24 years on this planet. It has always been my safe place, my home and one of the greatest memories of my life. I have seen multiple changes to the house, not only in color (the first color I rememeber was a pretty ugly peach, for the past 10-15years or so its been lime green). I've seen structural changes and additions (we converted our garage to an huge "game room," added an office on top and built a new garage in front. Added a screen to our pool, knocked down some walls, multiple bathroom updates and a kitchen update. Needless to say, it's not the same house they moved into 26 years ago, nonetheless it's still HOME.
My brother and I have both moved out and live on our own now, my parents decided they were going to "downsize" and move into a small townhouse about 20 minutes away and closer to the interstate for their traveling jobs. We took our time moving them out, not by my mom's request, but laziness by the rest of us and I think a small portion of that laziness can be attributed that we wanted to spend as much time there as we could in its last moments as our house.

I bought a medium to put a picture on in September for a boyfriend to put one of his horses on...he ended that before I even had the chance to make it. Decided I wasn't just going to let that purchase go to waste and I was going to fin a good use for it. A friend of mine suggested that I put a picture of my house on it, her family friend painted her a picture of her old house, so she passed along that idea. Turns out in all that time we lived there, we never captured a good picture of the house. We had to ask very good friend of ours to use there nice camera and take so pictures of the house. After some HDR editing, we came to a picture all of us almost couldn't stop looking at. Decided that would be the one I would use. I bought a 20x30 size of an aluminum medium from Aluminyze and after some discovering (having a high enough resolution) my mom and I were able to upload the picture onto their website. Within a week I received my picture and couldn't be happier. I have it proudly displayed in my apartment's living room right now and can't wait for visitors to comment highly about it.


Now I think I need to get one made for my mom for mothers day in May...not too bad of a gift if I do say so myself.  

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Customized Tervis Tumblers

My family has this obsession with Tervis Tumblers...we have all almost converted our entire cabinet of cups to tervis'. They are some of the best cups, don't sweat, dishwasher safe, fun designs and are customizable.
They are such a hot commodity that when my parents have parties they will hide their collection in their room. They seem to either grow legs and walk off...or walk off with the person that was using them. We have lost quite a few and are always on the look out to see if we can recover them when we visit friends houses (get ours back, not take their and perpetuate the cycle).

Anyways, I had some customized for my cousin and her husband-to-be for their wedding gift. They were really creative (he works in marketing) and created a logo to use for many different facets of the wedding (Save the Dates, Invitations, water bottles for hotel guests) that I had access to electronically. Tervis does say they have approve all designs before printing/creating to keep people from altering a trademarked logo.

This is the logo they are using for their wedding.
And this is the mock that Tervis showed me when I created.


Enjoy! Some of the best cups you will have. Awesome!

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Cross Wall

A couple years ago my mom got our family a Cross, to start our cross wall. Since then we have made crosses to add to it and bought some to remember some trips we have taken.
6 of the above have been made and 3 bought....looking to buy more and make more to fill that wall and maybe another.
Some of the ones that are up there are wine corks- mother's day gift- cut wine corks in half and attached to a wood base.
Wrapped beads over wood- my mom made that one- strung small beads (not quite as small as seed beads) on a THIN wire and wrapped over a wood base with a crossing pattern in the middle.
Rolled magazine on wood- one of the first ones I made, and made it in my college dorm room.

Beads and wire- this is actually one of my mom's favorites, we made this at a mother daughter night-  mom's is blue, mine is orange.

Mosaic- we bought this one in at the Ft. Worth Stockyards and it has a little bit of a Texas feel to it- second from the top in the righthand side above.
Metal with colorful design- this is the first cross to start the wall- my mom got it at some art gallery.
Porcelin- this was another mother's day gift- I bought this in Arizona and it has the southwest color and feel you often see in Arizona.

I've started my own cross wall in my condo, smaller then my mom's but working on it. Most of mine are handmade.
 
Screw cross-made from large screws and colorful beads.
This is now a additional item I have started to include in wedding gifts, still trying to find a poem that says something along the lines of build your home with Christ to incorporate the Cross part with it being made out of screws to "build your home."
Just made a new one, that my mom had now requested I make her one as well.
This is my cross wall, still a work in progress.
Most of the crosses on this wall were made by me and have "duplicates" that are for sale and will be on my Etsy page. Enjoy! :-)