Conus litteratus
She lives and loves by the ocean, carefully choosing her treasures amongst all the pretty things nature has forged with the waves.
Art imitating life ~ Can’t wait to hang up this pretty thing.
BTS shell painting
Behind the scenes ‘before’ photos of a very large painting in progress earlier this afternoon. Ian sat down to help me with the blue background to make the shell really pop. We finished the painting tonight, so I’ll post the completed ‘after’ photos tomorrow!
Love these pics because it really looks like Ian did the whole painting, haha! He took a couple photos of me painting too but I was in my underwear and it’s on his phone lololol
Making cloth napkins + elei printing
A couple of weeks ago, Gabby told me she was planning her sister Siumu’s surprise baby shower and she might need some help. She said she was inspired by what I’ve been doing to live a more sustainable life and decided on an eco-friendly tropical theme for the party. What?! How cool!! This made me very excited to hear her list out all the ways she was opting for a zero waste event. I immediately offered to provide cloth napkins (instead of paper towels), and before I knew it, Gabby came over to my house with a giant bundle of orange fabric. I just had to cut and hem. But it seemed too plain, and Gabby was already pulling all the stops, so I had to level up (yassss to Ciara + Parri$).
I finally had a good reason to use this elei stencil I bought in Samoa over New Year.
It took a looooong time but once I set up my workbench and did a couple of test prints, I found my groove. I cut the long fabric into pieces that could fit 4 napkins, taped the stencil down and placed two 2×4 blocks to keep the fabric from warping, poured and painted with a roller, took it out to the balcony to dry, and repeated this… about 15 more times! With less than 24 hours before the event, I couldn’t leave them out to dry, so thankfully Ian helped and ironed all the pieces to heat set the fabric paint. Then I cut out the 4 napkins from each strip, and took it to my sewing machine to do a raw hem edge.
Like I said, it took foreverrrr. I started on Friday afternoon and finished at 5am the next day, just a few hours before the surprise baby shower! Oh man, if it weren’t for Gabby, I don’t think I would have done any of this but I’m glad they turned out. I’ll be posting photos from the beautiful baby shower super soon!
Dusk Colors with this Gauguin Girl
I hosted paint and wine night for a few girlfriends last weekend. I haven’t painted in a really long time, and decided it was time to bring out the acrylics and put down feelings in color. Not knowing what to paint, Diane suggested I derive inspiration from Paul Gauguin’s paintings. She told me the colors I used and the way I painted reminded her of Gauguin’s work. I had never heard of Gauguin until she told me this, and it took me a while to figure out how to even pronounce his name. I searched his photos to find a painting I liked.
In one of his paintings, I really liked the way the woman was sitting and the fact that she was an island girl wearing a red lavalava, so I pretty much copied this almost exactly on my canvas, slightly askew. For the scenery, I just drew indistinct lines to give the photo context.
My mind kind of switched to autopilot and I focused on my company.
Louise and Diane were both using watercolor to paint a beautiful cone shell, and a very intricate and beautiful coral garden respectively, Tori was coloring in a psychedelic fish and Mareike also colored a scene of Ofu island. We were discussing all manner of things, as you do on girls’ nights, and funny enough we had plenty of conversation surrounding french history, and then greek history.
A couple of hours and cups of wine later, I almost gave up on my painting because the colors were wonky and the canvas wasn’t taking to the paint very well. Diane suggested I keep going, and fill it in as much as possible. I trust Diane so much because she’s a really amazing artist. So I kept going, layering more and more colors without much effort except to make it heavy.
It turned out better than I thought… certainly better than I had planned since I had no idea what I was doing. It’s not very good, in terms of the brush strokes. It’s messy and the colors ARE wonky, but I kind of liked it that way. It just felt good to be painting again and the dusk colors made me feel warm. I didn’t even look back at Gauguin’s painting until after I completed mine that I realized that there were two women. How did I miss that? Just like my painting, I was lost in my own world in a swirl of colors.
And on that note, I am feeling grateful for these eyes that see in color.
The sun was setting outside and I was going to grab my camera to take a picture of the sun over the lagoon in the yard, but walked into my room to find the light casting dancing shadows on the wall and I honestly didn’t want to be anywhere else but here.
