{a new day, a new look!}

Happy Thursday everyone! I hope your week is winding down and you're looking forward to the weekend!! I am uber excited as the IDSwest show is in town and I am looking forward to so many wonderful events including an Opening Night Gala tonight and a fabulous cocktail party on the weekend that we {Karla of Kerrisdale Design Inc., Victoria of Edin's House, Barbara of hodge:podge and myself} designed specifically for design bloggers attending the show. Best part? Ikea Canada is our premiere event sponsor and working with them has been fabulous! I hope to have tons of fab party pics to share with you next week.

On another note, things may look a little different to you around here today :) I hope you like it! I've been working on a little blog face-lift for some time, and I have to thank the people involved: the wonderful Kelly of Fabulous K Creative designed my navigation bar and side bar elements {she's fantastic, contact her if your thinking of a blog redesign!}, and my awesome/patient/skilled husband put together my header art!

Another exciting addition: I've finally put up a little Etsy shop {just a few items, more to come soon - baby steps!}. Here are some of the pieces you will find there:

And I am working on having the large canvas in my kitchen professionally scanned so it should be up there soon too!

Thank you so so much for all of your support of this blog, you have no clue how much it means to me! And thank you to everyone who personally encouraged me to put my artwork out there even though it is a bit intimidating at the best of times :) Have a wonderful Thursday!

{creating your own custom art}

A couple of years ago, while shopping for my wedding dress, I came across a large print hanging on the wall in a shop in Vancouver that I absolutely loved. I came home and searched the internet to see if I could buy a copy. Turns out a copy of this print would run close to $400!! So, I decided to try to paint it for myself. You can see below it is a bit different than the original (on the left), but it's close enough, with my own spin on it:

I was able to by a large size canvas that now hangs in our kitchen eating area, and I am pleased with the results. Just for fun I included a pic of the eating area before we bought and renovated our home:

I think it is a great idea if you cannot afford some of your favorite art pieces, you can even put your own personal touch on it this way. Or if you wanted it to be a perfect copy you could trace the photo with an art projector. I have several other painting projects on my list for other places in the house, hopefully I will give this hobby more time and get to them soon :) Have a great weekend!