Coffee & Donuts...and Kale!

It's always so hard to find time to paint new artwork. We have a ton of would-be new designs sitting on our drawing board, just waiting to be painted and made...when we finally get the time. 

But this past weekend we just had to get this one done. Coffee has maybe been the most requested subject for us to paint. And we really can't believe we took so long to finally make a coffee diecut. Aaron and I both love coffee, and although we've got very similar tastes in most areas, we're sorta opposites when it comes to how we take our coffee. Aaron likes his black, and he always has it hot, even during the summer. He'll do iced in the afternoon sometimes when he's outside cutting wood, but for the most part he drinks 2-3 hot black cups very early in the morning.

Me...I like it iced, and I like a little bit of soy creamer, and a tiny bit of agave. I like iced so much better than hot that I'll barely drink coffee in the colder months and opt for tea instead. And oh yeah, unlike Aaron, my coffee is ALWAYS DECAF. If I get within 10 feet of caffeine the heart palpitations will start.   

So yeah...we finally painted coffee. And of course we just had to give it a donut sidekick.

In our shop we already have a chocolate frosted donut, but this time around we had to add some sprinkles. 

Probably both mine and Aaron's favorite detail is the tiny coffee bubbles! So fun to paint! 

Here's how it looks hanging! And oh yeah...we highly recommend using a Chemex. We've tried machines and French Presses, but by far the Chemex is the best when it comes to flavor and ease of use. And we use cloth filters. They're perfect because they're reusable and better for the environment, and also they're sturdy and easy to just flip inside out into our garden without making a mess.

And we love that the Chemex had a little cameo appearance in the classic 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby. 

The design has never ever changed. It's the same as it was when it was invented in 1941. 

The new piece is such a fun size! We plan to add more coffee designs to the shop soon! 

And I almost forgot to mention that to kick this new one off we're having a sale in our shop. Use code COFFEE25 to get 25% off anything in the shop...now through Friday, June 17th.

Ok, now for this amazing piece of jewelry I just got from Rock That Gem! Yes, that's a Kale charm. And yes, it's an actual piece of Kale electroplated in 24K gold! I simply had to have it. You should see the amount of Kale me and Aaron bring home from the grocery store every single trip. I'm a big fan of the stuff and this necklace is more than fitting. 

Rock That Gem has so much good stuff...all of it handmade by a sweet gal named Molly. You have to visit her Etsy shop.

Ok, just wanted to pop in, say hi, and talk a little bit about coffee, donuts, and kale. Which is sorta a weird trio...but also maybe not.

We hope you're week is going great. We'll be back soon!

Love from the Jersey Shore!

xo Jenny...and Aaron

Familiar faces

Before I begin, I really want to say thank you! Thank you for checking in, thank you for reading, and thank you for welcoming us back. It really feels good to be blogging again. 

And we love hearing from you guys. Some of you take the time to comment here on the blog, (and we LOVE you for that) and some of you comment over on Facebook. It's so so nice to know that you guys are into what we share. Over the years this blog has served as a way for us to connect with so many like-minded friends...our fellow artists, collectors, vintage lovers. 

The blog world has changed a whole lot since we started this blog in 2006. So many of our favorite blogs are no longer around, and many have switched from being very personal to being very businessy. Aaron and I hope this blog will continue to be a place for us to share about the fun stuff we collect, day trips we take, classes we teach, artists and makers that we love, home projects, bits of family stuff, current fave music, movies, art, and whatever new stuff we're working on. 

Some of you guys know us for many years and some of you are new friends who found us through Instagram or our shop. Either way, we hope to continue to share some fun/interesting/creative stuff with you all for a long time to come.

Ok, so now let me get to how this post came about. The other day, after the Ocean Grove flea market, my camera decided to stop working. I would go to take a pic and the screen would just say "memory card error". And I tested a couple memory cards and every one had the same result. So it was a camera problem and not the card. It turned out that it's a problem that happens sorta often. The little sensor inside misreads the card. You can try blowing air in the port, or try poking the shiny little sensor with a plastic toothpick (never use a metal object because you can ruin the camera), or you can even try putting a piece of tape over part of the card (like you'd do in the 1980s with cassette tapes that you wanted to tape over). Anyway, none of those things worked and I really really didn't want to have to bring it in to get professionally repaired. 

Luckily, our camera has a send port for memory sticks. So maybe we could just bypass the memory card altogether and use a memory stick. So we went to go buy one, and guess what??...the things are nearly obsolete now...you cannot find them in stores. Yes, all technology becomes obsolete within a 5 year period...nuts. Ok, so I ended up finding a memory stick and a universal reader on Amazon. 

I couldn't wait for them to arrive. Being camera-less for even couple days was killing me.

So...long story short...the memory stick shows up...and I snapped the above pic just as a test to see if it works...and YESSSSSSS!!...Back in business.

 I honestly figured I'd just delete the test pic, but then it got me thinking...Faces. I'm big into faces. We have lots of faces around here. LOTS! And we kinda just take for granted that we've got faces all over the house. So I figured we should share some of the faces we see every day. And it was also a good way to dive in a take a bunch of pics real quick after going through a four day camera withdrawal.

 The above vintage Bailey's teacups were a gift from my mom. I've had them for years, stacked just like this, but I'm thinking I may have to plant some succulents in them very soon! 

I love this lil gal on my vintage bottle of Schilling "Fancy Decors".

Virginia Dare has inspired us so much over the years! Love the colors and vibe! 

Fun fact: Virginia Dare was founded in Brooklyn, NY in 1835, and it is still there today.

This family peeking out from this vintage box of birthday candle holders.

I love this little gal because she is 50% good old fashioned cute, and 50% Children of the Damned creepy.

But this one is 100% plain ole' cute.

Here's one of my favorite pieces by Sarah Hand.

We've had "boy" for nearly 18 years! One of the very first antiques we bought together! He changes his hat sometimes, and wears a mask on Halloween when he feels like it.

This little guy is a great conversationalist. When he tells a story, you never lose the thread.

(Thanks, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.)

This dapper fellow. I think he's kinda Jake Gyllenhaal-ish. He's actually the face of a little tutorial we did that you can check out here: "Treat Yo Self Treat Cone" 

We have a handful of sweet faced pieces by our artist friend Crystal Sloane. 

Allie & Amy 

One of my favorite faces of all time..."Bunny Baby" has been with us forevs! 

And everyone loves Sir Kyle. 

And this gal is only known as "lil Jenny in the morning" for obvious reasons.

We have a bunch of fabric collages by Judy McCallum around the house. Many incorporate vintage and antique photos printed on fabric. We collected most of them between 2007-2008.

We have a number of Charlottes.

And good ole' Fanny Farmer.

This fellow hangs in the living room. Its really wild when Aaron is without glasses and hat and happens to be standing in the room near this guy. We found him over 15 yrs ago.

One of my favorite pieces by artist Danita. This one is from 2007. 

This hilarious guy hangs in our entry way along with a few other pieces by one of our favorite artists Lia Lane. I seriously cack up every time I look at his face inspecting his egg. 

Another fave piece from Lia. And her paintings look really awesome up close. They're covered in beeswax so there's lots of texture. 

I honestly snapped all of these pics in about 15 minutes and only covered three rooms of the house. There are so many more but this is the main cast of characters when I think of the faces that greet us in the morning, or as soon as we walk in the door...the familiar faces that are looking back at us all day every day.

Take a minute and look around...are you surrounded by faces? How many? We'd love to hear! 

Thanks again for reading! Be back soon!

xo Jenny...and Aaron

Meet "The Creep"

So, remember in my previous post how I mentioned that I nearly died over the piece Aaron was painting while I was working on my "Girls with Cake" painting the other day? Well, here's the painting he was working on!

 If you know me at all, you know that I am absolutely crazy for vintage stuffed bunny rabbits. I have been collecting them for years, and even though I have a lot…I'd say I don't have nearly enough. Some are still bright and candy colored, but most have faded with age and their pastel tones are perfection. The well loved and worn ones are my favorite. If you look around our home and studio you'll soon gather that they're sort of a mascot or trademark of ours. We've incorporated them into our artwork quite a bit, but I think this is the first time we dedicated an entire painting to a bunny. That's why we chose our fave bunny of all to model for this piece. He's our big and tall pink guy, affectionately named Creep. He earned the name Creep because we'd always set him up in a vignette with other bunnies or dolls, and because of his height we'd always prop him up in the back. Well, standing back there behind all of the smaller bunnies and dolls, with his staring red eye, I thought he looked like some big creep who was pretty much trying to photobomb the vignette. But I say it in a nice way. I love Creep.

Like I said…vintage bunnies are a big deal around here. This rolling cart holds one gathering of them in our living room.

And we make bunny artwork whenever we can! Our "bunny baby" die cut has been a collector favorite…and probably my all time fave die cut of ours. 

The die cut painting is based on one of my most prized possessions. This is the actual Bunny Baby.

And here's another Creep appearance. This here is a pin I made (and some rings) from our scrapbooking papers! The bunny was colored in with some washes of acrylic paint, mounted to chipboard, cut out, sealed, and then I added a pin to the back. And if you scroll way way down to the bottom of this blog where it says "Thank You so very much for visiting…" you will see him there as well! 

And yes…he even shows up on the cover of our book!

But I had been saying that we really needed to do more real deal paintings of our bunnies. So, while I was working on painting my girls the other day, Aaron started playing with some papers, and sketching out "The Creep" on this tall and skinny canvas.

He wanted to keep it on the loose side…and sorta give the painting the same time worn feel as Creep himself. Right here is the beginning stages with just the darks blocked in.

At this point my heart already started to beat faster! Sooo cute! 

I really just needed to see the eye and some color, and I knew how the painting would turn out. I snapped this pic and went back to work on my girls.

And in a little while he was all done! Here it is standing next to the real Creep. 

It's a deeper canvas, so the sides absolutely needed some color. You can't see a ton of it here, but he used a fun pink and cream polka dot patterned paper on the edges…and it is perfect!

We already got lots of emails and messages and comments asking if he is for sale. 

Well, he is in the shop now! We made prints and they look fantastic. It's mounted on a 1/2" thick wooden plaque and measures approximately 12" x 4". 

 I think this painting came out perfect, and Aaron is going to show me step by step how he did it, so that I can paint a bunch of my own as well. We've got bunnies in every shade of the vintage rainbow…aqua with pink ears…pale yellow with aqua ears…light pink with dark pink accents…

The painting possibilities are endless! 

And this got me thinking...how fun would it be to teach a vintage bunny mixed media painting class?! Maybe at a future Art Is You?! Or at a few small shops? I think it could be SO fun!

I had to share! I am just in love with it!

Anyone else collect these? 

Thanks for popping in! 

xo Jenny…and Aaron says hi!

Girls with Cake

Ahh being back home from our Art Is You trip has us filled with mixed emotions. We're missing our friends, missing the artsy energy and environment…just so many creative folks under one roof…you can take a walk to get some coffee and you'll pass rooms that are humming with art…anything from soldering, sewing, painting, sculpting…all in a 5 minute walk. We're missing getting and giving hugs all throughout the day, and seeing friends we have known for years online. 

But even though the event is over, the great energy is still with us. We're home, all of our stuff is unpacked, we're thrilled to be eating home cooked food, and work-wise we're back in the swing of things...and feeling more inspired than ever. Being at Art Is You reminds us to make more time for making personal artwork. We make art daily, but 95% of it is our WORK. Which, don't get me wrong, we love our work. But we need to make more of the art that speaks directly to our souls. Way more Art Journaling has to happen, and we have to take more time for fun and exploring new mediums and techniques. : )

Today while a bunch of orders dried, we did just that. I had started this canvas a long time ago and put it away. I had been meaning to pull it out and rework it, and finish it...and today that happened! 

Maybe my favorite detail is the simplest part…it has this fantastic crackle textured background. And of course it was loads of fun working on these sweet gals. 

And painting cakes is certainly on my list of favorite things. I love the texture on this one…it's my signature frosting technique...molding paste mixed with paint. 

I also love re-painting vintage wallpaper bits and cutting and pasting them into paintings. 

I shared some of the fantastic old photos I had purchased at Art Is You in my recap post. Well I had also picked up some vintage newspaper, which is perfect to use in our mixed media projects and art journals. We hadn't opened up the paper pack until today, and ohhh boy! This particular publication cracked us up. It's a 1975 edition of The Daily Express from the UK. And oh my gosh the headlines are insanity! All Doom and Gloom! 

And I heard from a UK friend that The Daily Express isn't any different today in 2014! ha!

Aaron got a big kick out of this article on the sports page. Apparently there was some controversy over some soccer players who were sore losers and kicked a hole in the door in the opposing team's locker room.

Well the gist of the story is that the team blamed a mouse for the hole in the door…saying that either the mouse chewed the hole, or possibly a player was scared of the mouse and tried to kick it but partially missed and ended up kicking a hole in the door. They said to be on the lookout for a limping Coventry mouse with broken feet or teeth. ha! 

We used some of the more subtle pages of the paper on the edges of our canvases. I love how old newspapers are so perfectly yellowed! 

And check out that corner of the canvas. This is what I call a "sweet spot". I love the distressed floral cluster, and the way the wash settles into the crackle…and I die for that faint aqua glow.

Here is my finished canvas. Don't these girls look sooo psyched about their cakes?! ha! Maybe they are in a sugar coma? I honestly love turn of the century portraits of children...they are rarely smiling. I find that so interesting.  

I really love how this piece turned out. I'm so glad that these girls are no longer on a shelf in the closet!  I'm really looking forward to painting lots more in this series. 

Wait until you see the piece Aaron worked on today!! It is sooo good! I nearly died! Ok not really… but almost. 

Hope your week is off to a great start! Thanks bunches for popping in! 

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi!