Friday Favorites

Today was a great Valentine's Day...me and Aaron, as usual, were home, working together, doing a little decorating, cooking some risotto, baking some muffins, giving the chihuahuas tubbies, listening to music, watching our current favorite show after dinner...all the everyday stuff...and why should it be any different? We used to go out to eat on V Day, but then it got to be so stressful...too many other people out there doing the same thing. So we made it a day about cooking and relaxing at home. Overall, I like everything about Valentine's Day, especially that it's a day when pink and red sit side by side, center stage. I'm a highly visual girl after all. And speaking of visual...check out the perfectly stenciled wall above. So Fabulous! The colors and textures work so well together. So FUN! I need more rooms in my house. 

And I have been a fan of Fun Cult  forever! That amazing banner above is made by the same sweet gal who made the "forever" banner that hangs on our headboard. If you don't have one of your own yet...what are you waiting for?!!

I will always love paper crafting, and the simplicity and feel of paper decorations. I love the roses, sepia book pages, layered paper heart garland from La Mia Casa. It's just beautiful. And crafts like this should be kept in the highest regard. I so so appreciate the time and care put into precious things like this.

Do you want to make your own Royal icing sprinkles? Well, here's how! And they're not just for Valentine's Day! Imagine them in lots of lovely pastels. 

I wouldn't mind calling this Pink House my home. I feel like I'd have to return home with a package full of macarons each and every day. Why is it that I can picture exactly what my life would be if this was the doorway I came home to everyday?  

Yes, I'll take this couch and furball ottoman (if it's faux)...asap. Again, I can imagine a whole new life that revolves around the existence of these pieces. 

I'm so incredibly smitten with my Instagram friend Baby Dear's tattoos. I've seen so many tattoos that attempt to be sweet, but in the end they turn out harsh and odd looking. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Baby Dear's tattoos. She got them just right. Exactly as sweet as the elements that inspired them. Big kudos to her tattooer.

Perfect pink heart doilies for serving up sweet treats...or even for crafting, art journaling, or whatever you can think of. I'm a huge fan of these!

Lastly,  to say that these Italian Thumbprint Cookies are so up my alley is a gross understatement. I am a huge pistachio fan! Now mix the pistachio with vanilla bean, strawberry preserves, and white chocolate, and you've got yourself treasure for the tastebuds. I am totally making these! 

Ok, that's it for today. I'm so thrilled that you guys took the time to check out some of my faves on this lovey dovey Friday. Me and Aar send big love and hugs to you and yours!

xo, Jenny...and Aaron says hi!

"Sweethearts" Art Journal page (Inspired by Boardwalk Empire)

So I had mentioned that we just started watching Boardwalk Empire. And we are totally hooked. We are now on Season 3, and even though we are loving it, I have to admit that watching all the episodes in a row is kinda exhausting. We watch an episode every night before bed and I swear we both have had dreams involving aspects of the show. The characters are great. They perfectly walk the line between reality and caricature. There's also so much beautiful scenery, incredible costumes, sets, and decor. And at the same time there is no lack of insane violence and how shall I say??...."boobs galore"! 

But seriously, the show is currently etched into our brains.

Here are some Boardwalk Empire inspired things we've said throughout our days while working:

Jenny: "I wonder if there is a chihuahua out there named Nucky Thompson?"

Aaron: "I was on wikipedia and saw that in real life Arnold Rothstein dies in 1928. Do you think they'll take the show to 1928 so that we will see him die?" 

Jenny: "Seriously, Richard Harrow is an art journaler!?"

Aaron: "It makes sense that Richard Harrow is an art journaler...he's a tortured soul like the rest of us." 

Yes, Richard Harrow, the man with the hand painted lead mask covering half of his face. The result of a horrific war wound. And yes, we looked it up. The face plate is a perfectly accurate representation of what was worn by wounded WWI vets. So ok, Richard Harrow is the most likable cold blooded hit man that you'll ever come across. Because you know that he hates what he does, and you know that he'd do anything to help out the innocent and the meek. He's also a sentimentalist at heart and spends his free time pasting collages of happy family moments in his scrapbook. Yes, in 1920 this psycho killer was an art journaler.

I was thrilled to find pics of his pages on the HBO website. Which, believe it or not, were the inspiration behind our art journal page.

I'm also so incredibly in love with vintage photo booth photos. We've been collecting them for years, and we love the tinted versions. I thought it would be really fun to make our own! A little hand drawn couple, inspired by the show Boardwalk Empire...only without the murder, bootlegging, boobs, and corruption. 

So here we go with a little step by step of our page.

 Starting with a blank primed with Gesso page, we chose a stencil that had a very Deco era feel. 

Then we laid it on top of cardboard, taped it in place, and then we used Mister Huey's, which we sprayed in layers of colors, letting dry between each coat.

We used a blow dryer to speed up the drying time.

Now we've found that Mr. huey's over gesso "moves" when we apply washes, or gel medium or mod podge over it. We really don't mind it since it softens the lines a bit. But a trick to not blurring it too much is to try to not brush over an area too many times. We "sealed" it with gel medium, and when that was dry, we mixed a wash of water and acrylic paint, and gesso. We brushed the wash in select areas.

And then blotted it to soften it, and then we let it dry.

 We mixed black paint and water, and using a round brush we dipped into the black wash and then speckled the page with it. While that was drying we worked on our photo strip.

Aaron is master of cutesy retro faces. I did a rough sketch of what I was thinking and he totally knew exactly what I was going for. He sketched out a few "poses".

And then he gave the gal a beau. Kinda Richard Harrowesque.

Can you even handle the cuteness?? 

We love the feel of the tinted photo booth strips, so we added subtle color and shading. 

While the strip was drying we played around with layout and papers. We cut a "dummy" photo strip to stand in as a place holder while we were figuring out the layout.

When we found a layout that we liked we adhered some torn papers. Vintage wallpaper, sheet music, and stripes. Love the black mixed in.

We had this sweet little house photo envelope and thought it was perfect! Again, it reminded us of something from the show. The Commodore's mansion. An amazing house that becomes a place of ill repute. And this brass Sweetheart trinket seemed perfect. And this vintage black plastic photo slide frame fit perfectly.

We chose some key elements, like our roses cut from floral wallpaper. We adhered those and the house photo, some vintage envelopes with charming old timey handwriting and affixed stamps.

We then did an antiquing wash around the elements. Using a fine tip round brush dipped in water, we brushed the tip of a brown Gelato and then floated the wash around elements, and then blotted with a finger tip.

We then grabbed some chipboard hearts and painted them gold.

And added an antiquey wash using Gelatos to mimic the brass Sweetheart

We glued down the hearts, added more of our wash to areas. And then we added a

hand drawn scrollwork border with a sharpie fine tip marker. We designed the border to be in keeping with the era.

Then we added some stamps, and a saying. We knew we wanted to add more black to balance everything. And it adds a nice masculine touch.

I found this quote while searching for something fitting, and from the era. There were so many slang terms, and sayings from the 1920's but they were all too cartoony. We thought this classic phrase was perfect.  So we typed it up on a black background in PicMonkey, which we use for all of our day to day photo editing as well. Such an easy program to work with. I highly recommend it. 

So, that quote was then printed and we cut it to fit in the right spot. We really love the outcome of the page. It captured exactly what we were going for with Valentines Day looming...and our Boardwalk Empire addiction. And yes, our passion for the show is definitely enhanced by it's Jersey shore locale.

Hope you enjoyed our little step by step art journal page.

xo, Jenny...and Aaron

If you enjoyed this tutorial, you'd probably like our book! Get it here. 

I see a white wall and I want to paint it black

This week is off to a pretty busy start. We've got so many things going on at once, so why not throw one more thing on our plate? AmIright? 

And you know how it goes with painting...paint one thing and then everything else is crying out to be painted too. We are determined to get the kitchen/dining and living room finished by Spring. Of course there will always be little things to do...anything you love should be a work in progress. But we're aiming at getting the big stuff done...walls, moldings, floors, ceiling, lighting...that stuff. 

While going through a box this weekend I came across one of my old inspiration scrapbooks. Back from the days before Pinterest. It's not exactly an art journal but I would add paint to the pages, and sketch renderings of rooms if necessary. But mostly it's clippings and pasted-in ideas and vibes for rooms. This one above is probably from 2007 or 2008. Its funny to see that my style, color palette and overall vibe hasn't changed all that much. I always loved a great dose of black mixed in with my pastels. A lot like the ever present black and white tiled floor and fixtures in old timey candy shoppes. I had posted a few pics of what we've got cookin' in the kitchen on Instagram and I got some comments of surprise that me the pastel girl would go black! But in reality, black features pretty heavily in my life. 

I pretty much only wear black, and wear black nail polish most of the year. But then I have my pink hair so that my love of pastels is always with me. 

Maybe the first time we did black walls was in one of our early apartments, probably more than a dozen years ago, we painted a hallway black and then hand painted big pale pink cabbage roses all over like a fabric pattern. It was inspired by vintage barkcloth and my perennial favorite Betsey Johnson. To me it looked like the worlds most perfect wallpaper. 

Black just makes the pastel things prettier. This is a blast from the past...back when we had a furniture collection. This was a large half round table called Everything's Rosey. Maybe my favorite in the collection...and apparently a customer fave too. We made so many of these. My dad built them and we painted them. Tons of very technical work for everyone involved.  

We've also been using black for years in our various styles of menu boards.

We love the way black actually makes sweet things sweeter. When we paint this piece we always do the cakes and cupcakes in the foreground before adding the black background, and it's amazing how much the look of everything just changes the instant the black is added.

We've had chalkboard doors for a few years and love them. A great place for writing to-do lists. Oh and while I'm sharing the above pic, I figured I'd link to our tutorial for those who had recently asked where to buy the wallpaper. It is actually hand painted and we blogged a tutorial a while back. It really looks harder than it is. Seriously, once you've traced the motifs on the hand painting is really basic.

(source)

 This pic is definitely a big inspiration for our kitchen. I love the professional culinary feel of it. We love cooking and all of our utensils and containers are pretty much only stainless steel, wood, and glass.  

I love this styling. I love the natural feel of it. The textures, glass, cream crockery, wood spoons...and the way everything looks set against black is so classic.

So we picked up some black paint...it is indeed chalkboard paint. We love the matte black look...and if we feel like doing some doodling the option is always there!

We loved it as soon as we rolled it on! It is dramatic, classic, and modern all at the same time. A bit of masculine structure to balance the sweet accessories.

Sweet accessories such as these! The second the wall was semi-dry I slid the table back in place just so I could set up some of these sweet things in front. It just made me so happy! It totally works for us! And we are so so excited to finish the room! 

We are working on picking the paint for the rest of the kitchen. Something warm but not too dark. Not mocha, but not too yellow either. Its funny how choosing a pink or an aqua is so easy for us. We instinctively know exactly what we want, but neutrals are a bit more tricky. 

Another thing we are really looking forward to is hanging art work and unpacking some of our collections to finally display. We had an old cupboard that we had used in the bathroom that was begging to be upcycled. So it too got a coat of black and a neutral grey/tan inside. Then some slight distressing, and we're papering the back wall of it with one of our favorite vintage wallpapers. Again, we wanted to keep it neutral and antique...and let our sweet pastel collections speak for themselves.  

So here we are...chipping away while working on orders and other projects. Of course we wish it could happen overnight or at least over a weekend...but that's life. We're looking forward to sharing the ongoing progress with you guys!

Thanks for popping in!

xo Jenny...and Aaron says hi!