Backyard Boutique

I'd never heard of these before a few weeks ago, but apparently "Backyard Boutiques" are wildly popular in Arizona! A friend of mine just threw the first Backyard Boutique this little town has seen and it was a BLAST! A large group of us were organized to design and sell neat crafts, and there were all sorts of hand-sewn baby gear, potholders, binky-holders, headbands, hair clips, bows, scarves, jewelry, painted ceramics, shoes, geo-boards, baked goods, orders for hand-built furniture, and more. We had a good turn out and it was SO MUCH FUN to see the awesome talents these sweet ladies have!

After changing my mind 10,000 times, I decided to make paintings with inspirational quotes. Here are a few, and while I sold 3, I have several orders for custom artwork. I wasn't sure how they would do, and knew I wouldn't match many people's decor, but these worked well for samples and people could then give me their color schemes. I am really excited to start these custom paintings! It is wonderful to get back into painting, although very different than what I am used to doing.

Enough chatter, here are the paintings.


They started off simple...

As I got more comfortable with my trials and errors and got better with the process I made up, I got a little more daring...

And then decided to try my hand at an actual painting...haven't done this in years, and I don't think these pictures give it justice. I really like the way it turned out in real life

And all together it makes for a nice giant painting that several people are interested in and are getting back to me in a few days on whether they want it

This one is spoken for, just waiting to hear her color scheme to paint the words (P.S. I love you)

Here's my booth between the women selling bags by Thiry-one (I think that's the company's name, I can't remember) and the man selling custom furniture...of which he is pricing a piece of furniture we want but doesn't actually exists (he does beautiful work!)

I'm excited for when she hosts another one of these! And if anyone who stumbles across these are interested in a custom painting (these are 16"x20") leave me a comment and I'd be happy to work with you! The prices are these are about $30, and $35 for the more complicated ones. The giant one is $175.

I also designed some toddler church activities that the kids who have played with really like, so I will post about those later when I have more examples. All in all it's been a wonderful few weeks getting my creative juices flowing again!