Jen Bowles Design

Friday Happy Spot

There's a spot in our breakfast area/family room that makes me smile whenever I look at it.  Yep, I pretty  much just love everything about it--not that's there's much to it.

Well here, let me show you...

Can you see it?  It's the shelf vignette just past the chandelier.

That's the spot.

When we revamped this area last fall, I decided it would be the perfect landing place for one of my recently displaced Ikea shelves.  I take great pride in noting that I installed the brackets and shelf all by myself-- with the help of a drill and a level.  And it's still there ☺.

Although there are only three things up there, they are 3 of my favorites.  And they were all cheap.

I love, love this painting.

  The colors.  Swoon.  I bought it at the Tri-Town Rotary flea market for $1. Yes, $1 orignal art.  Cannot. go. wrong.

This milk bottle collage print is from the Pottery Barn Outlet in Gaffney, SC.  $9.99. 

Considering I first saw it (and instantly coveted it) in 2004 at The Island Cow restaurant on Sanibel Island as part of their wall decor, I was thrilled to find it and make it mine.

The newest item, though I'm sure it's really the oldest thing up there, is the whelk shell. 

I broke my own rule and *gasp* bought it last year when we went to the Outer Banks.  I made the exception because the owner of the shop where I bought it assured me that he had personally found a whole big bunch of whelk shells on the beach in Corolla after a big storm the previous winter.  At $3, totally worth it.

So there it is: my $14 happy spot. 

Priceless.

Have a great weekend!

 

First Day of Spring!

Hope it's a beauty where you are!

St. Patrick's Day sign

It was a wonderfully warm and sunny day here in coastal Massachusetts--which means Spring Fever is on!  Before I go full-on Spring and Easter decorating though, I have one more St. Patrick's Day project to share ☺.

Fittingly, this St. Patrick's Day sign is "green", as in eco-friendly. For the base of the sign I used an old game box, Scrabble I think.  I had to cut three pieces because the box alone wasn't long enough and we were all out of extra large pizza boxes in the recycling bin.  I taped everything together and then glued on old book pages.  After the glue dried, I painted a wash of spring green paint to the book pages.

The lettering was originally going to be glittery but I didn't have the patience.  Instead I used a combination of green paint and green Sharpie. 

I wanted to do something a little bit different than shamrocks, thus the rainbow.

You can't have a rainbow without a pot of gold, right?  I outlined the coins with a gold glitter pen to help them stand out.

And there you have it, a green, eco-friendly decoration for St. Patrick's Day! 

Thanks for stopping by,

Blooming and Painting

The first time I got up on Sunday morning it was a  3:40am.  Why?  To drop Ebby & a friend off at the gas station where she met another friend and her mom.  Why?  To drive 45 minutes to the Natick Mall.  Why?  New Direction, their favorite band, was doing a CD signing and only the first 600 people in line got a wristband to get into the signing.  They waited in line outside for 3 hours and then inside for another 6 hours...and they did it.  They met the "boys", got autographs , gave them handmade trinkets and exchanged a few words and eye contact.
Ebby declared it the best day of her life.

Meanwhile, I went home and sort of fell back to sleep for a couple of hours.  By 8:45 I was on the road.  I picked up a couple of my painting buddies and drove to my cousin Penny's house for our Bloom True painting group.

There's lots of eye candy at Penny's house... Snowdrops in a Lark Rodrgues vase

Very cool black and white lamp & shade

Penny and her daughter Audrey are quite the talented tandem.

Stained glass window handmade by Pen

Amazing oil painting by Audrey

Collection of hearts displayed on a stone shelf on the stone fireplace

After our house tour, we set up our painting space. I used the fish-eye lens on my OlloClip to get this shot

We watched a few of Flora's lessons, browsed the Bloom True Flickr group, and oh...we painted☺.

Some of Penny's paintings, in various stages:

Here's Lynn, hard at work:

Lynn had 5 canvases with her and she gave one to my mom to work on.  Here's the result:
Pretty cool!

Here are a few shots of my canvases:


I was feeling ok about my canvases when we packed up on Sunday, but now that I've been looking at them at home for a couple of days, I'm not so sure.  It's all good though because 1. we're using acrylic paints (very forgiving) and 2. this class is about so much more than the painting.

I can't believe we're in the final week of the Bloom True class.  Hopefully our little painting group will continue to get together.  I'm sure sure we will since my mom is already talking about doing studio tours in June and I think we should have some sort of gallery opening to share our finished paintings this Spring.

On the way home we thought we might fit in a stop at Russell's Garden Center before meeting up with the girls. Alas it was not to be this trip.  Instead we picked up four very happy, very thirsty teenage girls.

Yep, a pretty good day for all.

Anthropologie Inspired Berry Basket Storage

I don't visit Anthropologie very often.  In fact the last time was in November when Ebby and I were in NYC.  I'm still enjoying (in photos) the visual feast that was the Rockefeller Center store. 

There's very little at Anthro that I don't love, but there's also very little at Anthro that's in my budget.  However, the kitchen section is my weakness.  Great colors, fun & functional pieces, and relatively affordable prices.  One of my recent favorites is this Farmer's Market Basket ($14, comes in 4 different colors) :

As much as I loved it, I wasn't about to lug a breakable ceramic basket around Manhattan, no matter how small it is.  Maybe next time.  In the meantime,  I do have a stack of these:
Yep, wooden berry baskets.  Picked up by my dad at the swap pile no less.  You just never know what you're going to find at the dump--luckily I have people on the lookout on my behalf ☺. 

These little baskets have been begging for some crafty attention and this week I finally obliged...

Ooooh, aaaah, behold the transformed polka dot wooden berry basket!

I used the cheapest (thinnest) craft paint ever and didn't gesso, so it took 3 coats.  No big deal, the basket is pretty small.  When the final coat was dry I couldn't resist adding the white polka dots.
I pretty much declared it adorable at this point.  However, my studio table is cluttered enough so this basket needed some function.  It's obviously not food safe, but it is paper safe..Hello, stash of Martha Stewart labels from Staples.
I bought 5 or 6 different kinds.  I just noticed there's a $5 off $20 MS Home Office printable coupon on the Staples website valid in-store thru 3/3~I could've used that when I shopped a few weeks ago...
I do have a whole stack of free storage baskets...maybe I should stock up on a few more Martha office supplies.  Hmmm...

Thanks for stopping by,

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