A mixture of emotions- but mostly joy.

Today I sold another painting!!! Happy happy joy joy. Each time it happens I feel a mixture of emotions. I am elated to have someone interested in purchasing an art piece but a little sad to see the piece leave. Each art piece is marking a time and place in thought and process of where I was. My artwork on bicycles simply take me back to each joyful bike ride we took as a kids with no particular place to be. When we just enjoyed being able to travel and explore. You know the rides with the wind in your hair, as your riding down the road in a skirt and sunshine on your face. Watching the wheels go round and round taking you on an adventure.

Today's bike painting is called "Blue Bike 3- Racing Delight". It is a acrylic painting of a whimsical blue road bike with a orange ballon attached to its seat. This painting was sold to a fellow San Diego artist, Nancy Plank.

This woman, Nancy, paints in the same art building that I do in San Diego art department. She happened to be passing by my work one day as I was painting away. And little did she know my head was filled with doubtful about what I was doing and why I was painting bikes. She walks offer and simply said to me. "I really love your work." And even her letter she wrote that my paintings were magnificent and that I am gifted artist...... who doesn't like to hear such great things. Knowing that the artwork will be so appreciated and loved by someone else and to see the new owner's enthusiasm is absolutely contagious and immediately the sadness disappears and excitement takes way.  

Blue Bike 3- Racing Delight by Vanessa Hofmann

It is actually very good that this painting was sold. Since it gives me more room to hang other work in our recently remodeled home. In a future post- I will take about hanging artwork and our latest steps in designing our interiors.

Pick your artwork before you buy that sofa....

Sofa- red, yellow, tan, black or white? Leather, corduroy, linen, wool.... Sofas come in so many choices in colors and fabrics.

As I am creating an art piece for our living room, which is composed of three separate canvases, I am surrounded by all our belongings.  Some of which are still in boxes in the house and in the garage. This home has recently been combined- all of my stuff and my husband's for the first time. We have many duplicates of several items. So as we pick through what items will remain to reflect a new combined style for us. Each piece brings elements of our own personality and combining them in the interior design is establishing a uniquely different look for us and honestly still a little ecletic. But I have the ability to create artwork that can combine the elements in the room together- it is like a super power in some way. Saving our room from disorder. Ok, I am just getting silly now. As I began this process, I began thinking about non-artists and how if you pick the art piece last it could be daunting to find the art piece to match your current selection of decor. So I began to think, why not pick the art piece first for a room? 

I am not saying it is impossible by any means, just requires a little more legwork when you are trying to buy an art piece. Sofas are abundant; they are everywhere. You watch tv there is an advertisement for sofas stores. They are in magazines and online. Now good artwork and good artists that fit your budget, and style needs are lot more difficult to find. Once you do find some artists really examine their work. How does it make you feel? Do you just love it? What does the piece say to you? Do you want to continue to look at or do you need to look away? Where is your eye drawn to in the piece?

Also keep in mind, you can request for an artist to create something custom for your home. But make sure you find similar looking styles and colors with in their body of work that has already been created. Don't expect the artist to create drastic changes from their existing body of work. They might try something drastic and they you might not love it either. 

Here is Phase 1 of this piece. I haven't created a series pieces or anything this large before. I have always seriously worked small. Even as a child in school, I would write in this teeny tiny print. So I am amazed that this is not intimidating but really fun. 

I am working with a light shade of lavender on the walls of this room. For color- think light gray and light purple blended together. I had actually started painting this in the art studio and was pleasantly surprised to see the colors matched the room. Once I am done I will share the finished piece with you. 

Feel free to share your sofa shopping stories, or combining household tips. 

Art- as the accent piece.

After only having moved all our belongings in this weekend, I am contemplating decorating of the interior space. The walls and ceiling are freshly painted in the living room, among many other changes throughout the house. The furniture is being arranged and rearranged, but the walls remain bare. We are taking this time to learn to live in our new home. Right now, I am focusing on getting the living room working. My theory is, some order is needed when you are surrounded by confused and unorganized state (of stacks of cardboard boxes filled with your possessions that you just got back from storage after almost a year) you should have one place that is ordered, even it is small space within a space. So we are focusing on one room- the living room. Now you might be wondering why I am not selecting another room like say the bedroom? Well, the bedroom floors aren't quite 100% yet so all the furniture is about a foot from the wall. It is livable at the moment but not ideal and that is an entirely different story.

Here is the before view of this room and the entrance to the house in this short video clip. As I watch this video again and again I keep noticing different things. The accent wall I want to add art to is a bold red wall in the before photos.

Here is 'in progress' shot of the living room's accent wall with its primed walls and a sample of the lavender painted on it. The plastic draping the wall is for protection when they were removing the popcorn ceiling. 

Here is an 'after' shot- showing the very light lavender color and brown toned wood floors. The wall I  will start with is what you see immediately when you enter the home. I want to do an eye catching art piece here, something really large but I not have any really large canvases at the moment and heck they are cumbersome if I want to take it to art class, nor do I have the free space in my garage while it is in progress.  So I am planning to do 2 or 3 24x48 size canvases and hang them all together. I haven't painted anything this large and never had to match it to a room, before so it feels a little daunting.

Today I found inspiration in the photo below, from a blog I read. This photo has a colorful mix of furniture, and motley of style of decorative elements along with the art piece it is a pleasing combination. The silver/ pewter mirror balances the some of the color found in the art piece and creating a harmonious room. My intent is to find a balance similar to this that will compliment our existing stained wood furniture and our existing decorative pieces.  

So besides blog- I find inspiration in this great group of women I paint with every thursday. One of the artists, Ann Golumbuk, I paint with has always painted art work for house. She says this way she gets a chance to enjoy it before it sells. And I absolutely love her work, and her joyful way of living- she is inspiring. She is one of the many people who inspire me. Here is a look at some of her pieces and a link to her website.

I am going to take a photo of her more recent work that isn't found on her website yet- it is really quite fun. She actually took first place in a local art show. Here is her website: http://anngolumbuk.com/


Another artist, I paint with is, Jan Lord. She is this wonderful, kind hearted Canadian who is very talented. Her work that I am currently interested in has these warm and wonderful beiges and with this sketchy images from arrows to fish in them. The sketchy images remind me of drawings found in caves. Here is one of her recent pieces that took 2nd place in the same local art show. http://janlord.net/  Jan is also on pinterist as well. http://pinterest.com/janlord/artsy/

I will keep you posted on the art piece that is created for this wall. I might even do a video on its creation. I just have to let the painting take me where it wants to go.

Colors choices- getting down to the finally selections

So we have paint selected for the walls and we are doing stained concrete in the bedrooms for modern look. We just want to pick one color of stain for the floors. Here is the palette of floors colors we are choosing from today.

Patrick is traveling in Canada on business, so I am emailing him images of the floor samples and paint samples on the walls to make a decision for the final combination. It is definitely different working with a partner to select finishes. This is new for both of us. 

Our floor has gotten filthy, this week, with the sheetrock from removing the popcorn ceiling and adding some mud to the ceiling to create a smoother texture. Now our concrete floors look more white than gray. We have 5 shades of color to choose from. These stains are translucent so you will see some of the marks through the stain. Marks that will be seen are patching from the nails holes, swirly pattern of glue, cracks and what have you. 

So tomorrow the concrete guys come back and sand down the concrete floors a bit to clean the surface and prep for staining. Things are really going to get messy. The shade of color I think we want to go with is the dark brown above, it is the darkest shade. It has a slightly purple undertone to it. A few of the other colors had too much of a yellow tone to them. Which are fine but were not going to work with the more blue green color we have selected for the middle bedroom- we are going to dilute the intensity of this color for this room. And the light blue shade is for our master bedroom which will also have the brown concrete stained floors. The plastic bag in the photos is masking our ceiling fan since the ceilings were being redone. By monday we should have the walls painted!!!

This weekend we get to have a little demolition party on a brick wall and some landscaping outside back bedroom. It was the one with the train shelf in it. We are installing a new sliding door to the patio in it. The doors arrive next week, so in preparation we need to prepare by removing an ugly brick planter. I have never demolished a brick wall before so this should prove interesting. I am frankly not sure we have the right tools for the job. Can a sledge hammer and crow bar work? Or do we need concrete saws, jack hammer and heavy equipment to get the job done? We shall see on Saturday morning. Aren't you just looking forward to the weekend? 

We are making a little progress.....

Here are some photos from the second bathroom in the house.
The first shot is the in progress shot (below), wall are primed waiting for paint.

The next shot is from today. We have the walls painted a nice shade of yellow. We picked this shade to tone down the green tile in the bath tub.

More photos will be posted tomorrow, I need to go meet the concrete stain floor guy in a few minutes to see what that is going to look like in the bedrooms. I think we are just getting anxiously to finally move into our home. Which we are planning on doing this coming Wednesday- so we have lots of little things to finish up prior to that date. 

ok, here are some not so pretty photos

Here is a brief video of one of the bedrooms in the home. It shows the nasty, smelly carpet and all the 'accents' that came with the home when we purchased it.

Here are photos for those of you who can't view the video. These photos are from one of our three bedrooms. It is the back bedroom that borders the backyard. Eventually it will be a master bedroom for us. 

Anyway, what you will see is really dated, worn, goldfish colored carpet. It was so worn when we removed the padding, the padding was seriously adhered to the concrete floor. 

Working our way from ceiling to floor, it is a popcorn ceiling and then you start by seeing this 'lovely' blue border. It was 1/4" particle board with blue wall paper that was attached to the wall to add a scene to the brown shelf just below it where a train ran around the room. 

Yes, I know what you are thinking. Oh how cute for a little boys room. No, this was the office and not a child's room in the house. What you will also notice is a few other things. 1. Lots of random cables and wires running every which way. 2. Two strange pieces of balsa wood attached to the door (covered up a hole by previous owner- this was their 'fix'). 3. Access doors to plumbing- it is the little door on the left hand side. 

Here is the other wall- which got even better. I know your thinking- really it gets better?!

The photo above is contains an eclectic color palate with pink curtains, velvet green wall paper, the blue scenery, mirrored wall, with groovy green lights. 

 Here is a photo from two days ago- trying to remove the wall paper. It looks a ton brighter in this room with out the brown train shelf. And the carpet and security bars on the windows are gone. Removing the security bars turned out to be quite the hassle. They are installed with one way screws. So you need a special tool to remove them. We didn't like the look and frankly I would have died in a fire if I had to get out a window with these devices. There is a safety release but could never get it to work for me. We are thinking about doing stained concrete but can't decide on the finished look. Let me know if you anyone has any advice on stained concrete.

Next week I will show more in progress photos......... To Be Continued!

We got keys today on our house!

Projects are starting tomorrow. Oh, and as a little advice. Prior to starting any projects on your house, highly advise not to get yourself injured. I took a little spill on my bike while riding with a group last weekend. I think in the doctor's visit- I was asked, "are you trying to get out of moving and our construction project?" As if it was that easy......

We decided to work on the space we will use the most- the inside. Our plan is to remove the window and door bars from the outside. Scrap up the smelly old carpets, have a cleaning crew disinfect the place as it stinks like dog.

Then in about a week, repaint. Repaint the inside something calm and soothing. We are looking at gray tones with blues mixed in. The current colors are dark green and reds- it is simply too much for the size of the space. It has a dark cavernous feeling, so we hope to change that by adding some more light and using brighter lighter shades of subdued color.


Love the light blue color in this room, but our floors are darker. Eventually they will be a stained concrete.



This is the color of the floor in our living and kitchen space- imagine the walls a light blue gray shade.