Painting Crystals

It is a rainy Monday morning in Umbria.  Yes I have a cappuccino by my side, do you? I love the rain, to me it always magical.  The Italians are funny because they will sometimes have their umbrellas up even when it isn’t raining.  For this Northern California girl it has to be really raining for me to put up an umbrella or even carry one.  Now I know to look out my window not to see if the umbrellas are up but to look on the river and see if there are needle-point circles in the water.  Then it is raining.

 

the crystals I wired on with a flexible thin gage wire

I’m really excited about this post because a while back I had a great idea.  I thought why not paint with colored glass paint the crystals that go on chandeliers.

In the past I had tried to use glass paint and I found it really hard to work with but that was when I was painting kiln loads full of pottery and the kiln makes everything look so amazing that glass paint seemed pathetic.

Now that I’m painting furniture and walls, glass paint seems just like another fun alternative.  Plus I’m all about process and learning new techniques.

I'll show you some before shots now.

here it it before straight from the junk store

candelabra painted white already better

On crystals I suggest a thin layer with a soft brush that does not show too much brush stroke.  Then if you want to let it dry a few hours you can do another layer.

 

here they are before flash photo

I painted only one side of the crystal, this was all that was needed to show the color effect.

painting crystals
glass paint comes in many colors go to your art store

I absolutely love brown with a warm color.  I think it is so hip.

I like the idea of doing an amber brown color with this white chandelier. 

sorry I don't have the photo of it installed yet

painted crystals on chandelier

I wish you all a good start to your week.  I hope it is raining wherever you are in the world.  Remember every week do something creative that fills your soul up rain or shine.

plus the holidays are coming!

XO

Natalie

I'm linking with:

Between Naps on the Porch

Modern Vintage Life

Romantic Home

French Country Cottage
Shabby Nest

First Anniversary

Happy 1^st Anniversary Sette Design Blog

I started this Diario di Design a year ago today and I remember that it had snowed on the mountains around the city that we live in here in Umbria and I thought I’m going to write about the color white, just delve in Nat, you can do it.  I took the plunge and now here we are a year later.  I am so thrilled you are here too.

one candle in sette design studio

I want to Thank You for hanging around and taking part in the fun and inspiration that I hope is Sette Design.

oh the possibilities

It was so pretty, I had to put in my macho work boot.

I love it that we have a little-BIG creative community around the world and around the corner.  Everyone is full of positivity and joy and encouragement, it is quite astounding.

love wins

in my studio

I made a wish for Sette Design. 

 

happy birthday sette design blog
homemade cinnamon, sugar oat bread Yumm

A few dreams-goals:

I want to complete the E-course I am creating on painting techniques and creativity.  It is going to be so gorgeous with little films, and photos and stories and ideas.

I want to organize a Furniture Painting and Art Class here in Umbria, Italy that you can come to.  Imagine learning Venetian Stucco and Frescos painted as motif on furniture or panels, taught easily as process and technique so that anyone can do it.  Then going to find a cafe to sit in and have a cappuccino.

AND

I want to encourage you all to go after your dreams, to stop and pause and figure out what those dreams are.  Right now start some project that you want to do and if you just can’t possibly start it now.  Then pull out a notepad and write down what it is you have in mind to do.  Then you will have already begun it by writing it down.  It’s in the works!  It is that simple.

HAPPY One Year!

Let’s go for 2.  It is going to be an adventure.

Cheers,

Natalie

Painted Pear Box

Happy November first, can you believe it!

Here we go with the pears again.  This time I am going to try to let the photos speak for themselves.

You can see where I took my creative influence.

A silver bowl and some luscious pears.

natural pear stippling - heaven

simple life- still life,
a book, sage and pears in a silver bowl

Then I thought I would try to copy the finish of the pears on this box, simple as that.

Acrylic paint, some silver leaf and some stippling in dark brown with a tiny brush.

I like the irregularly applied silver leaf
on the box closure hardware

It somehow humored my heart to paint this project.  Later I gave it as a birthday present for a 9 year old friend, filled it with candies and gave the pear too, wrapped separately.  It is funny to give someone a pear as a birthday present, they never expect it!  It is good to throw them off, especially those tricky friends.  I am sure you have some tricky friends.  Did a whole hoard of them cross your mind just now with yourself leading the pack?

painted pear box

It is fun to look around and find your inspiration anywhere.  I would love to do the bathroom walls or a laundry room, some small space stippled like a pear.

With affection,
Natalie

I'm linking with:

French Country Cottage
Romantic Home
Between Naps on the Porch

Eye Candy

Eye Candy - The Simple Life

I think Eye Candy is supposed to refer to looking at yummy boyz, or girls, whatever your desire, yet for us freakers in the world of design eye candy can be so much more.  Do you find you walk around in a daze sometimes feasting your eyes on the small details of life? This is what I love about this simple life I am trying to live and enjoy here in Umbria and the world, the eye candy is everywhere.

Hot pink azaleas with moss green velvet yum!  The crystal vase is really a wall sconce that I turned into a vase.  I love it with the silver leaf table.

silver leaf and azaelas

Some days the eye candy just jumps out at me.

who doesn't love pink columns and cobblestones

This gray-green is the bee's knees.

this side mirror is beyond fabulous
1964 Ford in Foligno, Italy... strange culture
time warp

If this table and stools were mine, I would like to move them inside put felt all over the bottom to not scrape the floors and then make velvet cushions in slate blue to go on each stool.

way cool as your dinning room table

Sometimes the rain makes the colors richer in the darkened skies.

Umbria in the fog

And the fog and mist makes life mysterious and romantic.

 

I love going to work by train

Is there anything better then a red bicycle?

A surprise birthday candle for a friend?

Remember to slow down and enjoy your own eye candy -whatever it may be or wherever you might find it, that is the simple life embraced.

Cheers,

Natalie

Create a Kitchen Garden

The Simple Life

Happy Weekend!

I’m eating popcorn, writing to you and waiting for clients to arrive to my studio and pick up come gorgeous chandeliers that I painted very carefully for hours and then went crazy working on all the missing crystals attaching them in the right place.

windowsill herb garden

Today I want to show you my kitchen garden.  O.k. it is just a windowsill but it feels like a garden to me (serious city girl) and makes me ridiculously happy about life.  I love to use fresh herbs while cooking.

I labeled the herbs with popsicle sticks,
so the girls can help me cook

I like that I can come home from a trip or a long work day and if there is nothing in the house, except flour, yeast and olive oil.  I can always make rosemary pizza or onion pizza – man is that good with the onions sautéed first.  I should get onions for the balcony next year.

I also like to move the herb pots around and used them to make things look pretty.

mint and a stack of books-gorgeous

I put Basil in the bathroom to make it smell nice.

basil in tea cups

And I put candles and sprigs of Rosemary in my studio to absorb the paint smell.

make a wish

Does it make you want a kitchen garden a little bit?  Or do you already have impressive fields of flowers, herbs and fruit trees? 

Cheers,

Natalie

I'm linking with:

Between Naps on the Porch

The Shabby Creek Cottage

Romantic Home

French Country Cottage

Autumn Pears

I love pears.  I love to eat them, paint them, photograph them and just look at them.  They are womanly, delicious and imperfect in their beauty.   It is Autumn here in Umbria the mornings are cold and the days warm, sometimes the fog creeps in low on the river.  I'm drinking more tea.  Buying lots of apples to make apple pie and then eating them before I can get around to making the dough.

I got my quotes about pears from this site http://www.healthdiaries.com

“I warrant they would whip me with their fine wits till I were a crest-fallen as a dried pear.”  -Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.  If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in the revolution.  All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.”  Mao Tse-Tung

“Eating pears cleans the teeth.”  -Korean proverb

“Plant pears for your heirs.” -English proverb

“A pear will never fall into a closed mouth.” - Italian proverb

Of course the Italian proverb is about eating (not sex or soccer shocker!)

“Don’t shake the tree when the pears fall off themselves.”  -Slovakian proverb

“You should go to a pear- tree for pears, not to an elm.”  -Publius Syrus (42 B.C.)

Segue  --but it seems amazing that one could eat a pear in 42 B.C.  They have been around forever!

Here is another SEGUE "they" analyzed with a computer the painting the Last Supper  by Leonardo da Vinci and they found out the (American) portion sizes of meals have become something like 72% larger (this is my memory stating here), but the size of the bread portion is only 22% larger then it was at the time of the painting of the Last Supper, which would be 1495-1498, yet imagine that Leonardo put his own perspective on meal size 1462 years after the time of the scene in the painting.  So in 42 B.C. the whole meal was probably a pear or much smaller then a pear.  Pears were probably smaller. O.k. Natalie stop.

pears and roses

And now a quote from my man…

“A man watches his pear –tree day after day, impatient to the ripening of the fruit.  Let him attempt to force the process, and  he may spoil both fruit and tree.  But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!”  -Abraham Lincoln

Back in time when I lived in the California Wine Country I painted lots of pears on ceramics.  Kilns make everything look painterly and pretty.  This design was very Autumnal. You can’t really paint a pear wrong because they are so irregular and misshapen, yet graceful and delicate, feminine.

it's very wine country

This is not the first time I have written about pears.  I did so before the first month this blog began you can read about it.  Here is the Link on Pears, just silliness really.  It won't be the last time either because I soon will do a post where I painted a box to look like a pear, not the form, the finish, that is kind of silliness too.

Until later - a dopo,

Natalie