Uncorked Canvas!

 A couple weeks ago my friend Starr sent out a message asking if anyone wanted to go with her to one of those painting classes that are popular now. Logan's mom Jen has gone a couple times so I've seen her work and thought it would be fun. It was only $35 for all the supplies and a glass of wine....hence the name Uncorked Canvas!

Starr and I were the first to arrive from our group. Two of Starr's friends from church came as well. 

We claimed our spots right in the middle of the room and then got suited up in our aprons. 

The instructor was very helpful and made sure she explained things in a step by step fashion and she was always open to questions. Our first step was to paint the whole canvas this nice light yellow. 

Then we painted the bottom shading part. I wasn't happy with mine and ended up changing the color a bit later. I thought this looked to flesh colored. Then we did the sun which was really frustrating to get the blending of the colors right. 

Starr hard at work! All of our pallets looked like this after the first 5 minutes. I could have probably gone through 3 plates of paint with how much mixing of colors I was doing to get just the right orange or yellow. Kaitlyn the instructor was always happy to get us more paint if we needed it. 

Here is where I added more orange to help the bottom not look so fleshy! 

The we went onto the tree trunk....SCARY! This was black paint so it was definitely not going to be easy if we messed up. We just took it slow and built upon it little by little. 

Kaitlyn encouraged us to not just copy the original but to add our own spin by putting in curls and branches where ever we thought they needed to go. 

After the main branches and curls we added smaller curls and then tiny leaves. We thankfully did the leaves with a Sharpie marker! We were using a small paint brush for the branches and I was still haven't a hard time making things tiny so we were all happy to hear about the Sharpies for the leaves. 

Then came the swirls of color. The original swirls were layered with light orange on the outside, green and light green next and then dark orange right in the middle. I was making this for Ella's room so I chose to use pink instead of green. You might also notice the difference in the sun from the picture above and the one before that. I just wasn't happy with the way it wasn't nicely blended together. I asked Kaitlyn to help so she talked me though how to do a paint wash with a really light yellow to help diffuse the colors. I was SO much more happy with it after this! 

After learning how to do the wash I went ahead and did a little bit to the bottom orange that I still wasn't too thrilled with. It helped the color not looks so harsh. 

The original painting had two birds in it. I wasn't brave enough to put a bird in my. I did practice drawing one and it just ended up looking like Perry the Platypus! Some of the people were so daring and did cats, another lady did a swing coming off her tree and there was a young girl in the class that turned hers into a spooky theme with ghosts and grave markers. It was very cool!

All done!

Here was our group of the ladies...Emily, Kelly, Starr and me! It was so much fun...I even put my name on a list to get a punch card. There is a painting of the Seahawks symbol coming up in March. I was thinking I might do that one for the boys. 

I didn't get home until almost 10pm so Ella didn't get to see it until the next morning. She was so happy about her painting. Jack can't wait until I do one for their room. 

Michael took down one of the IKEA wooden frames that has a little mirror in the middle and hung the picture up right there. It looks so cute in her room! If you are thinking about doing this it was so much fun! You should definitely give it a try!