DIY Pistachio Shell Mosaic Craft

I have an easy DIY craft project for you today using something that would normally be thrown away.

How can one be creative, and eat pistachio nuts and not hoard those cute little shells for a mosaic craft project!? (Unless you don't eat nuts that is...)

You will need:

-Plywood or masonite panel in your choice of size
-Tile adhesive (I used a premixed indoor adhesive)
-Pistachio shells
-Acrylic paint
-Acrylic gloss sealer/varnish

Start by spreading your adhesive over your wooden panel. I love this part, it's so like icing a cake :)

Press the shells into the adhesive. You can go totally random or do flower or spiral shapes if you like. Let dry fully.

Once dry you can start painting the shells in colours of your choice using acrylic paints.

Add any interesting paint effects like spots, stripes or variations of colour. Keep these colours bright so they will contrast with the darker colour we will add later. (They kind of remind me of easter eggs!)

Once you've painted all of your shells, coat in acrylic gloss and let dry overnight. (You want the gloss to be fully cured as we will be wiping it back and we don't want it to shift.)

For my pretend "grout" colour, I made a runny mix of deep purple paint, and painted it over the surface and then wiped the shells back with a just-damp cloth. Rinse your cloth out when it gets too dirty.

Use the deep purple paint to do any touch ups to your "grout" with a fine brush.

I made a little wooden frame for my pistachio shell mosaic craft, but you can display as is if you want!

I hope you enjoyed this DIY craft!

Jules :)

25 Flowers for The 100 Day Project

Hello Creatives!

I recently committed to the 100 day project. It's an art project that challenges you to do creative for 100 days. I chose to paint or draw 100 flowers, and although the challenge has passed it's 100 days for this year, I am still doing the 100 flowers, just not as an every day thing.

The challenges I faced when I started this is I officially have Art- Attention- Deficit- Disorder (ha) and sometimes I would sit down to paint a flower and find that I've all of a sudden started a new painting. Not necessarily a bad thing but sticking to the plan would be better...

Also, announcing on social media that that is what I was doing committed me to show every flower I drew, when usually I do not share everything I do as an artist. I pick and choose what I share. I don't share every failed drawing, that's for sure! I didn't think of that before I started!

On the positive it challenged me to do regular entries in my sketch book, a practise I should aim to be doing as an artist. But as a busy Mum and running my own creative biz, I juggle many balls and sometimes I drop some (or all!) of them.

Enough chit chat! Here are the first 25 flowers in no particular order:

This last one is a pattern made from some of the flowers already shown

So, there you have it, 25 of the first flowers completed by either drawing or painting (with acrylic paints), and there's a quick digital one in there too.

I hope you enjoyed the show!

Jules :)

Studio Wall Mural

I have a new wall mural in my new studio!

We recently did some room shuffling in our house, and I moved studios. The room is slightly bigger with more storage than my last studio, but with all my stuff in there it looks small again! Oh well. I have plans that when my kids are all grown up and moved out I will take over so many rooms. 

Imagine that! A designated room for each area of my work.. a sewing room, a clay room, a computer room, a painting room. One can dream, ha!

I'll share some finished photos of the whole studio soon, but for now I'm showing this one corner. (I really need to clean the rest of the studio and I'd like to buy an outdoor rug to save the floor from a bit of paint.)

Here are some of the progress shots of the wall mural in progress:

I used a mix of student grade acrylics and house paint sample pots from the local hardware store. 

And some more photos of the finished wall mural:

The pre exisiting-shelves are handy to keep artworks-in-progress on, little creations and collectables.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this part of my new studio! I had a lot of fun painting this new mural.

Jules :)