Grand Opening of Rooms Adorned

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Lori Crane

The countdown begins!

facebookprofile As if I don’t have enough to do between working a day job, playing music on the weekends, and writing novels, I’ve decided to open an Etsy Shop. I’ve created all of the artwork in every house I’ve owned for years and years. I’ve painted, quilted, tiled, and carved my way through a half dozen houses in two states. I enjoy doing it, but I’ve run out of space in my house, unless I want to change from Country Chic to something else. My trophy husband might kill me. We bought our current house Dec 2016 and I’ve already remodeled the kitchen twice. It’s not my fault. I didn’t like it the first time.

So, to save my marriage, I have decided to open an Etsy Shop. I love creating one-of-a-kind art, and I hope other’s enjoy it in their homes as much as I enjoy making it. None of the items are vinyl cut-outs; they’re all handmade, hand painted.

My shop, Rooms Adorned, is opening April 1st! Please take a look at all the stuff and pass it around. Hashtag it, share it, copy it, paste it. Thank you for your support.

Below are some items that’ll be available at the grand opening. There are also some more photos if you click here.

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Rooms Adorned Etsy Shop Coming Soon

Posted on February 27, 2018 by Lori Crane

facebookprofile If you haven’t noticed, I pretty much took the entire year off from blogging and writing in 2017. I moved into a new home December 2016 and spent the year working on the house and getting the garden going.

In the meantime, I’ve also been working on two books and started a new “day job” with a national manufacturing company. Even though I’ve been busy, I’m still always looking for the next “thing.”

So, here it is…

I’ve always created all the artwork for every house I’ve ever lived in. I’ve painted, sponged, stenciled, tiled, and grouted my way around two states. Since I’ve been working on this new house, I realized I’m making more than I have room for, and I really enjoy creating it, so I decided to start selling my work on Etsy. My new shop is called Rooms Adorned. Make room for HAPPY! Everything is handmade. Everything is one-of-a-kind.

The grand opening will be April 1st! Rooms Adorned

Below are a couple items that will be in the shop at the grand opening. Mark it on your calendar, and please stop by. April 1st! Bookmark the store Rooms Adorned.

I’ll post another blog before the grand opening and show you the inside of my art studio and lots more cute stuff!

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My Family Tree Held Together with Tape

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Lori Crane

I’ve been talking for years and years about painting a cool family tree in my house and putting family member’s pictures on it. I’ve researched trees, both stick-on vinyl types and painted ones. I’ve looked at wallpaper. I’ve investigated some artists. I’ve counted the number of ancestors I have pictures of and realized it needs to be a pretty big tree and will cost an arm and a leg to buy that many frames. I also realized that that many frames probably won’t fit on one wall. And for clarity, the pictures probably need to be all different sizes. I don’t know how to make this look good.

Planning how to put it together, I couldn’t make heads or tails of how to display the pictures. Mom’s family on one side and dad’s on the other? That’s logical. But we’re not just talking immediate family. I want to put most of the pictures I have, and that goes back to my 4th greats, not to mention the paintings of my family in the 1600s in England. Do I put grandparents lower and greats higher and so on? What if I have more on mom’s side than dad’s side? Also, I’m from Mississippi, so some of mom’s side intertwines with some of dad’s side. LOL.

After a whole year of staring at the blank wall in my office, one day I just grabbed a quart of paint, a handful of paintbrushes, and started painting.

tree 1 The tree is about a foot wide at the bottom, so I started with a big, fat paint brush and some really scary black paint. I aimed for the middle of the wall, fighting with the corner of my desk that was too heavy for me to move. Next, I grabbed the next size smaller brush and started painting random branches. This is the point where my trophy husband came home from work, walked into the office, stared at the wall for a minute, shook his head, and walked out. Yeah, I know it doesn’t look that great, but just wait! I’m an artist. You have to trust me. Then again, he’s been here before. Poor guy.

tree 2 Step two. I used a smaller paint brush to extend the branches and then another smaller one. Starting to look like a tree, no? A little skimpy, but still, a tree! It’s going to need to be a lot bigger than this for all my pictures. I’m thinking of taking it all the way to the ceiling and as wide as it’ll go.

tree 3 Step three. I used even smaller brushes. The tree’s getting bigger. Of course I’m climbing across my desk and standing on a chair to reach this high, so I have to keep getting down and backing up to make sure it’s symmetrical. I don’t want it perfect, but I do want it to at least look like a healthy tree. My knees may be getting a little tired. Trophy husband’s also asking about dinner. Umm, I’m in the middle, you’ll have to order a pizza. Poor guy. But in my defense, he already knew we were having pizza when he came home and saw the beginning of the tree.

tree 4 Step four is a smaller brush and a smaller brush. Need. More. Branches. My arm is getting tired now.

tree 5 Step five is the smallest brush I could find, like one of those out of a paint-by-number box. I’m not sure the branches go as small as I want, but my next step would be to use a Sharpie. I don’t think trophy husband would approve, and I’m not sure you can re-paint over a Sharpie. Sounds like that might be a problem if this thing doesn’t turn out.

I stared at it for a while, wondering if I should make it even bigger, maybe take it across the ceiling. For art, that would be cool, but for a family tree, I don’t know how I’d put pictures up there. I decided to stick with the wall.

tree 6 Step six. The next day, I randomly taped pictures to the wall to figure out how I wanted to display the photos I have. It’s kind of looking cool just doing it randomly.

tree finished Step seven. After living with it for a couple days, I decided to stay random. I also decided to not frame anything. I like the freedom to add and move the pictures as needed. I used two rolls of cellophane tape.

So, there it is.

My family tree.

Painted by hand and held together with tape. That seems fairly philosophical.

There are over 9000 people in my family tree. Thankfully, most of them weren’t photographed.

Strange Family Trees

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Lori Crane

As an amateur genealogist and family grave hunter, I find family trees fascinating. Most are trees of real people that I could stare at for hours and hours, after all, that’s what people like me do.

There are other trees, though. Trees that are created by artists and people with larger imaginations than mine. For the last few days, I’ve been enamored by some of these trees. My favorite, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is the Genealogy of the Supermarket by astounding artist Nina Katchadourian.

Miss Katchadourian has managed to take all the supermarket icons we’ve grown to know and love and combine them into one large family. I wasn’t able to find a list of who’s who, but I recognized a few. One of the Brawny Paper Towel guys (there are two) is married to Mr. Clean, and they have adopted the Gerber Baby. Jolly Green Giant is married to the Land O’ Lakes butter Indian maiden, and the Argo Corn Starch lady is their child. Little Debbie is sister to the Charmin Baby. By far, my favorite is the Quaker from Quaker Oats who is married to Aunt Jemima. Seeing as it was the Quakers who were the first abolitionists, I find that hilarious. His son by another wife is Chef Boyardee. Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima are siblings. Samuel Adams and the St Paulie Girl are married and are the parents of the Brawny boys. I guess if you’re going to spill all that beer, you need some paper towels to wipe it up. I did recognize the Gorton Fisherman, but I’d have to see the work in person to recognize any others.

This tree is absolutely brilliant!

Another tree that has caught my attention is the Star Wars Family Tree by Joe Stone. I really enjoyed the last Star Wars movie and how all the characters connected.

It sure does get your brain spinning. How about a tree of TV sitcom characters? Or a tree of your favorite fictional characters? Or a tree of characters in songs? “Black Betty had a child, bam-a-lam” “She called his child Jesus” If you didn’t get that, those are lines from “Black Betty” and “Levon.”

I’d love to put some time into creating an unusual tree, but I need to work on my real tree.

Quilting. What was I thinking?

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Lori Crane

IMG_20150908_180218183_HDR When I was a young girl, my paternal great grandmother made me this quilt. When I was at her house, I noticed her sewing in the evening while watching television. It was done completely by hand. It never occurred to me that she was sewing it for me.

At the age of fifty, I still have the quilt and I treasure it. At some point, she made me a second one, and my maternal grandmother, who was a professional seamstress made me a third. I should probably pass them down to my children, but I can’t bear to part with them.

I have long been an artist. I make music professionally. I write novels professionally. I’ve made all of the artwork in my home, from paintings to rugs to throw pillows. Well, I was bored and decided to take on the time-consuming project of making a quilt. What was I thinking??

quilt pieces It started with cutting out 680 pieces. Sigh. That took a couple weeks. Then, fortunately, I had house guests, so I put it all in a box and ignored it for a couple weeks.

When I pulled it back out, I began making pinwheels for the center of the blocks. Twenty pinwheels seemed daunting, but using a sewing machine, (not sewing by hand, you silly rabbit!) the pieces came together fairly quickly, but still….there was twenty of them.

Now, I had to cut these square pinwheels and turn them into octagons. Not owning a special ruler or being able to find one at JoAnn Fabrics, I spent hours figuring out how to do this. After I had a total meltdown, my husband quietly worked on the computer constructing a template for me. In the meantime, I found a video on Youtube showing an easy way to turn a square into an octagon. When I cut one in two seconds and showed him, he was awestruck by the simplicity. “Well, if you want to do it like that,” he said sarcastically.

The original pinwheels were 7” squares, and after I turned them into octagons, I needed to sew corners on them, making them 6.5” squares. At the time, I was thinking this was some kind of cruel joke, but as the pinwheel got new corners, it began to change shape. It looked like a cross. Weird illusion.

star Next, I started working on the star points. They were time consuming, but they came together easily. The octagon/square was placed in the middle of the star points. Notice in this photo, the octagon still looks like a cross, and the completed square has two star points pointing up. Well, that’s also an illusion and won’t look like that for long.

I was supposed to cut these completed squares into large circles, but as with cutting octagons, that was just too much work. So instead, I sewed together frames, sewed them onto the completed squares, lining up the seams with each star point and creating a whole new angle on the original square. I flipped it over and trimmed off the excess corners on the square. That was so much quicker than trying to cut a perfect circle, hoping I didn’t cut it too small. From the wrong side of the quilt, it’s pretty sloppy, but from the right side, you can’t tell, and it saved me tons of time and probably a half bottle of whiskey.

one finished square Since the octagon and the star points shifted with adding the frame, you can see in the finished square that the cross is gone and the star only has one point sticking up. This whole quilt is one big illusion.