Stained Glass Painted Church Bench

For the last day of Sunday school, I was trying to come with something unique to do with the kids.  I had seen this cute bench sitting outside a Wal-mart and it was all painted with cute butterflies and flowers and looked as though kids designed it. I was only driving by, so I didn't have time to stop and study it further, but I thought that it would make a great end-of-the-year project for our kids at church to do.  We have a talented congregation and one of our members made a very nice bench. From there I primed and painted the bench.

 I had my handsome husband cut boards about the size of 3x8x1". I primed and painted them with paint too. Just regular white interior/exterior house paint.

Then at church, I had the kids decoupage pieces of colorful tissue paper onto their boards. They cut out their shapes first to make sure they fit, then they painted (with cheap foam brushes) Mod Podge over the boards and put their tissue paper shapes on top. Then painted another coat of Mod Podge over it again.

Using a blow dryer to quicken the drying process, the kids then painted over the lines where the different colors overlapped or lined up next to each other. Similar to stained glass windows. We used regular acrylic black paint and cosmetic (pointed-tip) Q-tips to paint on the lines. Easy and cheap and super simple to clean up. I don't have a photo of them painting the lines but you can see how it looked as we set them out to dry in the sun.

One of the kids had outlined her board in black and I liked that look. It helped define the separate boards from each other...so I secretly painted each of the boards edges so they would all look consistent with each other. Then I painted a few coats of Clear Painters Touch Indoor/Outdoor paint by Rust-OLeum over them to help seal out any water. I know these won't last forever, but it will be fun to make new boards next year with a new design on each. I also had each child put their initials on top so that they could easily recognize their work of art!

Then my husband helped screw the boards onto the back support of the bench and viola! It looks very nice and welcoming sitting by the doors of our church.

Art Journal Cover

My husband laughs at me because I can never leave anything untouched by art. He says everything that has a blank surface has to be touched by me like a fairy using her wand to magically turn anything boring into something unique. And so, he is right. I can't leave the cover of my art journal alone. It is ugly. It needed a facelift. It was brown and boring. So, I used my magic wand and transformed it into something much more pleasing to see sitting around the house.!! What do you think? Do you just have to alter every blank surface you see? My kitchen table is next and then the mailbox!!!

Art Journal page

This makes me happy. A colorful page in my art journal that is full of life and texture and color!

Christy Tomlinson Art

 I saw the little picture above on  Christy Tomlinson's blog. Although there weren't any other photos of it to study from...I loved the idea and decided to create something similar in my art journal. Mine has a little more dimension and chunk and one of my favorite sayings "Fine Out Who You Are And Do It On Purpose."

I just love the three dimensional form the rolled paper and flowers take. I love chunky artwork.

The butterflies were made from a technique I learned in the on-lline class I took called "The Art of Wild Abandonment". In the class we learned how to paint on parchment paper using different techniques and then cutting our paintings into shapes. The class sample was flowers in a vase. I did butterflies.

Altered Owl

This was a fun project to work on. I'd do a little every night for the past month. I saw this idea on a facebook group that I belong too and I'm not sure if the original was a kit or hand pieced together or what the size was. Mine is about 18" by 22". A nice artwork for my wall. He will watch over me while I work away in my studio!