Flowers, Paintings and More!

These days my studio has been incredibly busy with me working on my final projects before I can finally be certified to teach Deco Clay! I can't believe how far I've come these past couple of months and how much I've grown in this art form. Some people think I'm crazy to spend time actually hand crafting each flower petal by petal to create an arrangement. It is something that takes a lot of patience and attention to detail, but I absolutely love it. I'll probably do a future post on the actual process of creating each flower.

My most recent project that I'm working on is a tall vase arrangement. Most of my arrangements have been pretty small so this will be the most challenging project yet and time consuming. I've decided to incorporate peonies, different color roses and hydrangeas. I've completed the flowers, but they have yet to be painted and attached to clay stems.

Almost every detail is made of clay including the stems which surprises a lot of people. I spent most of yesterday rolling them out one right after the other.

I also wanted to post some of my previous projects that I had worked on. One of the projects was a wreath that I had to create completely out of clay flowers. I had a lot of leftover from previous projects that didn't turn out quite well and decided to use them for this project since the actual flowers weren't the focal point. Around 50-60 flowers were used for this...crazy...I know!

Also, most recently, we celebrated my mother in law's 60th birthday and Bernie and I decided to give her thoughtful gifts that we created ourselves. My mother in law is actually an accomplished artist herself and she does beautiful watercolor paintings. I of course made her a clay floral arrangement and Bernie painted a portrait that turned out really well.

Bernie is an extremely talented artist and there's so much that I'm learning from him. He actually whipped up this painting in one night after work!

Artist turned Sous Chef for a Night

I have an amazing and talented friend Chef Julie Yoon who had a cooking class at my loft in the beginning of January.  Her photographer husband Joe Yoon took some beautiful photos of that night and graciously also took some pictures of my clay flowers.

I met Julie almost a half a year ago at church and we immediately connected as friends.  She's supported me as a friend through a very difficult time and has been an incredible supporter of my art.  Recently we've decided to partner businesses and that is why I'd like to feature her in my blog today.

She had a private cooking class at my home and it was in lieu of a bachelorette party for the lucky bride.  This was actually my first time witnessing her in action so to speak and I have to say that she is an excellent teacher and chef. No detail goes unnoticed and every morsel of food just melts in your mouth.  I was her "sous chef" that night...uh...well I pretended to be =)  I walked around acting like I knew how to chop and caramelize onions and whatever else needed to be done.  Luckily she asked Janice another friend of ours to help out that night or else I would have been completely lost!

If anyone in the Orange County area wants to take a cooking class, I would highly recommend her.  Her accolades speak for themselves.  She's worked with a lot of big name chefs on the Food Network while she was living in New York and now is trying to build a name for herself out here on the west coast.

Here are some pictures that Joe took of my clay flowers that served as decor. Thanks Joe!

If you've been following my blog, you probably recognize these arrangements from my previous posts.  Hopefully, I'll be able to post some more of my recent projects soon.  Have a great week!

Peonies, Peonies and Peonies!

I've been completely obsessed with making peonies. The more I study them, sketch them and finally make them, I come to increasingly love this flower more.

I'm just amazed at how God took the time to intricately design and make each petal and then place them together to create this beautiful masterpiece.  Before I started making flowers, I never took the time to really appreciate them.  Better yet, I never knew names of different flowers until a couple of months ago.  I didn't know the difference between a peony or a poppy.  Bernie actually loves to buy me flowers and when he would bring home an arrangement, I would just look back and admire them from a distance, but never really saw the depth of detail and beauty of each bloom.

Here's an arrangement that I made that incorporates some of my peony studies.  It's difficult to replicate the whimsical nature of a real peony, but I think I'm getting closer.  It's challenging to make each petal thin and lifelike with clay, but my motto is practice makes close to perfect!  The arrangement below consists of peonies, roses and a small gerber daisy all made from Deco clay.

I hope you have an amazing day and really soak in the beauty of God's creation all around you!

New Beginnings

After a month and a half hiatus, I have decided to revisit my very neglected blog with an update on how I've spent the first part of 2010.  I love New Year's because it's always an opportunity for a fresh start.  It's only been a couple of weeks, but already the year has been busy with new resolutions to accomplish and projects to complete!

My Debut at the Santiago Art Walk 

With our big move to the art district in Santa Ana, I've been preparing to open my art gallery to debut my own artwork, but the debut came earlier than I had anticipated.  One of our neighbors, who is also Bernie's coworker, offered his gallery to showcase my work this weekend since my own gallery was not ready.  I was hesitant because I felt I didn't have enough work to show, but my amazing and supportive husband wouldn't take no for an answer.

With one day to prepare, we both frantically spent the morning putting together arrangements for that evening's art walk.  I feel so lucky to have a professional artist for a husband because we were figuring out compositions, color and texture together.  We literally were working against to clock to have everything completed before the art walk was to start.

I was starting with nothing but my work.  No business cards, no company name, no logo... just a simple printout of a sign up sheet if people wanted more information about future purchases or classes.

As people would walk by my work, Bernie would whisper excitedly about how people were signing up or complimenting my pieces.  He would nudge me to go over, but I just couldn't get myself to look. Overall, I felt it was a successful yet humble beginning to my new venture into my career in art.

Here are some pictures that Bernie took of that night.

The center arrangement is actually a wedding bouquet that I just put into a silver vase.  I needed to be resourceful with so little time to prepare. 

I have a lot more pictures, but I think I'll save those for another post. Have a blessing week!

New Studio New Designs

I can't believe that it's been over a month since my last update! There's already the hustle and bustle of one of my favorite holidays of the year. I can already hear my favorite Christmas carols on the radio and I can see people have started to put out their holiday decorations. 

It's definitely been a very busy month!  My husband and I have moved to a new place and we've been hard at work trying to make this new place feel like home. I'm so excited to finally have my own studio to work on my pieces and I have definitely been hard at work now that I have the space. It's a huge improvement from my makeshift studio on our "dining" room table.

We've moved to an extremely creative neighborhood where majority of our neighbors are artists. We literally have an artwalk that goes through our loft community once a month and it's completely inspiring to see what my neighbors are creating and coming up with.  There are painters, floral designers, photographers, sculptors, you name it.  Hopefully, I'll be able to open my studio to the public sometime soon=)

Here are some of the most recent projects I've been working on. I didn't have too much creative flexibility because I was limited to my class project guidelines, but I'm happy with the results. 

This is an arrangement of hydrangeas, roses and orchids. I was experimenting with bolder colors because I've been playing it safe with my previous projects.

This is a purple themed arrangement that consists of a gerber daisy, peonies and poppies. I especially like how the gerber daisy turned out, but I definitely need to work on my peonies.

I absolutely am addicted to working with clay and as I'm creating these pieces I'm realizing more and more how amazing God's creation is. No matter how much I try to imitate his creation, God truly is the ultimate artist!

Wedding Arrangements

I've had weddings on my brain after coming back from one recently.

I made a gardenia hair pick for the bride as a gift, but I knew that it was her day and told her she did not have to wear it. However, she did! She wore it during the reception and looked absolutely beautiful. I have one decent picture of her wearing the hair flower, but it's hard to see it. They were such an amazing couple and it was such a blessing to see them get married.

After coming back from that wedding, I was more determined than ever to finish my first bridal bouquet all made of clay. I had decided to go with a yellow color palette. I had no idea how it would turn out, but I'm pretty happy with the final result. The bouquet consists of roses, peonies, poppy and stephanotis.

I also took a stab at making a corsage. That project didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but practice makes perfect. I'm going back to the drawing board and am going to start cranking out more flowers.

As I am spending each day making these, I'm learning more and more about how amazing God is to not only create all of these beautiful flowers, but that he took the time to mold and create us.  When I am thinking about each project, I have to carefully plan out which colors I want to use and which flowers I want to make.  I'm realizing how God also meticulously crafted every detail of who we are from our hair color to the unique size of our toes.

Now back to making more flowers=)

Practice Makes Perfect

I have literally been eating, breathing and sleeping clay and making flowers.  I wake up, go through my morning routine and then from morning to night spend my time studying each flower thoroughly, sketching it to make sure I understand the construction and then finally making it out of clay.

My stuff is sprawled all over our dining room which has now been claimed as my home studio.  I'll post up a picture soon so that you can literally see how awesome of a husband I have to be patient with me for taking over the place.

Recently, I've graduated from making roses and have been working on some new flowers.  My sister's good friend is getting married tomorrow and I thought it would be nice to give her a flower hairpiece to wear for her wedding.  I have made several failed attempts before I finally made this one.  It's not exactly the way that I wanted it to turn out, but I think it's pretty good for a beginner.

I recently found out that people pay $70-$100 just to use a real one on their wedding day and I just couldn't justify spending that much money on something that won't last.  A clay flower would be such a better alternative.  Now if only I knew how to make these three years ago when I first got married!

The next project that I'm working on is a mini bouquet for my class.  It's going to consist of an anemone, peony, roses and some stephanotis.  I thought pastels would be a safe color scheme so here some pictures of the flowers that I'll be putting together soon.  The gerber daisy is something that I wanted to practice.

I'll post up the stephanotis at a later time when I have all the stems attached to flowers. Have a great weekend!