Holly Doodle Designs

I’ve listed a whole troop of dancing queens in my etsy tonight!  Aren’t these the cutest?  These are oversized nut cups that I’ve embellished.  So fun. My neices inspired these.

 Aren’t they darling?  I made 5 sets.  4 sets of 3 and 1 set of 2.  If you’d like your very own Ballerina Baskets, hop on over to my etsy and getcha some!

I’m going to have a big post in the next day or two of all the swappy goodness I’ve been treated to lately!  Whew!  Can’t wait to share.

XOXO

  

I have a bad habit of deciding things on the spur of the moment.  Actually, it’s not a really BAD habit.  Most of the time it’s a good quality.  I can decide something quickly, realizing that most decisions are a gut instinct, and most of them are not life & death.  But, occassionally, I regret a decision. So, I’m learning to let it rest for a while.  To let go of the control of deciding immediately.  To let an idea or thought grow a little before jumping in full force with a plan of action.

 This is hard for me.

I’m working on it.

Even in the tiniest of things, this has proven a wise decision!  This is a little painting I bought at the flea market a couple of weeks ago for $10.00.  I think it’s done with pastels as it’s a bit chaulky (sp?).

When I saw the painting, I was drawn to the awesome old blue paint in the frame.  I mean, TEN BUCKS?  Come on, great deal for the frame alone!  As soon as I saw it, though, I completely dismissed the amateur landscape and was replacing it in my mind with a painting I was planning to do of birds and a nest, or maybe a collage featuring my kids, but SOMETHING other than this painting.

So, I paid my $10, took it home, and sat it on top of the fridge.  A couple of days later, I took it down to start working on my painting.  My husband saw it and liked it.  I told him I didn’t want the painting, just the frame, and I was going to make something else for it.  He said, slightly annoyed, “why don’t you just hang it up as it is.  It looks good.  Just leave it alone”.  I was slightly offended.  Well, actually I was pretty aggravated.  Hmmpff.  It’s MY frame, I want to paint something for it, he should butt out!  Hmmppff.  Hmmm.  Well…I guess it’s not too bad….maybe I could….Hey it looks pretty cool over here on the mantle.

I really hate it when he’s right.  I mean, really do. not. like. it.

So, I let go of the control.  Let it rest on the mantle a few days.  And the thing grew on me.  Now I like it there and I’m happy with it.  For now, anyway.  Plus, now I don’t have another project on my huge list!

Do you have any stories like this?  I have so many.  Some are much bigger decisions like moving to a new town, building a house, and much more.  I guess I don’t know everything. Yet.

XOXO

Holly

I had the privelidge of being visited by my very sweet little nieces last night.  I think I’ve mentioned that all my girly maternal instinct is slathered upon them, since I’ve been blessed with only boys.  I’m sure that one day they’ll find this annoying, but for now they think it’s pretty “rockin awesome” as my son says.

So, anyhoo….I made them these little ballerina baskets.  These are really big oversized nut cups that I embellished with crepe paper, tulle, flowers and ballerina cupcake toppers.  I snipped the stands off and sheared off the backs of their skirts so they would lay flat against the cup.  My girls loved them.

I gotta give props to Andrea, who’s nut cups originally inspired me.  She used vintage jewelry instead of ballerinas, which I LOVE.  May have to make some like that for moi!

 

So….I joined Jenny’s fun Bits & Pieces Swap.  I was so happy to have the fabulous Jenny as my swappin partner.  The assignment was to take random bits and pieces of whatever was on hand, and incorporate them into 12 3×3 squares on a canvas.  We were to fill each square with the bits and pieces.  I cheated a bit.  I have some stuff centered on the top, but I HAVE to have SOMETHING centered!  I have a weird need for a focal and balance, but whatever.  It’s art, it can be whatever we want, right?

The idea was that the random pieces would come together to make a beautiful whole.  This got me a-thinkin.  Oh yeah, it got me.  I thought about those photo mosaics, you know….. the ones where they (whoever THEY is) take hundreds of photos based on color and incorporate them to make a picture of a building or a face or whateve.  It’s interesting to me how the pieces come together to make a whole in such a way that the photos themselves become insignifigant, they are just parts (bits & pieces!) of a whole.  I decided I did want my parts to be signifigant, that every square could stand on it’s own in some way, but I wanted them to have an overall image also.  SO, I went with a wreath type of an image and worked my collage pieces to give that impression. 

 

I also wanted a theme, so I went with a LOVE theme for Jenny and her main squeeze, Aaron.  I have incorporated pieces of their world….ballerina and bunny cupcake toppers (bonus…the bunny looks just like the vintage paper mache ones Jenny loves, expecially since I added the egg!).  I used colors that she suggested, mochas, tans, chocolate, PINK of course, and things she loves, rhinestones, old jewelry, pink bird cards, vintage wallpaper, millinery flowers, sheet music, glass glitter, and more.  I also put little love suggestions…..flowers of course, two love doves flying towards each other, a couple of little hearts, words that say “love”, “promises of love” “our lives” “dreams”, among other insinuations.  I tried to make every single thing I put in signifigant to their lives and love in some way. 

It was so much fun, I think I’ll do something like this for my family.  Here’s a larger picture of the finished project.  You can see bigger pictures on flickr.

 *I’m getting lots of requests wanting to know if I will make crowns special order.  Sure!  One like this would cost about $98.00.  If you would like one, please feel free to email me at holly@hollydoodledesigns.com.  Thanks so much for your interest!*

still so inspired by the movie Marie Antoinette

Here are some little glass glittered stars on wires I made.  They’re drying in my vintage crystal s&p shakers.  So cute!

the back:

close

i love pink.

 

I’ve been commissioned to do a custom tiara for sweet Rosanna all the way from Italy.  I’m still working on it, but here’s some sneak peeks just for fun.  Thought it was good timing since we’re in full swing on our swap! 

Hey gals, I’ve had some emails that some of your royal highnesses are having trouble finding the Flickr Group I set up for us.  There’s a link to it on my sidebar under “fun swaps” that looks like this:

If you are participating in the swap and haven’t already joined the Flickr group, come join the fun! Just ask to join and I’ll approve ya!  Only about half of our swappers have signed up.  But we already have tons of fun photos. 

Holly

I am so very blessed to be married to my sweet husband.  We got married WAY too young (I had JUST turned 22, he had just turned 23!), so we fought and wrestled our way through our twenties.  Trying to grow up with each other, rather than away from each other.  It was really hard!  We prayed and fought, and argued, and I cried a lot.  Looking back, it all seems so silly.  Isn’t that the way hindsight is?  It’s a great clarifier, isn’t it? 

In our 7th year of marriage, God blessed us with our first pregnancy.  We went from a self-centered existence to complete, overwhelming, unimaginable love for someone else!  This little bundle of softness and snuggles, warmth and cooing, and total dependency!  And, though we still had our difficult times, we were forever changed.  When I finally pushed that last painful push and our first son was born, my husband turned to me and said “we’re a family”.

A family.

My family.  I am so grateful that we stuck it out all that time.  So grateful that we never gave up.  So grateful that we waited to have children until we were older and further away from the tumultuous times of our early years together.

Our family is blessed.  We are blessed because Brian (my husband) is the father in this little family.  I’d like to honor him today and just list a few of the reasons why I am so in love with my sweet husband.

Last week, Brian VOLUNTEERED to work at the Vacation Bible School we did at church.  Yeah, volunteered.  He said he wanted his sons to know what a man really is.  A man is not embarrassed by his faith.  Brian said he wanted his sons to see him making God a priority.  This made me fall madly in love with him.  Madly, I tell you.

 My husband works tirelessly.  He honors, and is grateful for my desire to stay home to raise our little ones.  He is grateful that I work hard in the home for us, and he’s understanding of the times I don’t work so hard, or when the kids have been so crazy that the house is a disaster and we’re all a mess when he gets home.

He makes me picture frames from wonky old moulding pulled out of old dilapidated victorian houses.  He grumbles a bit, but he does it because he loves me.

Our children are madly in love with him.  They want to be just like their dad.  My husband works for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.  He’s not an agent, he is in charge of all the computer systems that store all of the criminal history for the state.  All of the state agencies and some federal agencies depend on these systems.  When I tried to explain what Daddy does to my son, he said “so, he helps the police catch the bad guys?”  So, now, every day when he gets home from work, my son says “how many bad guys did you catch today, Daddy?”.  I love this so much.

When I was pregnant with our first child, Brian was still in school for his Bachelors of Computer Science.  When we realized I was preggers, Brian, who was working full time at the OSBI, took 18 hours at night in one semester, on top of working full time, so that he could finish school before the baby was born.  He didn’t want to miss a minute.  I was 8 months pregnant at his graduation.

Both times that we were pregnant, Brian saved his vacation and sick leave all year so he could take off work for 6 weeks when the baby was born.  This way, I actually got to sleep a little.  Just a little.

My husband kisses the kids goodbye in the mornings, even though they’re usually asleep when he leaves.

There are so many other reasons why I’m grateful to be married and have children with my husband. 

Happy Father’s Day, honey.  I love you so much.

Ok, OK, OK.  I snapped some pictures of myself today.  Please don’t be too hard on me!  As I’m sure is true with most of you, I’m usually the person taking the pictures, not usually the subject of them.  But, I snapped a few while the little man was napping today.  They aren’t good, they’re silly, but at least you’ll get a look at me.

Here I am pretending to daydream. Workin’ it for the camera. so sad.

I’m just about to crack up here, something my kids were doing.

whatever.  moving on.

Jenny has been forewarned from me in an email, but if you missed it, Jenny, I’m about to post pictures of your crown. So, if you don’t want to see, then stop reading now!

 

Ok, so tonight I finished the crown for my second swappy partner, Jenny from Every Day is a Holiday.  If you know Jenny, and I’m SURE you do, then you know how fun and full of happiness and passion for art and color she is.  She just exudes it, ya know?  She has such a fun sense of style.  It would be impossible not to be happy in her cupcake world with the beautiful color pallette of pinks, aquas, a little sepia and brown, and maybe a dash of seafoam.  Jenny sent me some beautiful pictures for inspiration and here’s what I came up with, keeping my 40’s glamour girl Jenny in mind!

I made the little stars on a wire out of the chipboard from the back of a pad of paper!  hahaha…hey, use what ya got!  Waste not, want not!  A little german glass glitter is all they needed to be the STARS of the show (buh-dump-bump).  I had these strangely shaped vintage marque deep teel rhinestones, so I decided they’d make great little leaves for the tiny millinery flowers.  Jenny loves polka dots, so the flowers sit on stars covered in aqua polka dot paper and dusted with irridescent glitter.

I won’t bore you describing every detail, but overall I think it turned out really fun and pretty.  I wish I was going to Silver Bella for so many reasons, but wouldn’t it be fun to get a picture of Miss Cupcake wearing the crown?

OK, I’m off to clean my mess.  Or, maybe I should just leave it out and get started on Jenny’s Bits & Pieces swap?  Hmmm…..

Have a great day!

Holly