Painting Again

I closed The Framed Frog down in December, but I have still done the occasional frame or art piece for friends and family. While I was visiting my brother Tom and his family for Jack's memorial service, I promised my nieces that I would paint each of them personalized frames.

It only took me two months to finish them! The older girls had specific themes and colors that they wanted on their frames, and I just picked fun colors and themes for the younger ones:

and of course I made a special frame for Jack's memory:

it's been a while, but it was nice to pick up the paints and brushes again without the pressure and stress of short deadlines. Hope my sweet nieces enjoy their colorful frames!

Farewell to the Frog

So when did I post last? November?

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that life has been busy and crazy around here. I don't claim any special circumstances that make my life any busier or more hectic than any of you. All of us have unique challenges that make life . . . interesting.

Ahem. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I was sitting on the couch in our living room. The time was 3:30 am, and another episode of "In Plain Sight" droned on on the TV. I was wearily putting the finishing touches on yet another custom name train, with a stack of orders piled up next to me that had to be completed and shipped out before Christmas. It wasn't the first time that week that I had stayed up that late to work on some Etsy shop orders. In fact, it had happened EVERY night for two weeks! Insanity was starting to set in. . .

That night (or morning, or whatever time of day it was), I realized something. I didn't enjoy it anymore. The whole reason I had started up The Framed Frog in the first place was to give me a chance to do something I loved and make a little money in the process. Now I sat there, hating the stupid train on the table in front of me and feeling like I was going to scream if I had to paint one more stripe or one more polka dot. Something had to give! Family time, housework, church ministry, my husband - everything was suffering as I plodded through each custom order.

After a lot of prayer and discussion with the Nerd, I decided to close The Framed Frog indefinitely. I am moving on to a new chapter in my life now. My life is full now with school activities, Davey's therapy, church ministry, taking care of my family, and taking care of my home. The Framed Frog provided a creative outlet that I no longer need, at least not now anyway. I still plan on doing the occasional custom piece for friends and family, but the shop is closed.

It is with a sense of relief ( and a clean house!) that I write this post. Earlier this morning, I played several rounds of "Uno Moo" with the Beast and the Spud without worrying about when I was going to get an order completed. After I pick up my daughter from school later, we are going to sit down and plan out her birthday party coming up in a few weeks. I have "fullness of joy" and feel content.

And, best of all, I will be able to get back into the whole blogging thing. It looks like I'll be playing "catch-up" for a while to record all of our holidays goings-ons and to read all my favorite blogs. I am looking forward to the challenge!

Cyber Monday Sale

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and holiday weekend. Despite an impacted wisdom tooth, I enjoyed my Thanksgiving and of course Black Friday shopping. :)

Today is the big shopping day - online at least! Lots of stores are offering free shipping or good discounts on this Cyber Monday. I am joining in on the fun with my shop The Framed Frog. Today you can purchase anything in the shop for 25% off! This includes custom and personalized items, which make unique Christmas gifts. Here's just a preview of what's on sale:

Custom name trains are fantastic gifts for children and make great keepsakes for years to come. I just had a customer take advantage of this sale and purchase two $40 trains for $60 total! I have never discounted my trains this much. :)

Lots of unique art pieces are available and ready to ship. This "I Love Portland" art piece is only $30 with the sale and doubles as a memo board. I can do a similar piece to represent any city you like.

Don't settle for a generic Welcome sign or wall plaque. You can get unique signs customized to your family's interests and color schemes. This is a custom sock monkey portrait sign in which I paint each family member as a sock monkey while showcasing each personality with their interests - only $15 with the discount!

Wall letters are fantastic for nurseries and kids rooms, but they can also be perfect in a living room or dining space when painted in elegant damask or stripe patterns. Shown are my wooden wall letters, but I also offer paper mache letters as a durable, lightweight alternative. Wood letters are just $7.50 each with the discount; and paper mache letters are $6.75 with the discount.

It couldn't be The Framed Frog without photo frames! I have done dozens of custom frames to match nurseries, kids rooms, living rooms, etc., and also offer some ready-to-ship frames in my shop. At just $11.25, these make great gifts for teachers, bosses, grandparents, etc.

When you purchase a custom memo board from The Framed Frog, you get to choose the fabric, ribbons, and fasteners so that it will perfectly match your living space. A 16x20 board is just $18 with the sale today!

Horatio the owl has gone to decorate a little girl's room, and many other custom art options are available in the shop. When custom nursery art is ordered, I do sketches for the customer until they are satisfied, and then paint the art piece or set of art pieces. A 12x12 custom painting is just $15.

Hurry and order today! Not only will you be taking advantage of a great sale, but you will be able to get these custom items well in time for Christmas!

Froggy Feature Friday #2

It's time again for a little show and tell from the creative lily pad! My art desk in the corner of the living room is covered with custom projects in progress for the Christmas season. Last week, I posted some pictures of vintage ring bearer and flower girl frames for wedding attendant gifts. This week has to do with a wedding also.

The wedding is going to be a simple nature theme - the ring bearer will be carrying a pillow made of moss, the invitations show the bride and groom's initials "carved into a tree", etc. The groom-to-be loves trains; so she wanted to showcase that with a custom name train painted to match the wedding's theme. I have never done a train for a wedding before; it was a challenge to make it simple and sophisticated at the same time.

I decided to go with patterns from nature for each train piece - the veins of a leaf, wood grain, ferns, pine cones, moss, river rocks, and a dandelion blowing in the breeze.

The edges of each train piece were painted in a creamy vanilla with scattered green leaves, and the wheels were painted to look like cut tree stumps.

Overall, I love the way it turned out. The bride-to-be hopes that someday they will have a little boy to play with the train. :)

Custom name trains make perfect Christmas gifts, and there is still time to order yours to receive it in time for the holidays. Check out all the themes and colors available at The Framed Frog.

(and don't forget, savvy shoppers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming! There will be a fantastic sale at The Framed Frog - buy any item and get a second item of equal or lesser value 50% off! Also, select items will have free shipping!)

Happy Friday everyone!

Froggy Feature Friday #1

As most of you know, I own an etsy shop called The Framed Frog in which I sell my customized nursery artwork, photo frames, memo boards, custom name trains, wall art, and signs. I realized that although my blog is mainly about my family and the crazy mishaps we find ourselves in on a regular basis, I need to include more about my other passion - my art.

So every Friday, I am going to feature something that either I made for a customer or something new for the shop. Every artist likes to show off a little, right? :)

So here's a set of custom frames I did for a bride to give as gifts to her ring bearers and flower girls. These have actually been quite popular this fall - I guess brides are attracted to the vintage children silhouettes and the custom wedding color matching.

This bride's evening wedding is featuring bold red, black, and white as the color scheme. With two ring bearers and two flower girls, she wanted to make sure that each child had a unique frame.

This was the first time I have done frames for flower girls; so I came up with the silhouettes of a dancing little girl, a toy tea set, a girl chasing balloons, and a rocking horse for the frames.

On the other hand, I have done many ring bearer frames, and the drummer boy, sailboat, tricycle, and boy chasing a ball are pretty popular.

It's nice to think that each child now has a special keepsake from the wedding that will last for a long time.

Play Time

Lots of thoughts are swirling around in my head, but those thought-provoking posts will just have to wait! It's a gorgeous day out there, and we don't want to miss it! Time to play!

Please don't forget about Found It! Friday tomorrow! The theme is STARS, and I would love for you to participate. Please please please!

Summer: Splashing, Slides, Sailing, Spoons, School Shopping

Three cheers for a fun summer! It has finally arrived here in Oregon - it made its very late appearance in early July. We don't mind the heat because now we are finally getting to all our summer activities! It has been a bit of a challenge with our schedules - the Nerd was out of town all last week, VBS is all this week, and the Drama Queen and I will be headed up to Canada for two weeks in August.

Still, there was time for the Drama Queen and the Beast to take their very first ride on a paddleboat. I am not sure what was more exciting to them - the actual ride or getting to wear a lifevest.

I did not trust the Spud to stay in his seat on the paddleboat; but he amused himself for quite a while with a partially-deflated ball and wading pool. The kid is so crazy he was doing belly-flops into the pool and laughing hysterically!

Our friends ( the cool ones with the pond and paddleboat and big backyard) set up a homemade slip'n'slide complete with little inner tubes and dish soap to make the kiddies (and some grown-ups, ahem) slide faster. The Drama Queen daintily danced her way down the slide on her tippy toes each time. Perhaps she missed the point, but hey, she had a great time!

And who needs expensive plastic toys when a couple of spoons and some food cans will entertain the little hooligans? Traditionally, the kiddos have beat their little hearts out on pots and pans, but to save Momma's sanity, I persuaded them that the coffee can and the oatmeal can were just as fun. As apparently they were, for the kiddos spent over an hour playing their "drums". (Note: Make sure you are using empty cans or at the very least, firmly secure the lids with tape. Mischievous children will be sure to open the cans and distribute their contents liberally. )

And while I have been getting my fair share of the sun too, I have mostly been spending my time on The Framed Frog orders, paperwork for the Beast, and planning for VBS puppet theater.

That, and waiting eagerly by the phone on Friday because my baby sister ( in Canada) had her first baby! Little Delaney Hope is so beautiful, and my sister is already an amazing mom. I am so excited to go see her in August and monopolize the baby. :)

Also, the Drama Queen and I have already been hitting the stores for back-to-school shopping - getting uniform shirts and a lunch box at Old Navy and crayons and glue at Target. (giddy with school excitement!)

Exciting times! And speaking of exciting times, I now need to rally the troops and make a trip to the post office. It will be epic, I'm sure....

For Your Viewing Pleasure

After a 2-hour-long appointment with the ESD folks yesterday and a pile of confusing and sobering paperwork to attend to, I am completely overwhelmed. Perhaps the emotions and seriousness of David's diagnosis are starting to sink in. I have a post written up all about it, but I guess I'm just not ready to put it out there yet.

So instead, you can see what lovely things have been traveling from my place to Canada, California, Mississippi, and Ohio lately.

A fun race car themed name train - I had full control over the design and colors. This customer is fantastic - it's the third time she has ordered a train from me! :)

another name train - this one in a construction theme, specifically to match the Little Dozer nursery bedding set. I love doing stripes, and these blue/brown/white ones are so sweet!

a custom memo board done in a tiffany-blue floral fabric with black ribbon and sparkly silver fasteners. It's going in a dorm room where the mom has already made bedspread and bed skirts to match. Lucky girl!

Pink ladybug letters - these will be standing on the table at Kayla's first birthday party, so the design is actually continued on both sides of the letters. I think pink ladybugs is a super cute theme for a first birthday party, don't you?

14 more custom orders to go so I can catch up! Yikes!

Giveaway! woot! woot!

Exciting news folks! My All Around the Mulberry Bush Wall Initial is being featured at 3 Garnets and 2 Sapphires! After you read all the extremely nice things Karen writes about my work (I am humbled and overwhelmed), you can enter a giveaway to win your own wall initial. If you are not in love with the Mulberry Bush design or have something different in mind, never fear! The winner will be able to choose whatever design they want for their wall initial.

This is an especially fun giveaway for The Framed Frog to participate in. Just a year and a half ago, I opened my Etsy shop with great misgivings and no sales for weeks. Karen kindly offered to host a giveaway on her site, and that giveaway, along with some other factors, helped launch my shop and get the sales going. Karen does a lot of great giveaways and is very candid and thorough in her reviews. Go check her site out!

A couple of other notes: We will be headed out to Davey's appointment with the special education folks soon, and I will update you later on that. Also, please don't forget this week's Found It Friday theme: sand and surf. The Found It Friday posts take a little time to put together, so start gathering your ideas and photos now. Mr. Linky was looking a little lonely last week. :(

Mom Who Works at Home

So a lot of cute photos of my kiddos sneak their way into my blog. It's my way of cheering myself up when I realize that I have chosen this path of temporary insanity. :) One might think that those darling rascals occupy all of my time.

It's true. Luckily, I have mad multitasking skills; while donning the hats of Chaos Prevention Director and Sibling Peace Chairwoman, I can also claim the title of Mom Who Works at Home. Beyond laundry, vacuuming, and dishes, I also paint and create things that I sell through my (mostly) on-line shop The Framed Frog. Most of my work is custom - I spend a lot of time working with a customer to make sure the design, colors, fabric choice, everything is exactly what they want.

Lately I've been a little swamped with these custom orders but am slogging my way determinedly through them. So, without further ado, here are some of the completed orders:

This was a local order for a dear friend. Her sweet baby girl has been through a lot - most recently a surgery to put in a feeding tube. I hope these wall letters add some cheer and happiness to her room!

Okay, so this wasn't technically an order. It's just that when my best friend has a birthday, I'm inclined to pull out all the stops and make her a dramatic zebra print memo board. I tried some new techniques on this board - making the black and white damask star fasteners and adding tiny rhinestones.

This particular piece was ordered as "a frame that includes some blue and green and has some cute monkeys on it." I do love it when I get a little artistic freedom in a custom piece!

This memo board makes me think of my grandmother's kitchen. That, or the brown, yellow, and orange blocked linoleum in my childhood kitchen. So fun and bright!

Another memo board - this one was actually for a funeral. People wrote little notes to the family of the deceased and stuck them under the ribbons on this board.

Some more custom name trains - sports-themed trains for twin boys turning two!

Frame in polka dots and stripes. Simple, colorful, and of course personalized.

Another memo board - in Amy Butler Star Paisley in Lime fabric. I think pink and green are a delicious combination!

Can you guess what holiday this was a gift for?

Custom sign for a customer currently in love with the color scheme of teal, brown, and ivory.

This memo board was created for a customer who has a cabin in the Adirondacks.

Custom orders in the works include a race car-themed name train; a construction theme for another name train, a few more memo boards, four orders for wall letters, etc.

Busy, busy.

Please don't forget about Found It Friday tomorrow! The inspiration is daisies, and I am hoping to have some more link up this week! (pretty please)

Family

I finally got the family picture wall all set up in the living room. I picked my favorite candid shots of the kiddies for their own portraits in the center, around the word "Family." On the far ends of this picture, the collage frames hold shots of the little rascals at the playground and at the beach. I chose to put the long frame with pictures of all the far-away relatives on the bottom, where the little ones can reach it and point to their Grammy and Pop and Uncle Andy and so on. And see those small bright paintings at the top?

After getting all the photos up, i still felt something was missing. After reading my Bible that morning, I was reminded again of some verses that have really meant a lot to me lately. And now those verses grace our wall as well, as a daily gentle reminder to TRUST HIM and

NEED HIM.

I love having all my pictures up - our living room finally feels like a family room. And that is a great feeling!