My New Website!!! Bright and Merry Designs

Hello all!
I am so excited to announce that I FINALLY have a website!  I have been wanting to do something like this for a VERY long time but just have not had the confidence to go for it.  Well, I WENT for it and Bright and Merry Designs was born!

You can visit me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BrightMerryDesignsByJanaBailey and also on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/janambailey/bright-and-merry-designs/.  I hope you would be kind enough to "like" my Facebook page and to pin some of my Pinterest pins to help me get the word out.

Some of the fun things you will find on my website currently are card sets that are prints made from my original art.  Last year I made the set below at the encouragement of my sweet husband after making small paintings for 5 of my girlfriends that I sing in an ensemble with.  Well, they were a big hit and sold really well.  My friends encouraged me to create more cards this year and boy did I!  I now have a total of 3 Christmas card sets and a Birthday card set.

 This set is called Christmas Portraits.  I imagined what it might be like if Christmas characters had to sit down for school portraits!  The thought kind of cracked me up :)

 This set is called Christmas Whimsy - more portraits really but I threw in a Christmas tree!

This set is my favorite, it is called Christmas Nativity.  I used words from Christmas songs and one of my favorites of all time is "Mary Did You Know?"  Just the thought of how Mary would have felt if she only knew what all Jesus would do and what all He would go through just for us.

Then there is my cheerful Birthday set.  I love this one!  It makes me smile. :)

Eventually I will be offering small prints of each of these little gems on the website also.  Some other things I will be offering are 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 prints from some of my larger original paintings.  Here are just a few, you can see more on the website.

 Beatitudes - This was inspired by my pastor who recently preached a whole series on the Beatitudes out of Matthew 5.  All of the qualities God wants us to possess are in white with all the blessings you will receive written in the background.

 Bless This House - just a little fun and funky painting to help us remember God's grace and that He wants us to seek His blessings.

 Me and My House - Joshua 24:15 - One of my all time favorite verses.  We have had this verse in our home in one form another for most of our 24 years of marriage.

Have Faith in How You Serve - this one was inspired by my dear daughters.  They are volleyball players but God's faithful followers first and I wanted it to be a reminder to them that they are to be a light for Jesus in all they do.

Thanks for checking in, I hope you will share my post, Facebook page and do some pinning for me.  I would feel blessed to be able to make someone smile with my art!

Many blessings to YOU!

Jana

I'm back!!!!

OK, so 5 months is ridiculous to be gone from blogging, I know, but friends, there has been some changing goin' on 'round here!!!  Life is good and God is good.  So if you remember, last time I was here I had started the Your Living Canvas Workshop with Christy Tomlinson and I told you it was quite the journey and it had spurred some changes in my life.  Well, good bye caterpillar, hello butterfly!  In the time since I last posted here is what has happened:
1. I still haven't finished the workshop - I stopped to begin implementing the change.
2. I quit my full time job to focus more on my family and on the things I feel are most important.
3. I began teaching again, part time for the local museum but out in the schools with 3rd and 4th graders.  I am teaching art and it is AWESOME!!!  I only teach about 5-6 days a month which leaves LOTS of time for family and fun.
4. We started on a new budget :/ that has been hard, fun and rewarding! (did I say fun???)
5. My daughter made the varsity volleyball team as a freshman and I made it to almost all of her games! (Of course, my gas bill for October was $600 but it was awesome to be able to be there for her)
6. I am putting my first bit of art "out there" for publishing.  I will be taking images of 4 pieces I created for friends for Christmas to the printer to create sets of Christmas cards!  I am SOOOO excited.

So, my goal for this project was to sell at least 10 sets so I could justify paying a printer to create the cards.  I was so worried no one would like them but I went for it anyway, with a lot of encouragement from my awesome husband.  I told my friends in our church choir and they told their friends and I posted it on Facebook today and I have sold 22 sets!!!!!  I am so excited about this I can hardly stand it.  So I will be ordering a few more.  Here is what each card looks like.  Details about the card sets follow the pics.

Each set comes with 12 - 5.5 x 4.25 cards that are blank inside.  There are 3 of each above design in each set.  The set is $15 plus shipping.  If you are interested in purchasing a set just email me at janambailey@wtconnect.com with your address and I will send you a Paypal invoice.

Hopefully someday soon I will be selling things through an Etsy shop and maybe even here on my blog.  Something I will be working on in the near future.

I will be posting more projects, artwork and such as I am on a bit of a creative binge for Christmas and I would love to share with you.  I hope you will visit again and tell your friends about Raining Grace because baby it's pouring right now!!!!
Blessings,
Jana

Merry Christmas Banner!

Well!  It is good to be back!  My laptop was stuck at work and my photos were stuck in my iPad so now I ma ready to show you what I made right after Thanksgiving.  I don't know about you, but crafting has been at the bottom of my to do list with all the shopping, choir performances, parties and let's not forget craziness at work!  Oh well, all part of the excitement I suppose.
For Thanksgiving I made a "Blessings" banner that hung in my dining room and my husband just loved it.  I was so excited he liked it because he normally has no opinion about such things.  So when he asked me to make one for Christmas I jumped on it.
This turned out  to be a not so good lesson in color theory and how not to use too much pattern, etc.
So I began by cutting a banner out of the red then a large star from a pretty pattern paper that contained all the colors I wanted to include. (See at this point, I thought I was doing real well choosing paper...)

If you look closely you will see a scalloped circle but from a great yellow/gold paper with music on it backed with a green shadow.  I LOVED this music paper and it was to be a sort of "feature" of this banner.  Well, then I cut the letters, using Cindy Loo out of the same red paper.  Turns out...too much red.  It all kind of blended together and when I first hung it up you couldn't read the letters AT ALL!!!  I was so bummed!!!!

 So my daughter suggested outlining all the letters with red stickles and I thought YES!!!  That will save them. So SHE painstakingly outlined each one with a perfect thin bead of Christmas red stickles.  She is awesome and only 14.

 I thought that was the solution but you still could not read the letters. There just was not enough contrast so I cut out the large white snowflakes from When It's Cold Outside and put them behind the letters and it helped immensely as you can see below.  I then tied each banner together with jute. I know it looks good from close up and I do really like them but ...

 As you can see below, still a problem from a distance.  SO...then lesson here would be to use a higher contrasting color for the letters, not the same paper as the background.  I will probably re-do this while I am off for Christmas break and I think I will make the letters a golden yellow or white, or maybe a green, hhhmmm, I think I am going to have to do some experimenting!

I hope you enjoyed it anyway and were maybe inspired to create your own Christmas banner.  Let me know if you do, I could use some pointers :)
I can't leave without mentioning that Kristal at Getting Cricky will be having a Snow Much Fun blog hop coming up on December 16th with great projects from our wonderful design team.  I hope you will join us.

Blessings,
Jana