Friday, March 20, 2009
Earl Grey Scented Candles
Pelling Sharman home scented night lights for the homely aromas of freshly baked bread rated as the most wonderful fragrances in the world, the sweet perfumed aroma of vanilla and the warm hint of bergamot from earl grey tea. This wax light has set of 3 scented features with the comforting aromas of home baked bread, vanilla and earl grey tea. Bodhi Silver Leaf Candles flames cast a delicate silhouette of the Bodhi leaf highlighted in pure silver.
The Legends are taken from the Victorian-era Explorer's Clubs, Legends swirls of Sandalwood incense from exotic India blending with the heady aroma of fine Tobacco cigars. This Steam is taken from Bergamot-flavored Earl Grey tea mixes with the aroma of Mexican Vanilla-scented shortbreads. These are familiar scents with a touch of the exotic, evoking the sense of a less hurried age.
The bright, ornate patterns of damask weaving from turn of the century European fabrics inspired this collection of candles. The wax light is made on complex jacquard looms; damask fabric was used on everything from table coverings to window treatments. We include these patterns and design a patchwork effect interspersed with stripes of "ribbon" meant to look like embroidered trim. The scents in this collection are all inspired by different types of tea, an afternoon pastime that may have been enjoyed in a drawing room filled with these rich damask fabrics.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Unusual Personalized Gifts
Personalized gifts are among the most cherished gifts to give and receive. If you are not familiar with the art of personalization, it is the process of adding words, numbers and images onto a specially designed item through painting, screen printing, engraving or embroidery. The end result is a personalized gift that is perfect for any occasion, sentiment or recipient. The beauty of personalization lies in the creation of something unique and very special for your friends, family, co-workers or business associates. Adorned with a name or message, a personalized gift becomes one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable. What's nice is that you can be as creative as you want with personalization. The sky's the limit! So if you're ready to give a gift that has more meaning than a toaster, here are a few recommendations for personalization:
Personalized Life Preserver Ring: Non-milestone anniversaries can sometimes be a little tough to buy for. Stop swimming for ideas! If they have a pool, they will love a personalized life preserver that thoughtfully displays the family name. It's a great decoration that they can hang near the patio, from the gate or off the pool, beach or boat house. Look for them online.
Why are personalized gifts better than non-personalized? Well, we like to think that when you buy a personalized gift you're letting the person you are giving it to know that you wanted to give him or her something special, something that you didn't pick up at the corner store on the way home. You've taken special care to pick out a gift that is perfect for them. A keepsake that they can cherish for years to come. Please browse through these gifts and pick out a special gift for a special person.
Unique keepsake for someone special
When you want your gift to be truly exquisite, let our elegant
try making gift in making this gift special
All of the seniors really appreciated their gifts, and everyone was surprised that we could afford to get such nice gifts on our house budget.
Photo Playing Cards: Surprise them with a really wild gift - their very own photo playing cards! You can include photos of their kids, pets, special places, events or occasions. All you have to do is upload your picture to an online retailer specializing in personalized products or save the photo onto a disk and bring it somewhere locally to have the cards created. They take it from there. You should allow yourself plenty of time to order and receive this gift.
Personalized Granite or Marble Gift: For an exquisite gift, imagine a granite or marble clock, frame or bookends personalized with their name, wedding date or a special quote. Visit Wealthwood gifts (www.wealthwood.com) online for a huge selection of magnificent gift ideas.
Personalized Wedding Favors: Personalized favors are very popular at today's weddings. For a unique twist, personalize the favors with each guest's name along with your own. This works great if you are creating or personalizing the favors yourself.
Personalized Door Mat: A personalized door mat is a wonderful, welcomed gift for newlyweds, and first-time home buyers. It will proudly display their name, and pride in their home for many years to come.
Name Toting Duffel Bag: A personalized duffel bag is a practical gift for anyone on your gift list, especially teenagers and young adults. You can have their name, jersey number or team screen printed across the side.
Express your sentiments for any gift giving occasion with personalized gifts that create a lasting impression. By customizing and personalizing a gift, you are giving a keepsake that will be remembered for many years to come.
Picture Framed Artwork
“In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire”- Leonardo da Vinci
Well, none of us would like to risk damaging our lovely paintings, which is so admirable, attractive and is an exceptional decorative piece that allures the beauty of the place where it is hung.
Now, how to keep paintings safe and secure for many decades? Simple! Frame it! And you can preserve it for a life-time.
Why to Frame a Picture?
A frame not only offers structural support to a painting, but it also creates a changeover from a “Cubic” (3-dimensional) ornamental world into a “Planar” (2-dimensional) imaginary one. Meaning to say is it provides a fender which discriminates the artwork by devoting it an exact decorative context amongst the ambit (room).
Types and Styles of Frames
There are various types of frames available for framing the paintings. They come in varieties of materials from Aluminum, Wooden, Glass, Acrylic glass, Sealed Surface frames, to Tailor-made mats.
Not only this, they come in numerous outstanding styles. The frame style can range anything from very simple to extremely embellished ones. Depending on your choice, preferences and of course considering your budget you can select any thing you want.
How to Select a Frame?
Many a times we wonder, with so many questions that flicker our mind. How to frame? What style, size and dimension to choose? Does it match with the painting? Or probably, just the thought sometimes shatters us that one wrong selection, may blur the beauty of the artwork that is done with so much of hard work, love and care.
Relax! There is no hard-and-fast rule to choose a particular frame for your painting. But if you have a frame individually made for your picture, it will only enhance its beauty.
Nevertheless, the right style of frame will add life and beauty to the work-of-art. It is always good and worthy that, a frame is selected, based on the type of painting, such as contemporary artwork or traditional piece of art. This will add a new life to the picture, and also it will depict the true beauty of the art. And of course the vice-versa, a wrong frame can diminish its overall appearance.
Note – A ‘Traditional’ painting is highly formal and lavish in tone, and generally looks awesome with ornate, decorative, gold and silver frames. Similarly, a ‘Contemporary’ piece is more streamlined, so plain or simple frames look great.
However, sometimes it’s very tough to make a generalized edict about a creative process like framing. Because, nothing remains compulsory when it comes to creativity, and in this framework it can be anything that “You” like, as you better know what you want, and what it should look like.
Apart From Types And Style, Does Color Matters In Selecting A Frame?
Yes! Selecting a color that dominates a painting makes a huge difference. This gives room for the artwork and the frame to merge into one harmonious being.
Note – Best match: dark format and dark frame. And light frame with light format goes hand-in-hand.
Coming to borders of frames, this simple rule-of-thumb can be applied.
A “Small painting” appears sober in a narrow border, and a “Large one” looks perfect in an extensive border.
Size of the frame!
A good balance should be maintained in frame size and the art size.
Generally, select a “Wide Frame” for big art and a “Thin Frame” for a small one. However, at times a wisely selected wide frame can give a sense of luxury and glamour to a small painting, while a slim frame can add a modern flair to a large contemporary artwork.
Note – The most important point to keep in mind while selecting a frame is, matching the frame to your room décor. So, choose one that allures the style and colors in the room. This not only compliments the room décor but also fascinates its viewers.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Oil Painting Ideas
Who Would Not Like To Add Master-Pieces on Their Credit from the Magic of Their Brush……..to allure the beauty of your home, or smugly give away to your friends, or an exception is to sell and earn from it?
Painting is not just the pictorial representation produced by applying paint to a surface or on the canvas. Infact it’s an art, in which not all of us can be good at. If this is a fact, even trying and achieving things has never ceased to be true. In-short if a man is “Determined” then nothing is impossible.
Well, it’s true that all of a sudden none can start painting like an artist who spontaneously paints. But still you can try your wild imaginations about anything and everything to give life to it in your paintings.
After all what is painting all about - One understands absolutely nothing and still it's charming. Usually you’ll have all good remarks as WOW! My Gosh! “What a Delightful Thing”. Etc….etc.
Even if you’re trying your hands on painting for the very first time, but alas, not familiar even with the ABC, of paintings, not know to hold up a brush also. And even don’t know the match-and-mix of colors, but wanna paint, your dedication and a little care will produce something good.
However, before starting with oil paints, let’s learn what oil painting is? And then will see some simple techniques to master this art?
Oil painting – This is one type of painting, where all oil paints are used, rather than acrylics and other water-paints. In short this is a technique or outcome of employing paints made from pigments blended with oil on a canvas. All the same, many say that oil painting is more challenging and difficult medium to master.
Well….It doesn't matter whether you've never held a brush before in your life.
Before going for tips of oil painting, here are some most important things that you need to learn.
First and foremost is, you need to master or learn a few shape and drawing skills. Try to draw accurately, step-by-step and put out concisely the picture that is in your mind on a canvas.
Never mind if you do not want to spend much on buying expensive cotton duck canvas, when you are painting for the first time. There are a lot of alternatives available. You can go for some cheap quality canvas, or select a fairly thick preferably acid free paper. Or even you can go some cotton or linen fabrics that can stretch as canvas.
Learn the mix and match of color, to come-up with most inspiring and excellent pieces of art-work. Again this is not a big deal! Try to attain perfect color harmony.
Oil paints can be opaque, transparent, or translucent. If you don’t know what is what, an easy way to check is, put a dark line on a piece of white card, and use a brush to put a thin layer of paint across the line.
If the line isn't seeable it's opaque. If you can see the line it's transparent. And if the line is bedimmed yet visible it’s translucent or semi-opaque.
And also there are certain oil paints called the Earth Colors, which dry fast, like Raw Umber, Mars Red, Burnt Umber, Light Red, Mars Orange and Mars Violet. Note - these colors should be applied at the beginning of a painting.
And the colors that can be applied at the end of the painting, which are slow driers are White, some Yellows, Green Earth, Alizarin Crimson, and Ivory Black.
Above all, you need to learn “How to Hold a Brush”, because no matter how good you’re at drawing and color basics. But if you don’t know to hold the brush, which gives life to the painting, all your work will go down the drains.
So first select some good quality and sized brushes for painting, here you cannot compromise with the brushes, because quality brushes will stay for a life-time.
However, you can still be creative if working with a limited number or size of brushes. For example, if you were planning on painting a very large piece but only have small brushes; take a try at Pointillism (dotted painting).
Note – To ensure long-life of your paint brush, wash it with warm soapy water. Or even alcohol is best solvent for paints and good cleaning agent as well. Comb brushes and rollers after cleaning to do away with extra fuzz and remove loose bristles.
Finally, what all needed is, your concentration, dedication, and the art of coercing eyes onto your work,
With this, now let’s start with some simple techniques to paint.
Step 1: Stretch the canvas or what ever material that you are using for painting.
Note – It’s better to apply some acrylic color on the base of the canvas and than coat with oil paint, which will help the painting to dry soon and gives good results as well.
Step 2: Mix some amount of oil paints in a palette. Lay all your colors in the same order, so that it will be easy for you to pick up the required paint when needed.
Step 3: If you wanna come-up with a ‘fat over lean” painting, the proportion of oil (medium) should be increased for each subsequent layer. The lower layers imbibe oil from the layers on top, because, if the upper beds dry faster than the lower ones, they may crack.
Note - for painting “shadows”, usually the shadow color should be darker especially at their edges then the local color. For example, you can cast shadows coming down across horizontal planes. For this, the shadow color should be a darker interpretation of the other basic colors of its surroundings (road or grass). But at the same time it should also be influenced by the sky color reflecting into it.
Step 5: Finally, when your painting is ready, don’t dry it in the dark, as it may form a thin film of oil to rise at the surface, yellowing it. However this can be eliminated by exposing the painting to bright daylight.
