Ronnie Bringle's Season's In The Country

Next summer Ronnie Bringle is bringing her Season's In The Country seminar to Artful Endeavors in Raleigh! This is the seminar that Ronnie hosts yearly and next year she will start offering an east coast as well as a west coast seminar. She likes our studio at Artful Endeavors and we have arranged to have the seminar here. Welcome Ronnie.

She will teach the "Welcome Friends" project, her terrific still life window design, Aug 18 - 27, 2009, Tue - Sat., with prep night on Mon. the 17th. Watch for details on Ronnie's web site and get the latest information by signing up for her newsletter.

Register with Ronnie and come paint!

Holiday Painting

Yes, thats right. It's time to start our painting for the holidays if we want to have it finished in time. We've already painted a whimsical JoSonja Jansen Santa recently and are working on The Three Kings now, an elegant Ronnie Bringle design.

Here is the Peppermints, a wonderful Cheri Rol design I just finished painting, that we have scheduled on Wed evenings starting Sept 17. Plan to join us.

Mirrors for ALTA

A while back the Assistance League of the Triangle Area or ALTA asked us to paint some mirrors (seen above) that were donated to their Antiques to Zippers Thrift shop. ALTA's members do so much to help our triangle community and painting is one way we can give our assistance to them. Our painters have been working on designs for the mirrors and the first of them have started to arrive in the resale shop. Here are some of the decorated mirrors. A big improvement from their scratched and dull appearence above!


The mirrors below were painted by members of City of Oaks Decorative Painters one of our terrific Society of Decorative Painters local chapters.



ALTA is a volunteer organization dedicated to meeting the needs of our community through service, resources and financial support. They support Kid's Place at Wake Med, Operation School Bell outfitting the triangle children in need, Women in Need at The Women's Center of Wake County day shelter for women in crisis, and have a scholarship program for individuals in the Triangle. You can find out more about ALTA, and how we can help them, at altriangle.org. 100% of the tax dedctible donations remain in the Triangle commuinity.

Student's Blog

Have you see our new blog just for our students? On this blog you will find wonderful paintings and class photo from our talented Artful Endeavors students. We think their work is amazing and want to share it with everyone. Our students are such fine individuals as well as painters and we have a fun time as we are creating in our classes. The students attending classes, along with instructor Liz Miller CDA, plan our schedule of projects they would like to see taught. Take a look at our Students' Artful Endeavors. You can also click on the badge in our right side column to reach the page.

Decorative Painting Classes Update

I'll be on vacation from classes Aug 1 - 17th. I'll be back and ready to paint on Aug 18. Plan to join me!

Here are our Aug classes starting the week of the 18th.

Tue 6:15p in Cary we start the dramatic Tiger bench. This is a great design by Glenice Moore and Leon our wood man has built a wonderful bench for it.

Wed 10am we start Ros' window view. The original window overlooked the beach but you can choose your own view out of the window. Just bring a photo from which you can design your view. Check out Ros' fall window.

Wed 2p we'll start the Nativity or Ronnie Bringle's Three Kings. Come ready for some fun dry brushing.


Wed 6:30p is your chance to paint the Cardinal Snow Globe ornament. Start your Holiday painting now.

Ros Stallcup Seminar 2008

What a great seminar we had with Ros. Our seminar with Ros is always the painting highlite of our summer. You need to come by the studio to see the paintings that I created during the seminar. I especially like the winter scene stool.

Here are a few glimpses of our seminar. We'll have lots more photos on the web site soon. Click on the photo for a larger view.

New Look For Artful Endeavors Blog

How do you like the new look for our blog? My loyal friend Gail Schmidt helped me change our look. Gail designed the great new blog header from my paintings and I love. If you would like to see more of Gail's header designs click Gail.

New Inspiration Blog

My friend Gail/wonderful artist/designer who owns Shabby Cottage Studio has a new blog! It's called Mind Wide Open and although it is brand new it is already inspiring people and lots of conversation!

The purpose of Mind Wide Open is to inspire people to get in the creative mood. Every month a Challenge Contest is held with a $20.00 shopping spree and free shipping at Shabby Cottage Studio. Gail's prices are really great and $20.00 will buy a lot of fun!

Everyone is welcome to come play at Mind Wide Open no matter your medium! Whether you paint, collage, sew, it doesn't matter....the idea is to spark your creativity.

Goldfinch and Thistle class

I finished the Goldfinch and Thistle design by Ronnie Bringle and it turned out even nicer than I expected.

I had a canister sitting around waiting for me to come up with just the perfect design, and I think this was it.

You can paint this design on your special surface that has been waiting for your inspiration or choose from our unique choice at Artful Endeavors. Wouldn't this look striking on one side of a mirror frame with an oval mirror on the other side? Or, there is a tin pocket just the correct size, or that little square stool would be just right! Such a versatile design.

This class starts on July 16, 10a - 12:30p and finishes on July 30, 10a - 3p. Register now!

Society of Decorative Painting Convention

Come into the studio to see all the fun products, packets, and paints that I brought back from convention. We had a great time and came back with lots of inspiration. It was wonderful to see everyone that I only get to see at convention.

I talked with Ros Stallcup, Ronnie Bringle, Ginger Edwards, Trudy Beard, Peggy Harris, Gretchen Cagle, Andy Jones, Doxie Keller, Rebecca Baer, and many more inspiring artists.

Mary and I took some interesting classes at convention. We enjoyed painting a couple of cute and fluffy ducklings with Lydia Steeves who is a delightful person and excellent teacher and artist. We’ve painted her designs before and I wanted to experience her teaching. I was not disappointed.

We painted a fun oil landscape with Cheri Rol, a beautiful painter, great teacher, and nice person. And attended an audit with Trudy Beard, awesome, and Bobbi Takashima, wonderful artist. I brought back more of Trudy’s wonderful packets for us to paint.

We were able to experience more painting with the Jansen Traditions Global Blending. Wonderful paints. And I enjoyed meeting and painting with Sue Pruitt, Traditions Artist.

DecoArt has some wonderful new texture products that we’ll be using in upcoming designs. We saw outstanding crackle texture, that’s one step to crackle, a terra cotta texture, a glass texture, and Fierro texture which makes a great sparkly wrought iron. I can’t wait to do some designing with these new products. DecoArt has also developed new improved enamel paint for glass painting. Check out the DecoArt web site for more product information.

Mary and I enjoyed the week together and we’re still friends. We’re looking forward to our next excursion. Wonder what that will be.

Liz

Register For Upcoming Summer Classes

Summer is here and we’re ready for summer painting with special classes and a varied schedule. We’ve found lots of great new projects to create. Check out our flexible summer schedule. Notice that some of our classes run morning and afternoon so that you can get more painting in during one day and save gas. If you missed a class earlier in the year, check with me to see if you can paint it this summer.

Watch for more fun decorative painting classes coming up in Aug.

You won't want to miss this Goldfish Beauty, a Peggy Harris design, that we'll paint on Friday, July 18 in a 10a - 3p class. Such fun! Register now.

Tuesday 10am - 12:30p Open Class

Make up a missed class or work on your own project with assistance from Liz.

Wednesday 10am - 12:30p
July 2, & 9 Fuchsia on Faux Stained Glass, Johanne Marcotte design. Scroll down to see the photo. We learn lots of exciting techniques to make this wood piece look just like real stained glass.

7/16 10a- 12:30p & 7/30 10a – 3p Ronnie Bringle's Goldfinch & Thistles. I'm working on this one now. I 'll post the picture as soon as it's finished.

Starting Aug 20 Ros’ beach window

Wednesday 1:30p - 4p

Aug 20, 27, 9/3 10, &17 Nativity from a choice of designs. We couldn't all decide on the same design from our variety of interesting choices. Come by to see the options.

Wednesday 6:30p - 9p

June 25, 7/2, 9, 16 & 30 Paris Grocery by Linda Locke. If you missed this one before, be sure to contact me to see about joining the class.

Cary Tuesday 6:15p - 8:30p

July 15 & 29 Peggy Harris' Cat in gold fish bowl. Such a delightful design.

Aug 19, 26, & Sept 2 Tiger bench. Striking! We love this design by Glenice Moore.

No classes Aug 1 - 17

Santa in July

We’re painting Ronnie Bringle's Big Fat Santa on July 12, 9am – 5p. It’s a definite. Liz is teaching this wonderful dry brushed design.

We’ll get the Santa with his bag and list painted with maybe just a little finishing up to do on your own. I’ll tell you how I painted the trim and border. It will be a full day of painting.

I'll have the prep and pattern ready for you as soon as you are registered. Contact me at Artful Endeavors to register. You can paint him on anything you would like.

Santa and I hope you can join us for the day. It’ll be a cool way to spend a hot summer day.

Stained Glass Fuchsia

No I didn't paint on stained glass. It's painted on wood to look like stained glass. This wonderful technique and design is from a Johanne Marcotte design.

The class with Liz starts July 2, 10am for 2 weeks. Registration is open now.

Another Wonderful Portrait

Yoko has been painting this portrait of her son in our Tue morning open class and has just finished. What a wonderful painting she has created.

Yoko Nishiguchi

A Cutie

This is not a painting, yet.
We had a wonderful time at the beach this year on our vacation. It was Maddy's (my grand niece) first beach trip, first time in the ocean. She thought the sand tasted strange and the cold water kept coming up onto her. Not impressed. She liked her little swimming pool much better and the toys tasted great. Can you tell that she is at the stage where everything goes into her mouth?
When her Mom took her down to the beach for the first time, there were 4 of us following close behind with our cameras taking photo of her every move. I felt like a paparazzi.