Wall Art on the Fly...and for Cheap

I would not describe myself as artsy. My sister Mary, on other hand, super artsy, so I try to be like her. She does more abstract stuff, which isn't really my style, but the fact that she just picks up a paint brush and gets going inspires me. So a few months ago, during my fall break, I decided to try my hand at painting something simple and meaningful for our family. We have a TON of empty wall space and it taking us forever to fill it up, but this was a good meaningful way to get something up on the wall.

Using a few random art supplies I had around the house (canvas, acrylic paints, some stencils, and a few paint brushes), I was able to throw these little pieces together. The blue and burnt orange are two colors that you can see throughout our house (and I could easily make these particular shades with the random paints I had).

The one on the left is our anniversary which is coming up! And...believe it or not, the one of the left is suppose to be an "O" for Oertle. Unfortunately people always ask me what the zero stands for, which honestly makes me want to take these down sometimes. I am convinced that people only think it is a zero because it is next to another piece with numbers. I didn't even think about it being interpreted that way when I made them because we used the same stencil to make signs for our wedding reception. 

 No one seemed to confused the "O" for a zero then! Wah-wah. What matters most is that I like those pieces of art that I made for our house. They probably won't be permanent, but they satisfy our need for wall art, add some color to the hallway, and always remind me of our special day!

To make these little paintings, all I did was measure the inches of the canvas and draw the different lines for the horizontal stripe. Then on top of those lines, I traced the numbers (or letter). I only had letter stencils, so I improvised by printing out some large numbers on Word and used those. After tracing the whole pattern, I just started painting. I wanted the two pieces to work together, so I used the same colors but opted to alternate the use of the colors on each canvas. 

Just  little pic to show a bit of the process

All in all, I love how they turned out-despite the fact that most people think I have a random zero painted and hung on our wall. Maybe I should try to come up with some special significance for the zero...Any ideas?

Let me brag...about my sister

I have been blessed with a wonderful family. It is full of great people who love life and one another. There are no shortages of talent, conversation, confrontation, and love. My parents have done a remarkable job shaping us into unique individuals, helping us to see the many gifts God has bestowed up on us. My sister Mary is my older sister by two years. The gifts and talents Mary fosters involve art and history. Not quite together, though they definitely influence one another. Here, I hope to brag about Mary the Historian.

Mary perserved in academia. It didn't necessarily come easy to her, but she did not lose hope or ever give up, and she has come far! Mary graduated high school, joined a missionary program for a year, and moved back home. She lived at home, attending Cabrillo Junior College and then California State University Monterey Bay, completing college after a rigorous 7 years. She persevered and I was so proud of her. But she didn't stop there; rather than searching for an OK job in Santa Cruz, Mary ventured into graduate school. She attends CSU Fullerton where she studies public history with an emphasis in oral history. What does this mean? This means my sister digs through the trenches of museums to find the truth about what happened. She wants to look at the primary sources and put the puzzle together herself. She wants to talk to the people, listen to their stories, and find out their truths. Not only does Mary want to do this, she does do it and she is extremely gifted in her ability to convey the stories of others. She has a compassion for their lives and their circumstances and she sees with a wholeness that I find historians often miss. 

I had the opportunity this last year to help Mary through her first year of graduate school by editing her papers. It gave me a unique opportunity to see into Mary's mind and the way she thinks and it made me appreciate the challenges of her program. This summer I also had the opportunity to see Mary's history come to life in an exhibit. We went to the Oakland Museum of California, an awesome, very tactile museum, where Mary's work was on display. She and her colleagues studied the effects of the recession in Southern California. They interviewed people, received first hand accounts, and had to creatively design an exhibit that showed this part of California's history. It was so awesome to see Mary's work and to see her name "in lights" so to speak. 

Here are a few pictures of the exhibit! 

These magazine covers capture the lifestyle of OC. The names of the historians are on the back. 

Can you see it? Her name in lights! She focused on the educational effects of the recession.

This corner discussed the foreclosure. There was a door with a notice of foreclosure taped to the front and a mailbox with letters written from people asking for loan forgiveness on their homes. 

This corner discussed education and the different propositions made that affected students and professors. 

This discussed how the OC culture still thrived, but only under the guise of extreme debt.

The historian herself!