Bridal Shower Mad-Lib

Last weekend my mom and I got to throw a bridal shower for my oldest and dearest friend. We kept it simple and traditional but I wanted to share with you some of the little details that made it fun :) 

First of all we did the "around the clock" theme and gave each guest a time to purchase a gift in relation to. Not everyone was so comfortable with their times but it made the shower fun and more than just measuring cups and mixing bowls!

Here is the invitation that I created for it. I was pretty pleased with it :) I was hoping that it would look more personal by adding my own hand writing on each invitation, but man did it get tiring after a few! 

I didn't take very good pictures of the shower. I wasn't using my normal camera and just couldn't get it to work right. So sorry no fun pictures of the decorations :/

But this is what I wanted to share with y'all most. We had a few games we wanted to play but ended up landing on this one, hoping that the bride could keep the end product as a keepsake! 

What we did was take the idea of a Mad-Lib and made it personal {Mad-Lib is a word game where the player is prompted to fill in a list of words, like nouns, verbs, adjectives ect. and then later fills in the blanks of a story with the earlier list of words.} Growing up we played Mad-libs all the time and I thought it would be fun way to break the ice. 

So to make this one personal we got the bride to send a quick write up of her proposal story before the shower.
This is the original unaltered proposal story as told by the bride herself. 

I then went through and edited it, choosing which words to take out and which to leave in. This part was actually pretty hard, and I think if I ever do it again it will be a little better. But hey it worked and everyone had fun even when the tense wasn't right!
Traditionally in Mad-Lib games you ask another person for the words to fill in the blanks. But we chose to just put a list on the back side of the story and have each guest fill the list out as they entered the party.

These are the finished edited proposal stories.


After everyone had mingled a little while and had time to finish their list and fill in the blanks of the story we all sat around reading our version of the happy couples engagement. This was a sweet moment and created so many laughs. It was really a fun way to break the ice and help everyone get talking at the beginning and I think it kept the attention on the bride with out making her do anything too ridiculous and embarrassing:)

Bridal/wedding showers can be so fun and creative, sometimes I wish I could just do parties like that for no reason :) 

Painting with out BLACK

A few weeks ago I shared how to use the  language of color (if you missed it check it out here) I talked about all kinds of terms and how the color wheel is set up. Now I didn't get a chance to go to deep in to color theory and I don't really think I'm qualified to go much deeper. BUT I did think I should share how all of those terms can be used in an actual painting. 

So today I decided to do a little pet portrait of a precious pup and show you how the knowledge of color can help create a really unique painting. 

Quickly I'll just share with you how I started. You can see that the board I was using had a painting on it before. So I just used some gesso (basically primer) to cover it up and start a quick drawing. I am so not good at sketching so I usually just do a real generic sketch (this one was based off of a photo) and then fill in the details with the paint. 

I then started with my high lights. Based from the image I took the lightest parts of the fur, where the light was reflecting, and chose my light colors. I didn't want to do a super realistic painting so I decided to go with yellow and a bright orange. And I left them straight out of the tube, no mixing. 

This puppy is a dark black with khaki/cream spots on his face, ears and paws. But like I said earlier, to avoid a flat and realistic style painting I decided not use black or white at all. I decided to use nothing but color to create this painting. So by using the knowledge that contrasting colors often create a muddy brown/black when mixed I started at it.  You can tell that there are lots of blues purples yellows and pinks. What you probably can't pick out are the greens. Green and red are one of the best combinations for getting a dark color with out using black. So the dark spots are mostly a forest green mixed with a red. You can see how different areas are shaded with different colors I used that to create the volume of the body and show how the light can cause different temperatures of color just by how it hits the object. 

Painting with out black and white is hard. But often creates a much better painting. By using other colors to create your darks you are actually painting much more realistically than if you only use black as your darkening agent. Just look at an object and really study it. You can see that the shadows are different shades or tones of a color like red, green blue, ect. It takes a minute to notice but once you see it its like light goes off and you will never see white as just white or black as just black again! 

I enjoyed this fun little painting. I wish I had paid more attention to my photography so I could have actually shared the process with you instead of just talking. But I just got caught up in my TV show and painting. Too many things I love happening at once for me to stop and photograph the process :) Sorry 

So this wasn't nearly as informative as the earlier post about color (here) but I hope it helps you get creative with the next little craft or painting you decide to make. Seeing that you can get real lights and real darks with out using black and white will make any project more interesting and dynamic!! 

*I have started some advertising with Passion Fruit Ads and need some lovely blogs to grace my side bar :) Please check out my advertising page and let me know if you are interested!! HERE