The ABC's and XYZ's

We love our new alphabet collection for "This Thing Called Family" because it's so versatile and personalize-able  - is that a word?

In case you were curious about what each of the individual letters look like, here you go:

There are also a few key words available to help you create just the right message for your home.

We love the idea of creating a focal point - a unique wall in your home that can be a conversation piece that tells a story, welcomes guests, or portrays who you are and what you value most. You can go a step further to personalize the wall by adding photos of the important people in your life with these frames that coordinate:

There are shelves in 2 sizes if you're interested in creating a "mantle" or a more linear grouping:

3ft shelf

2 ft shelf

Here are a few more examples of how you could use these pieces to create something awesome:

If you're interested in learning more about the inspiration behind this collection (involving Green Girl's unique welcome wall in her own home!) go check out this earlier post.  It's our goal with DEMDACO to create products that are meaningful and that help families to connect - so this collection is super dear to our hearts!

If you want to build a message for your home,  head over to Gabby's Gifts online store or Clevershoppers.com.  They both have just about everything you need and are great to work with.

If you've already created a special wall in your home using our alphabet program, we'd love to see it!!! We want to feature you in a future blog post!  Send photo(s) and a short description of the meaning behind your message to me, Jill, at paperprayers@hotmail.com

We Love a Good Quote and Instagram

Here are some recent instagram favs:

Washi tape is perfect to combine with brown kraft paper to wrap art that's getting mailed!

posted on Sept 11.

A special order Laura did for a teacher friend to hang in her classroom!

ok, this isn't from Instagram, NOR is it a quote.  But it IS major cuteness. Mabel, after a bath.)

Love this quote.

Artapalooza 2013

ARTapalooza in Cedar Falls was hot, hot, HOT this year!  Fortunately it has cooled down around here since then.  It is FINALLY starting to feel a bit like fall!  

But man, oh man was it hot.  At ARTapalooza we sold our original, handmade, one of a kind pieces.  Here are some photos of what our displays looked like:

Here are a few fun new pieces from Mama Winger:

kid-sized chair

We adopted this katydid as Green Girl's new mascot.  He entertained us (and scared a few unsuspecting customers) as he travelled all the way around our booth.

Our local DEMDACO rep, Leslie kindly brought us some Look Books to show people what else we do!
When people ask us if we have our own store in Iowa City, we always tell them about "This Thing Called Family" so it's nice to have the visuals!

We always hang up this sign too at the front of our booth:

Our katydid friend travelled over to our table and kept the birds company:

We were blessed with a visit from Emily whose story continues to blow us away.  We wrote about her wait for a heart and lung transplant and the art she bought to put in her hospital room while she waited here. And we celebrated and gave thanks to God here when she updated us that she'd gotten her transplant! Last year she stopped in at ARTapalooza again, almost a year after her transplant, to buy something for her hospital neighbor who was still waiting.  See what she bought her friend here.  Now it's been 2 years since her heart and lung transplant, and Emily stopped in just to tell us she's doing great!  Yay!  It was great to see her face!

How about you?  Did you make it to ARTapalooza?  What did you buy?!

We'd LOVE to see your new Things With Wings art in your home ---- you are always welcome to upload photos to our facebook wall!     It would make our day!!!

September Sale Today on Facebook!

That's right!

We're making room for new creations and having an online sale today!

Join us on our Things With Wings Facebook Page
-  we'll be adding one of a kind originals to our "September Sale" album all day long today!

The first installment is up now!

Good news for all of you far away folks who can't attend a show!

We Love a Good Quote, Mabel, School, and an Upcoming Art Festival!

Hello Beautiful People!

Here's a recent "We Love a Good Quote" for you:

This idea has been showing up in a lot of my artwork lately(as you can tell!)  

Did you enjoy your Labor Day?  The boys worked and played in the yard,  I painted, we opened our windows (gorgeous weather!) made pizzas to eat out on the deck and got the kids ready for another week of school.  Very relaxing!  What did you do?

Yes, school is back in full swing!  My youngest started kindergarten!  Which means it's now very quiet around here during the day,  just me and Mabel!

My kids were (mostly) excited to go back to school - by the end of summer they're bored and ready!

We LOVED hearing that a special young lady we know brought along this little piece of reassurance (made by Mama Winger) in her pocket for the first day of school:

Last week we had early 1pm dismissals EVERY single day, due to the heat.  It was brutal. Yesterday and today we're enjoying more fall like temps with highs in the 70's ---- it's absolutely GORGEOUS! Yay!  But I guess it's supposed to get hot again. Booo!   We're hoping for fall whether on Saturday because we'll be doing this festival outdoors, in downtown Cedar Falls:

Click here for more info!

*FYI, we are NOT going to be at Riverssance this year in Davenport, so this is our one and only fall show!

Remember the welcome sign we made for my kids' school?  The other day when I was in the school office, I snapped a few more photos of what it looks like now that it's hung up!

Mama Winger has been hard at work on a huge school project too!  Remember this teaser that she gave us on facebook?

She made a very looooong sign for our church preschool's new outdoor music area.  Now the kids can bang on the pots and pans with different spoons and whisks to discover the different sounds they can make!  It's like they've got their own mini Stomp!

Custom School Sign and Art/App Mash-Ups

I've been working on a welcome sign that will go in my kids' school office!  It will be one of the first things that visitors, parents and students see so we wanted it to fill up the space and have a big impact.  It is 3 ft x 8ft and certainly big!  It could barely be contained within the walls of my studio and required an "extension" to my already huge table!

My husband dropped it off up at the school this morning. This was such a fun project, but I'm glad to get it out of my art room!  I'll show you another picture sometime, once it's hung up in the office!

finished!

Here are a few photos of our artwork that I recently enhanced using the Rhonna Designs iPhone app and instagram.  (Follow us on Instagram for even more app/art mashups and lots of puppy pictures!)

We already shared these on facebook,  but thought you might like to see them here too:

And, just because she's irresistible, here are a few recent pics of Mabel for your viewing pleasure!

Painted Piano

One of the projects we were most anxious to tackle after moving into our new home was painting our old piano!

We only felt confident attempting this because we had gotten the piano for free from a coworker of my husband's who was moving, we knew from our piano tuner that the piano was not an expensive one, and it was not an heirloom.  I don't recommend this project for expensive pianos!

My husband first did some sanding to roughen up the veneer.  He used his paint sprayer and we asked Sherwin Williams for their advice on what kind of paint to use.  They recommended a tough primer and   a semi gloss trim and door paint for the color.

I love how it turned out!

The color is Sherwin Williams "Drizzle" and it's the same color we used on our front door, the panels of our garage door and studio barn doors, and the insets of our dining room ceiling.  Some of the following instagrammed photos make the color appear more green than it really is, but you get the idea!

I've begun adding pops of orange into our blue and grey color scheme, so I found this orange metal vase on clearance at Gordmans!  The "Home" blocks are part of our line, "This Thing Called Family" and can be purchased here.  I recovered the seat cushion with a cool green, blue and grey leopard print upholstery fabric that I was able to get with a 40% off coupon from Hobby Lobby!

Here are some short videos of the piano painting process:
Here are a few photos of the same "Drizzle" color in other areas of our home.
Garage Doors:

Studio Barn Doors:

Dining Room Ceiling:

Front Door:

If you're interested in even more house, puppy, family and art photos, follow us on Instagram!  Our user name is ThingsWithWings.

We Love a Good Quote

Made this quote using the Rhonna Designs iphone app and Instagram.  The background is a photo I took of a recent art project. The swatch of paint was still drying and the brushstrokes really stood out because it was in that in-between stage and it  just looked so rich, so I snapped a photo!  Now with the instagram editing, it kind of looks like one of those popular chalkboard backgrounds!   I'm sure I'll be using this background again!

You can follow us on instagram here if you're interested!   If you're a puppy lover, you'll get a kick out of all the pics of our new, 7 week old mini goldendoodle, Mabel!  We're all in love with her and she's a good little girl!