Although there is a large majority of the time that I go through life completely brain-dead, every once in awhile I do get a little crafty. My latest creative outlet has been designing blogs. I like doing this because you get immediate results and it’s usually not very messy. It’s so fun taking the ideas for beautiful web pages out of my head and turning them into something people can actually use. Very satisfying.

Before I learned how to design blogs (and I use the term “learned” very loosely here, since I know how to do about five things in html and the rest I make my husband help me with) I used my creative juices to paint. I haven’t made anything in a while, but I used to keep myself busy making custom name and letter prints. On the left is a 5″x7″ painted canvas with a wooden letter glued on top. My girls each have one of these with the first letter of their name hanging on their bedroom door. I love making these for gifts, and I even had a few people pay me to create something unique for their child. Here are a couple of the canvases I was paid to paint:

And here’s another of my favorites (sparkly!) that I made for my friend’s baby shower:

It’s just so fulfilling to me to start with a blank white canvas and fill it with something that the recipient would find special and meaningful. I like that something I created will be hanging on someone’s wall, that they’ll look at it and love it every day. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.