Month: November 2020

Christmas ornaments

/ B / Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Hope you all are at least TRYING to have a Happy Thanksgiving, in spite of all the crazy in our country right now. I’m going to miss our annual trip to the theater this year. Since my daughter was 3 or so, we’ve gone out to eat on Thanksgiving and then to a movie. All of the theaters here have been closed since March, so no movie this year. Our plan is to go to Country Bob’s, which is a local restaurant with a really great buffet and then probably home to Netflix… of course, I’ll be painting while watching TV.

Very seldom do I just sit and watch television anymore, I’m almost always doing some sort of craft, painting, drawing or researching the next thing I plan to craft, paint or draw. LOL

The past couple weeks I’ve been working on ornaments, trying to get as many of them up and listed on our Etsy store as possible before Black Friday, or at the very least before Cyber Monday hits since we’re an online only store right now. I’m also having to take a break from creative stuff to work on lesson plans for my daughter- who is going to start homeschooling in December- the school here just went “hybrid learning” for Covid and she wasn’t interested in doing that, so we decided to just homeschool- at least until the end of the school year.

Anyway, I’ve managed to get a few of these listed, a couple of them have been sold already- (Thank you Carina and Momma!) I have more to finish up and post in the next couple days.

So if you want to go check them out, they are here:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/CordesFarmLLC
Look for the “Ornaments” section on the site.


The prices vary by size mostly. Some of them were on the smaller side of 2″, I grouped those in 3 packs, so you get 3 little ornaments for $15. Some of the bigger individual ones come with a free organic cherry chapstick that I made a few weeks ago. The ornaments are almost all different, some are very Christmas-y looking, others are just countryside or barn scenes. I did a couple with the Northern lights, the larger of those has been sold already. Since they are wood and I didn’t want them to stink like fresh paint, I put a drop of peppermint oil on the backs of them. Now my whole living room smells like a candy cane. I guess there are worse things it could smell like with 3 dogs. 😉

Happy Holidays friends, stay safe out there.

-B

Alley Mill

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Thanks to Covid I’ve been able to drag my daughter on nature adventures on her days off school, since every other form of entertainment is currently closed/off limits/frowned upon, etc. Our theatre has been closed since March, there were no parades or festivals this year. 😦
We have to be careful to find bathrooms before we go on trails, because most of the state park restrooms and facilities are still shut down, but the parks and trails give us something to do on what would be otherwise another day in front of video games or the tv. – which I am both thoroughly sick of. If I stay home and go outside, I feel like I need to be working in the yard or garden, so I have to get out and get away if I’m to just relax.

I’m not a fan of crowds and some of the parks are quite a bit busier than I like them right now (Elephant Rocks and Johnson’s Shut Ins have been INSANE this year), but Alley Mill is less exciting, so therefore less busy than the more popular parks. It’s a few miles outside of Eminence, Missouri along the Ozark National Scenic Riverways park. This includes the Current River and Echo Bluff which is another of our favorite places to go, especially in summer. We didn’t go tour the mill because we had our puppy in tow and you can’t take animals into state run buildings- or so the signs said. We did go walk the nature trail that circles behind the mill and along the spring for about 1/4 mile before looping back to the parking lot.

I’ve seen SO many pictures of this place on photography forums and Missouri parks forums that I follow and after seeing it in person, I understand why. The mill makes for impressive photographs, especially if you have good light ( I didn’t, it was too bright and my photos look washed out because of it) and can capture the deep red of the mill against the spring’s turquoise water. Yes, the water IS actually that color in person, I did not ramp the color way up in these pictures AND they were taken in mid-day in full sun! There were some cool little caves along the path, though not for human exploration. They were gathering up a big group of horses for a trail ride when we first arrived. We stopped to look at the hoof-prints in the mud on the way out and chat with a couple whose toddler wanted to pet Bowie.

The trails were pretty calm, there’s lots to look at, if you want a quiet little daytrip with lots of photo ops, I’d highly recommend it. If you have busy toddlers that like to run from you like the couple at the end, I would recommend keeping them strapped to you on the trail- it’s high up, narrow and the water below is running VERY fast over some rather large boulders underneath. You don’t want to have to swim for your kid (or dog!) in it.

I recently did a painting of the one of the pictures I took on a saw blade. You can see it on Etsy here:

Acrylic saw blade painting of Alley Mill

https://www.etsy.com/listing/891211240/alley-mill-springs-on-antique-handsaw
It’s of that same iconic shot below the mill that all the photographers like to take.

My daughter loves to visit anyplace with water. Have any recommendations for us in Missouri? We’d love your suggestions!

-B

New art available!

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I have two new sawblades now available on Etsy. This first, I’ve already posted about, it’s my wild turkey painting on an antique handsaw, you can see it on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/889423336/wild-turkeys-antique-painted-handsaw

The second is a winter snow scene of a child adding the final touches to a snowman as big as she is. The inspiration for this painting actually came from this photo, that I have available on Fine Art America:
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/snowgirl-belinda-cordes.html

My daughter was only about two here, she refused to wear gloves that day because she wanted to feel the snow. Look how red her little fingers are! (BTW, don’t judge. I didn’t let her get so cold it hurt her. We went in and warmed up with hot chocolate after) She loves snow, she still loves snow and doesn’t miss an opportunity to get out and play in it. She still doesn’t want to wear her gloves. 🙂



The painting that this photo inspired is available on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/903516457/building-a-snowman-painting-on-antique


I included my pre-sketch in the Etsy photos for this one too. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s fun to get a little insight into the artist’s process and how they came up with what they made. The house in the distance in the painting is loosely based on my Great Grandma’s place in Clifton Hill, Missouri. We visited there several times when I was a kid. I can remember the inside of the house better than the outside and I didn’t have any photos of it, so it’s hard to draw from memory after not seeing it for many many years. I did get on Google Earth and looked, but unfortunately the street view wasn’t great and the satellite photos from above were new enough that the house had already been torn down in them. 😦

My daughter suggested my next one be of coyotes, so I’ll start working up a sketch for that one this evening. Please share with friends and let me know what you think!

-B

Turkeys

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New painting from sketch to finish. (Pardon the color being off and the seam on the saw- I patched two pictures together to get it all in up close. I tested my Black-eyed Susans out on the sketch paper also. Wasn’t sure how to paint them at first to get the look I wanted.
Have to let this cure for a few days, seal it and then it will be available on our Etsy shop at Cordes Farm. I think my next project is going to be a snow scene. Another challenge, I haven’t yet had the experience of working with white scenes in acrylic, only colored pencil. I’m almost wondering if that one would be easier in oil. Even though the drying thing makes me nuts…