Portrait with Sarah

I had a great time this past weekend photographing with my good friend Sarah and her two puppy dogs.  Yes we call them puppies even if they are old and gray.  We went out to Hobbs woods which has tons of great walking trails and we discovered is the place to go for fall portraits.  The colors were amazing and there are so many different spots to do photography.  But since that is one of the only places here that allows you bring your dog, everybody, their grandma, and their dog were there.  Fortunately we were able to find a couple great places to photograph that didn't have other people around which allowed Ashley and Hunter to calm down and allowed me to get some beautiful shots.  Here are some of my favorite shots of the day. 

Mirrors

Over the summer I worked on a couple painting projects for when I have my own place again.  One project I've been wanting to do for a while is painting the frames of a bunch of mirrors to later hang as a collage.  I bought 8 mirrors in different sizes and shapes and painted them three different colors.  I might add more mirrors later but I thought 8 was a good start.  It was fun trying to find different mirrors but I had the most luck at Goodwill and found all the mirrors there.

I started by taping off the edges of the mirror with a painters tape.  There are a variety of ways you could attack this project, you could remove the mirrors, tape them off, use a scrapper to scrape the paint off later, or just paint really carefully.  I would suggest sanding the surface of the frame a little bit as well to help the primer stick.  I prefer painting with a brush but you could use a spray primer too.  I primed all of the frames with two coats and let them dry over night. 

After the primer dried, I painted the frames in black, turquoise, and chartreuse. I painted them each a couple coats until the finish was nice and even.  To give the frames a little more depth I painted watered down black paint onto the colored frames and wiped it off with a rag.  This leaves the black paint in the carved areas making the raised areas pop out (see below). 

Let the paint dry, remove the tape or scrape off the paint on the mirrors and you have gorgeous refurbished mirrors to hang on the wall.  Most of the furniture I own is hand me downs or bought second hand so to give things a personality and a new life is important to me.  I can't wait to hang these up in my own place someday soon.