WELL DONE BLOG

Faux-Batik

2018-11-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a project that can be done with kids in the style of African Batik. It is so easy to do!.

Step1. Draw a picture with pencil on any cotton fabric

Step2. Go over the lines they drew with Elmer Blue Gel Blue, let dry.

Step3. Paint over the design with Watered down acrylic paint, let dry.

Step4. Soak fabric in warm water for 15 minutes and then scrub the glue out!

Voila you have a design that mimics authentic batik and is durable. They key to making it beautiful is to use dark saturated colors and to have at least one neutral color ( I used the blue gray for this)

Check out my fine art website- https://anneviggianofineart.wordpress.com/ and send me a message- I can give you other auction project ideas!

Eiffel Tower through the gates. Paris

2018-11-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant. -Honore' de Balzac
This picture is telling me something. I need to pass through this gate in 2010.
-R

Peppermint Ping-Pong Paddles

2013-12-04T15:28:00.002-08:00

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is when my family gathers with good friends for the annual "Chez Zinn Ping-Pong Tournament." The competition is fierce. Seriously, some of these guys could play for the Chinese National Team. This year Charlie, the guy pictured on the right and one hell of a Ping-Pong player, decided to bake Peppermint Ping-Pong Paddle Cookies (note the mold he designed and built in the lower right corner) as a pre-tourney snack. They were delicious and, btw, he and his partner won the tourney--now I'm wondering what was in those cookies, hmmm.

Great presentation. Check-out the homemade mold.

Michael and Charlie enjoy the paddle cookies.

Mom's bookshelves

2013-11-16T14:46:00.001-08:00

Ya know how bookcases become a sloppy holding place for old books and dust? Not at Mom's house-she organizes hers by color and interweaves plants, sculptures and art- what a pleasing view-

Well Done Bookcase, Mom!

Oh Halloween, how you make me laugh!

2013-11-05T23:09:00.001-08:00

Walter is Everywhere

2013-10-31T11:39:00.003-07:00

Jack O'Lantern and Stingy Jack, The Story

2013-10-31T08:55:00.000-07:00

Origins of Jack O'Lantern

An Irish tale tells us where the origins of the name Jack o'lantern came from. There once was a man named Jack who liked to play tricks on people. He lived a long, mischievous life.

One day he tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved the image of a Holy Cross in the trunk of the tree. This trapped the Devil up the tree.

Jack made a deal with the Devil that: he would let the Devil down the tree, if the Devil promised to never tempt him again.

After Jack died, he was not permitted into Heaven because of his evil ways. He was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the Devil. The devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the freezing blackness. This flame was put inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing.

As Jack walked his neverending journey as punishment for his trickery, he carried a burning coal inside a turnip to help him see along the roads everywhere he traveled. Soon he was known as "Jack of the lantern" or Jack O'Lantern.

In Ireland, turnips were used as their Jack's lanterns originally. However, immigrants to America, found pumpkins more plentiful than turnips. The Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

Excerpted from jackolanterns.net

Wicked

2013-10-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

Out for my daily walk and…lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Ghoulish Graveyards

2013-10-28T14:23:00.002-07:00

Pumpkin Shopping at Trader Joe's

2013-10-24T14:19:00.004-07:00

So many great choices.

Cocktails for Two

2013-10-22T20:04:00.002-07:00

We LOVE Halloween and promise to bring you the best in local decor and costumes for the next week and a half.

Art Heals

2013-10-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to the folks who purchase the art that is on display at the University of Washington Hospital Main Campus (UWMC). I visit my AMAZING headache doctor there every three to six months and look forward to walking the corridors and checking out the new pieces. Here's a little of what I saw on display this week.

Untitled (Cherry Tree) by Errol Etienne, 1995

The artist was in Seattle in 1995 for a liver transplant at UWMC. He trained at the Art Center School of Design in L.A.

The UWMC Art Program and Suze Woolf presents

Inspired By Zion

Watercolors created during an Artist-in-Residency at Zion National Park in 2012

My (almost) open letter to Miley

2013-10-14T20:53:00.001-07:00

I started writing a letter to Miley today... it was time. I've been thinking about her. Also I was thinking, "Maybe this will be the post that gets 1 million hits!" Wait, I'm no better than the music industry pigs--I too want to use Miley for my own selfish needs. So I put it to rest. Then, later in the day, I read what Gloria Steinem had to say on the matter and I knew that Glo, in her wisdom, deserved the final word on our blog.

I don't think Miley's VMA performance was a feminist set-back. "I wish we didn't have to be nude to be noticed...But given the game as it exists, women make decisions. For instance, the Miss America contest is, in all of its states...the single greatest source of scholarship money for women in the United States. If a contest based on only appearance was the single greatest source of scholarship money for men, we would be saying, "This is why China wins." You know? It's ridiculous. But that's the way the culture is. I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists."

We need to stop blaming Miley and change the culture. Thanks Gloria.

well done quest for beauty- in a dump.

2013-10-10T08:36:00.001-07:00

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-the-first-54-seconds-that-s-all-i-ask-you-ll-be-hooked-after-that-i-swear?g=2

Old car colors were sooooo much better.

2013-09-24T16:29:00.001-07:00

I saw all of these hip vehicles around Seattle in the past few months... I wish modern cars weren't so over the top with bad colors, ubiquitous silver metallics and high sheens - these soft lustrous colors look great with out all that reflective shimmer...

Well Done Street Art, Wallingford

2013-09-20T13:08:00.001-07:00

Wow!! I drove over this today and had to stop the car! It's an amazing neighborhood effort to beautify their street-

So inspiring! Turn east off of Latona on 60th to see it-

Found on FB- our motto exactly-

2013-09-13T07:46:00.001-07:00

Okay Fite, Bring it!

2013-09-11T18:25:00.001-07:00

Tetherball! Wow, serious memory flashback. I played this game EVERY DAY during recess at Devon Elementary with Suzanne Knapp, Claudia Kerschner, and Carolyn Fite. Fite was the best, feisty and determined, but I could hold my own against her.

Today I was out for my regular walk and came across this--a street signpost and the surrounding turf converted into a tetherball court. Brilliant. Well Done--it's good to be back.

Don't go to sketchy malls.

2013-09-11T07:31:00.002-07:00

My first real memory of jeans was hating their stiffness ,their funky sewed on 80's lookin patches on the knees, and the fact that I couldn't really do cartwheels and splits in them.
My first memory of loving jeans was in high school (this was the early 90's) when friends and I would buy men jeans, go down to the basement, rip them up, pour bleach on them and put them in the dryer. We would sit on the pool table and wait patiently for them to come out, creating acid wash boyfriend jeans before such a thing existed in the fashion world. We'd promptly put them on and do the classic tight ankle roll at the bottom( remember the fold and roll?) .
It was imperative that the jeans were big, ripped, bleached and that we wore white Reebok sneakers with slouchy socks and a big Champion sweatshirt- That was the uniform in my NY town - rebellious, yet not.
I can still remember sitting in class with the bleach smell wafting....

Between then and now I have had some love affairs with some late 90's Gap Jeans, the Lucky Brand, and a brand called Delia's ( they sells jeans for women with curves) that required a trip to a sketchy mall where we ended up being caught up in a mall shooting. I am not kidding. I don't wear them anymore.

So, here I am in 2013. I turned 40 this past summer. Life is good! Except I was in a serious jean depression. Everything looked terrible.
In the background sound track of the past year, I have heard a friend often saying, you are a 'catherine boyfriend jeans' kinda girl ( by Kut from the Kloth) I mean, she has said this literally a thousand times. I kept ignoring, why? I don't know. I think it's the fact that you have to come around to some things on your own. I went to her house on Saturday night and she made me try hers on. It was a revelation. They had the tiny bit of stretch, good coverage but not 'mom jeans', great color, great shape and then I danced and felt a cartwheel coming on. They had the essence of the 90's man jeans, the sexiness of the lucky brand jeans, the color of the gap jeans all wrapped up in one pair of jeans. TADA!!!

Lessons learned, listen to your friends & don't go to sketchy malls.

Dahlia's at Volunteer Park-

2013-09-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

Wow..today I stopped by Volunteer Park to see the Dahlia Garden-

There are so many varieties it's mind blowing- if you have 30 mins and you live in Seattle you might consider having a look this week-

They're right near the conservatory- across the lawn. Prepare for major aaaahs and oooohs like fireworks!

Well Done Revival.

2013-09-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hi y'all-

It's been a while since i posted anything here- I'm not sure why- I think it's because when Rebecca and I started this blog we were in a work slump or sorts and needed to revive our creative selves and prime the pump.

Well, it worked- Rebecca's event planning business is booming and I have never been more busy with mine. We are in performance mode now.

This is good for many reasons, except one important one.

Hi! We missed you!

I am forgetting to stop and smell the roses. I am traveling at the speed of light and haven't sat and stopped and looked around to see beauty, truly see it, in a long time.

It's what this blog was all about.

We have had 76000 visits to this blog since we started, 1000 visits per month even though we haven't posted since December. This says to me that others are feeling the same.

Hey Rebecca, you in for a revival??

Anne

Hulihe'e Palace

2012-12-23T11:34:00.001-08:00

A summer home palace for Hawaiian Queens & Kings.
This is my new "happy place".

An elegant palace that is 2000 sqft . It has tall ceilings, deep, big window wells lined with Koa wood and big porches looking out on the perfect ocean view. The top porch has a stairway to the lower porch.

I love the exterior colors- and the Victorian elegance amidst the other casual architecture of Kona-

Come see this place if you are ever in Kona- it's a well done mini palace!

Lazy Susan & me

2012-12-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

First off, can someone tell me why this is called a Lazy Susan? I've always wondered. Okay, to the meat of the post. Some things in life just make me happy and I mean really ridiculously happy. One of those things is coming across UNBELIEVABLE vintage items and deals while thrift shopping and another is Lazy Susans. So imagine the joy I felt when my BFF Carol found this baby (see photo) at Value Village Capital Hill yesterday. Yes folks it's a killer Lazy Susan. And there it sits on my dining room table (okay, I want a new vintage 50's table, but that's another story) making every single meal taste so much better.

Steel Door

2012-12-08T10:34:00.001-08:00

Collaboration is pretty awesome-
1.Homeowner saw an inspiration picture
2.Contractor figured out the 'how-to': did the math , cut and pre-drilled 5 sizes of metal shapes, enough pieces for two sides of a 5'x9' door.
3.Expert metal finisher created the multi-layered color , plus an exterior rated lacquer coating on the galvanized steel pieces and also on thousands of screws.
4. Ecstatic designer(me) made a template of how to lay them out
5. Giddy designer (again, me) guided the contractors as they hung the pieces, these guys were great collaborators, willing to give up the creative part of the construction- such professionals.
6. Angels sang.
( ok maybe they were just singing in my head )

5'x9' Pivot Door with Custom Steel Design


halfway thru the first side.

Twin Set

2012-12-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

Does anyone know what's going on with the knitting project at Dahl Park? I sure would like the scoop. I was out walking the other day and "BLAM" there it was: sweaters on a bench, sweaters protecting trees, and my initial dangling from a tree.