Ask Kayla Q&A Round 1

Here are the questions to the questions that you awesome blog readers left me. Let me know if you have any additional questions!

April Oaks said...Hey Kayla! What is your favorite art piece you've created?

Oh my gosh! That is a hard question! I create so many different pieces of art from photography to graphic design to painting to cardmaking to scrapbooking and just about anything else you can think of! I practically have a new favorite piece of art every week!

I'd have to say that the art piece that I am most proud of would be my college portfolio from design school. I spent two very long and hard years at school every day working hard to create the pieces that are in my design portfolio. I love graphic design so much. It's a talent that God has given to me and I love to use it for His glory every day. I am so thankful that I was able to go to school and learn how to be a graphic designer. And I am still learning new things every day! I spent two years creating these various design pieces and I spent several weeks putting my portfolio together for graduation. God really blessed me in school. Several of my pieces received awards at the Annual Portfolio and Art Show, I was the only one in my class to graduate with highest honors (4.0 GPA) from my school, I was given the 2007 Portfolio of the Year award out of all the students at my school and I was awarded Meritorious Recognition for Student of the Year in Art & Design out of all the private colleges in Colorado! I am so blessed to have this talent and I love what I do!

These are several pictures of my college portfolio that I had set out at my graduation party just over a year ago. Almost all of these pieces can be viewed on my website as well as all of my new designs: Spink Studio




April F said...Hey Kayla!! I am thinking about getting a new printer, I love to scrapbook, make cards, and invitations and stuff, but I am still using an HP all in one printer from high school, like 7 years ago (wow I am getting old). And with your line of work you must use a great printer...so what is your suggestion??!!

Hey, April! I bought a Epson Stylus Photo 1400 a year ago and I LOVE it! I use it almost everyday. It has six ink cartridges, so you only need to replace the ones that are needed and it uses Claria Hi-Definition ink which prints beautifully. The ink cartridges are a little pricey (about $20 each) but they seem to last for a long time and I don't feel like I am replacing them very often. I print all of my scrapbook pages, Etsy stationary, client proofs and photographs on this printer. It is wonderful. I also recommend the Epson Premium Photo Paper in 13x19. That is what I use to print my scrapbook pages and they come out beautiful!




lisa frith said...what is your inspiration to create? is it a color, a shape, a mood? just curious ... your talents span a range of things, so i'm just curious!

Hi, Lisa! I hope you're enjoying some good sweet tea down south! We miss you here!

I had to think about this one. Really, the biggest influence on me is definitely other artists and designers! I LOVE Google Reader and I subscribe to over 150 blogs of other artists, photographers, designers and friends! I am so inspired by other artists and they give me the courage to try new things! I am always getting new ideas and inspiration. Here are a couple of my favorite websites and blogs that inspire me:

Design & Art:

















































Photography:












































Painting:

















Scrapbooking:























Stamping:

















megs said...when are you going to buy couch number three and come see me? :) love you babe, oh and i'm about to watch calamity jane

My friend, Meghan! I wish I was coming to Dallas this weekend with Clint. But I can't! I must stay here and work to save for the couch. Once we get it, you must come visit and see!



megs said...one more thing... how did you get the name spink studio?

I get asked this question a lot! Spink Studio is a totally original name. When I first came up with my company name, it was Scallop Pink, Ink. My business cards and logo had a very cute scallop edge and were all very pink as you can see in the logo. I also used ink instead of inc as a play on Incorporated. For short, the initials were, SPInk. I went a whole year with it being Scallop Pink, Ink all while having the world's most confusing URL (www.scalloppinkink.com). In June of 2007, I officially switched the name to Spink Studio and rebranded my company with the more sophisticated Spink Studio logo. I launched my website, www.spinkstudio.com last August and have had great success!



Thanks for all the questions! We'll have to do this again soon!

The First Paintings

I know you all have been waiting to see what I did with all those paint supplies I bought! Let's just say that I am in love with my new hobby! I have lots of new ideas filling my head.

Here is my first "experimental" painting. This one is for my totally amazing friend, Meghan who is currently in Europe without me...so it will have to be a late birthday present! I totally played on this one and I tried a whole bunch of different stuff. I laid down a thick texture of gel medium and let that dry overnight. Then I painted the dark pink color in the upper right hand corner. Once that dried, I laid down the word "LOVE" in sticker letters. Then I had fun painting over it. I also decoupaged one of my favorite verses from Ephesians that talks about love onto the canvas and painted over it. I also added drips and splatters. Once the paint dried, I gently peeled off the sticker letters. It was so fun and I was able to try a bunch of stuff on one canvas.



My good friend, Deanna watched me paint the whole LOVE canvas, so she decided that she needed to come over and have a painting day with me. So this Tuesday, she came over and painted a beautiful yellow and white paisley canvas for her new home. While she did that, I worked on my first collection for my house.



I had an empty space above my towel rack in my guest bathroom, so I wanted to paint something green to go above it. When I found a huge paisley stencil at Hobby Lobby, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it! I bought 4 8x10 canvases and painted them all black. Once they dried, I laid the paisley stencil on top of all four of them and I slathered over it with a thick coat of gel medium to create a raised paisley pattern. After it dried overnight, I brushed four different coats of green over it while still exposing some of the black. It looked perfect with my green paisley towels! Don't you think!?!



Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be happy to answer them! Now to think up my next project...

Here We Go...a New Hobby!

Do I need another hobby? NO! But do I want to start one? YES! As you can see, I just bought a bunch of supplies to start a new hobby. I have been wanted to start painting for quite awhile, but I have had no time until now.

Clint and I moved into our rent house three months ago. We love having a house, but the sad thing about this house is that all the walls are white! Yuck! And Clint and I LOVE color...bright colors! So, because we don't want to spend the time and money to repaint the whole house (especially if we won't be staying in here for very long) we decided that we would look for large pieces of artwork that were brightly colored and that we could use in our next place. Well, Clint and I have a very picky style and we could not find anything that we really loved that was in our price range. So I said forget it! I am just going to paint something myself!

Although I have lots of scrapbooks, cards, design, photography and crochet projects that I could be working on, I have decided to paint instead. Thanks to my good friends Christa and Katja who gave me advice about what to buy, and lots of inspiration and video tutorials from the awesome Donna Downey, I went out and bought supplies this weekend and started my first project! I am just about finished with it and will be posting here on my blog later this week. It has been so fun and freeing and I am looking forward to creating lots of original works of art for our home.

Painting

Clint and I are still working on getting settled into our new home. We love being able to spread out all of our junk among rooms instead of having to cram it all into a bedroom. One of the first upgrades that we did to the house was repaint the shutters. As you can see above, they REALLY needed it! Clint spent his whole day off from school on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day sanding and repainting them. They look soooo much better now!

The house looks about 10 times cuter on the outside than it did before! Sorry, I don't have an after picture. You'll just have to come over and see for yourself!

After we got the shutters painted, we spent two whole Saturdays (note to self: painting red takes about 5 coats of paint) repainting the kitchen. As you can see in the photo below, there was one wall in the kitchen that was an ugly brownish red color. Whoever had painted it before did a very poor job and I had to go back and touch up the ceiling and baseboard with white. Then we painted all of the walls in the kitchen with a much brighter and fun color of red! We love how it pops with our new black kitchen table!

Our friend Eric came over the first Saturday and while he was helping, he left his mark on our kitchen.

It looks so cute now! I'll post some more photos of it next!