It's a Ballard Knock Off from The Answer is Chocolate!

Hello all! Happy Monday! I will be in and out of blog land this week...

My sweet Ranger Danger is not doing well and I owe it to him to spend this extra time with him and take him to the vet and see if we can figure out what is wrong. This pooch has already had at least 9 lives...but I am hoping for some more. I am however realistic...so if any of you have already gone through the loss of a pet with little kiddos and have some advice, please feel free to email me.

However...I have pure awesomeness planned for you!

Tomorrow I will be posting a new coffee-loving giveaway

Later this week is a donut extravaganza

and TODAY is

Ballard Knock off Fabulousness from The Answer is Chocolate.

I love this post for 2 reasons:

Ballard has been one of my favorites FOREVER

and 

Carol from The Answer is Chocolate is Amazing!

So, I will stop babbling and get to it!

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A big chocolate-y hello to all of Holly's followers here at 504 Main! I'm Carol and I blog over at The Answer Is Chocolate where I combine my addiction to crafts and creativity with my addiction to: you guessed it...chocolate!  I was tickled pink that Holly invited me over to guest post my version of a Ballard Designs piece of wall art.

I have the condition called : ICTMTM ( I Can Totally Make That Myself) . You may know it as
"Inspired By-itis"  or find yourself afflicted with "Knock Off Fever". I think all of us creative types have it in some form or another.

I had fun with my first real knock off piece that even got featured over at Copy Cat Crafts, it emboldened me to try again. I may have exhausted my skills!

This time, the inspiration came from Ballard Designs. Both in their current catalog and on their website they have several pieces of abstract art, either paintings or digitally printed glicee prints…and they range from $249 to$459. GULP. I can’t draw to save my life but these aren’t still lifes they’re abstract so no one can tell me that my apple looks like a pumpkin.

I liked these from Ballard:

because even though our house isn’t contemporary, these are really muted and I think they go with many styles. And they’re $249-$429!

So, I had a canvas (previous DIY art) that had been hanging up that I was tired of, and I had paint, and I even had some Golden Gel Medium molding paste that I bought for reasons that weren’t clear to me at the time. I think an art store was closing. I do things like that. I know I'll use it someday.

I covered the whole thing in black paint, then smudged ( sorry all you Fine Arts people whom I do truly respect) some of the Gel Medium goop all over with a plastic knife. Dried that overnight. Then I started splotching ( another technical term) various paints on. I used a combination of pewters, silver, grey, black, white, gold. Whatever I had wherever it went. Added some silver rub n buff in places.

Closeup of the layering of molding paste and paints

Another closeup from another section

And that's that! I had fun with it which I think is a requirement for any project but I won't lie...I was nervous whether my followers would think I'd had one too many chocolate chips but they liked it and I hope you do too and aren't afraid to just go for it when you feel yourself coming down with a bout of ICTMTM. Thanks so much Holly for having me over! 

Carol,

Head Chocolatier, The Answer is Chocolate!