Tag: home decor

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100 Year Old Barn Windows


It’s a glorious day to be Refind Creations when I get to drive in the pouring buckets of rain to get some barn windows from a barn built in the late 1800s!
After two days of back and forth messaging with a sweet lady we finally connected and made a plan for me to head out on my lunch hour about ten miles north. Such a beautiful drive into Whatcom County where acres of land surround old and new farms, berry farms, flower nurseries, silos and cows.
She told me to meet her at the big white hay barn. As if I know which one that might be. I pulled into a homestead with this giant barn filled with brand new windows. If I was storing hay I think that’s where I’d put it. She comes out in the downpour well dressed for such delightful conditions in her rubber boots and rain slicker. The high winds push blonde wisps over her cheeks. And she has a huge smile and a kindness I think only farmers exude.
I step out into the muck trying to hold my baggy scrub pants above my tennis shoes and she tells me to back up to the hay barn. Apparently the other white barn that looks like where you might feed baby cows – or an old milk parlor. I told her I wouldn’t know a hay barn from a hole in the ground.
A barn is a barn to me. Beautiful, rustic, full of old stories and lives gone before us. A work of Art. A labor of love. A necessary part of a farmer life.
She shakes my hand as I again attempt to hold my pant legs out of the mud and the wind whips my hood off so my bangs get drenched and stick to my forehead.
She shows me the different sizes and I pick four that will be great for a project I have in mind. They are filthy and layered in years of dusty cobwebs that I find disturbing but she’s wearing gloves and gets them into my trunk safely.
I tell her I passed the house on the way there where I got piles of dahlias just a few months ago and that soon her windows will merge with her neighbors dahlia petals into my art. She likes that concept a lot and I’m glad.
I head back to work feeling blessed to drive out and meet her and to know I have four windows on history to Refind. It’s a beautiful day!

Windows to the past. How many days spent taking in light as the farmer mucked. How many sunrises reflected from their panes? How many sunsets let the last drops of sunlight in on her? How many windowpanes replaced after a nor’easter blew? How many hours and days and years of hard work, memories, sweat, and worry passed by the windows of the hundred year old barn leaving bittersweet idyllic treasures of times gone by?

Petals as Paint- designed by nature. Refind by me!
©Belindabotzong2018

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Translucence

Petals as Paint has transformed into stained glass effect. This one is magical. There are rose petals sunset clouds over trees made from elderberry blooms. A pretty field of blue hydrangea and a hedge of peegee hydrangea petals creates a peaceful scene between two panes of glass – like looking out a kitchen window as the summer sun sets in a blaze of glory. Framed in distressed wood this would look amazing hanging in a window with the sunlight shining through opaque glass. Be still my heart.
There is a lamp behind to give the effect of what it will look like if hung in a window

©Belindabotzong2018
This one will go in Etsy store – search Refind Creations and order the original for $125. There is no other art so natural as Petals as Paint

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Petals as Paint

The thing I like about art is that 20 people can be given the same exact supplies and be told to do what they will
And 20 different designs will be created!
I was thinking about this as I develop my Petals as Paint technique. It started with picking up seaglass and thinking that scanning it on my printer/scanner would be a cool way to save the look of it rather than photography.
The first scan got me hooked on the idea because if I just took a picture I wouldn’t see the intricacy of a little pile of glass and shells and coral. And I especially wouldn’t see the grains of sand and little debris that surrounds it. It was so magical to me. I started scanning leaves and sticks and all manner of found objects. I fell in love with that degree of detail!
Last spring I started scanning flowers and petals and blossoms and stems.. oh that first scan nearly made me cry. It was so beautiful to see the intricacies of creation and I couldn’t then just throw them out! So I started preserving them. I pressed them the only way I knew– between pages in the Children’s Encyclopedia. That works great most of the time but I didn’t like how long it took. So I read about microwaving. That works instantly and a majority turn out beautifully preserved in color. It reminded me of paint. It’s time consuming but it’s beautiful but not for every flower. And I learned about silica. I tried a little container and it preserves them in their original shape beautifully. So I got a big airtight bucket and more and more silica and soon I was using that bucket for weeks and the petals reminded me of paint strokes. And that made me think.. what if I used the petals as paint? I don’t have my children’s gift of painting with acrylic.. but the petals come in so many hues and shades with little details already built in. All I’d have to do is find a way to stick them on a substrate and arrange them how I want, thus led me to my battle with adhesives! (See an earlier post about that!!!).
So over the past few months this has been my joyous attempt at art. Each one becomes my favorite! And I am hoping they become other people’s favorite!

And now I hope you’ll visit Whatcom Art Market in Bellingham WA to see the originals or go online and shop for products with my designs at society6.com/refindcreations or in my Etsy store which is under construction!!
©Belindabotzong2018
To find the very best adhesives at the best price – I recommend the following:


Acrylic Medium Glossy https://amzn.to/2LCuLsd
Mod Podge https://amzn.to/2RjZ8sU
Krylon Spray Adhesive https://amzn.to/2BMfRLC

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Works in Process—Lilies of the Field

I’m inspired to play in the petals for a few more weeks before turning back to working on my novel idea and waiting for my palette to be refilled with fresh “paints”!
Here’s what’s in process right now … along with a few more 4×4 Christmas themed tiles coming up next.


So fun!

©Belindabotzong2018
This one looks like the beginnings of Christmas ornaments dangling.

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Featured Artist

As most people know, I have not led a creative life.  I have led a productive, hard-working, technically (technologically) challenging, and beautiful life, but I have not been known to be an artist in the least.  Accepting this new role in life, at this stage in life, is kind of funny, kind of embarrassing, and kind of weird, I suppose.  We have decided to call it my Renaissance Period!
So, it is with a weird sense of self-deprecating humor that I had to announce that it is my debut as the “Featured Artist” at the Whatcom Art Market this coming week.  I have not embraced the term, “I am an artist”, yet I am thankful for the encouragement of my family and fellow art guild members who acknowledge that I am, indeed, somehow an artist.  My father-in-law and I agree when he says, “You mean people buy this stuff?”  It cracks me up that he says that like my inside voice came out of his mouth.  This “stuff” is Refind Creations, which I invented just over a year ago when I was getting this sudden urge to be creative with things that I found.  Sometimes they were in a junk store (aka Treasure Store!).  Sometimes they were just random objects I found or had laying around that suddenly seemed as if they could totally function as something entirely different than what they had originally been created to be.  Like me!  I was, I thought, just created to do really technical things in the medical field, while of course being compassionate and caring with my patients.  It takes little creativity to use a computer to do diagnostic imaging, though some people think there is an art to the science.  It is more rigid than that.
Anyway, about a year ago I decided to join the Whatcom Art Guild.  I remember that first meeting when I had to stand up and introduce myself and announce to the other members what kind of art I did.  And I fumbled that because I said I had no idea what kind of art I did, but that I was wanting to explore the possibility of being creative.  To that point I had taken a pile of old insulators and turned them into candles.  That was about as creative as I had been besides finger painting with my children when they were little and admiring their true artistic talents that fill my home even now with their beauty.
And now my Renaissance is in full swing.  I have two canvases for sale at Hair Art Studio in Bellingham.  And … Over the past several months I have created many things from found objects, I have scanned into the computer, dried, pressed, and preserved about a ton of flowers that now inspire me to “paint with petals”, and it seems a bit surreal that I am now going to be “Featured Artist”, where I am not only selling my creations in the Whatcom Art Market, but indeed I am going to demonstrate this technique I invented and let others try their hand at being creative, too!  It just might surprise them to know that they, too, are artists!
I have added many of my creations, most of which are scanned flowers, petals, and many items found in nature, to my “storefront” on Society6, a website that let’s artists like me make their creations available in home décor and many other useful items.  Enjoy!  I hope you can come out to the Whatcom Art Market next Saturday, November 17, from 11am-2pm and see if you, too, are feeling creative!
https://society6.com/Refindcreations

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Petals as Paint Peaceful

My heart is happy with this work in progress from my Petals as Paint collection.
A collage of dahlias, hydrangea and elderberry — this creates a peaceful scene on a breezy day. A mist creates a foggy field beneath a periwinkle sky. A place of solace. Two trees stand in tranquility amidst a golden meadow.
Petals as Paint on burlap canvas.
©Belindabotzong2018

Thank you Diane Kindle and Nancy Craig for the flowers and thank you Lord Jesus for letting me Refind your perfect creations.

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Sunburst Sold!!

So happy that Sunburst found a new home! Lovely couple from Seattle came in to Whatcom Art Market and loved the unique design painted with petals from dahlia and black eyed Susan. Made my heart happy ❤️
©Belindabotzong2018
Society6.com/Refindcreations

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Dahlia Petals as Paint

The beauty of the dahlia has captured my imagination. The color wheel is built right in – reds and yellows, purples with white, and all manner of pinks and orange that create a beautiful palette for Painting with Petals.
I discovered a new adhesive. You all know I suffer from adhesions – sometimes getting glued to my own self. This is acrylic medium glossy and I loved it. Some change in the petals occurred after this photo but much less than using a water based adhesive.
It’s going into a frame and will be available at Whatcom Art Market tomorrow morning. An explosion of Fireworks Dahlia

©Belindabotzong2018