It is that time of year when we start to reflect on the year behind us and we make those dreaded resolutions for the year ahead.  We usually start out full of energy and persistence and in many cases will power!  We are committed to making changes in the new year and this year we are going to stick to it by golly!  Hmmm….sound familiar?  So around about February, how many of you are starting to,oh, maybe exercise two times a week instead of three,  or maybe you could have just one chocolate brownie, or maybe it’s ok if we don’t file that paperwork right this minute and just file the pile of paper at the end of the week – I bet this sounds familiar!  All too often we start out with good intentions and excitement only to see them fizzle out in just a few months time.  Well our Deer Valley Manager, Nicole has come up with some great inspiration.  We’ve all heard of the saying – “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”  Well, our manager’s took part in a teambuild towards the end of the year based on just that – everyone has some lemons in their life that could be turned into lemonade – so they took ordinary lemons, decorated them for each other and turned them into lemonade (so to speak). 

Nicole kept her new dressed up lemon on the counter at the studio for inspiriation – it become her lemon-aid so to speak. “Scott gave me the one he made and I put it up at the register. It cracks me up everytime I look at it and a couple customers have inquired as to why there is a very special lemon sitting on the counter and they are pleasantly surprised to hear that our fearless leader made it for us.”  Nicole’s new saying is “When life hands you lemons, decorate them with feathers and glitter!”

Nicole decided to take it one step further and use her “lemon-aid” for a more permanent lemon-aid solution.  She used her dressed up lemon to make this:

It is a reflection of Nicole’s New Year’s Resolution “ It says The Attitude of Gratitude and it’s for my New Year’s Resolution to be thankful for simple pleasures and small treasures.  Instead of numbers, it has words that represent the small things in life to be grateful for (and a nice yellow lemon in the center-my original inspiration). So, when you check the time, you can take a moment to reflect on how grateful you might be for….sunshine, good food, friendship….and the like”

Now that is what we call Making Lemonade outing of Lemons!

Football season is just a few weeks away, with pre-season games already underway.  As You Wish has quite a few samples featuring our very own Arizona Cardinals and ASU Sun Devils and we’ve always thought it was a great idea to paint game day serving accessories to add to your festivities whether you are enjoying the game at home on tv or tailgating at the stadium.  We have one Arizona family who dare we say are Steelers fans!  The Simons family has stopped in to our Deer Valley studio every year for the last five years right around the start of football season.  They paint dishes, mugs, frames etc to reflect their allegiance to the Steelers .  Whenever they get together for the game they bring out their As You Wish dishes full of good food and good cheer!  They were excited to paint the tall beer steins this year.  Now, they do have one family member who is a die hard Arizona Cardinals fan “we accept him anyway”  they say.  They also added one new member to the clan this year who made a 49ers mug “He’s the NEW guy!” 

Our Arizona Cardinals will have their first home game on Sept. 11^th , so whether you are cheering them on our rooting for the other team, plan a painting party at As You Wish to paint up your team spirit and you’ll have the best grid iron grub serving dishes around! 

Who’s your favorite team?  Let us know how you get your game on!

This week’s blog post comes to us from our District Manager, Tyler Willis.  Tyler continues to be involved with our primary charitable partner -Camp Soaring Eagle.  She has been a camp counselor,volunteered at golf tournaments and recently she was part of a Camp Soaring Eagle charity event featuring Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia.  We are proud of Tyler’s volunteer efforts with Camp Soaring Eagle and our own involvement raising funds to send kids to camp through our Tiles For Smiles program.  Here’s a peek at Tyler’s evening raising funds for Camp Soaring Eagle with Julie Powell.

Just over a week ago, I was invited to attend a fundraising dinner at Le Cordon Bleu for Camp Soaring Eagle. The evening consisted of a four course dinner with wine pairings, silent auctions, and an opportunity to meet Julie Powell. My invitation for the evening was to interview Julie!

For those of you who do not know who Julie Powell is, she is the author of Julie and Julia. The book was turned into a major motion picture in 2009 and Julie was the guest of honor that night.

I rushed out Friday and decided that an event like this deserved a new dress, accessories and an appearance by a special pair of shoes, although I had all of these already I took advantage of the situation. When I arrived at Le Cordon Bleu, I was greeted by the members of Camp Soaring Eagle and had a chance to talk with Julie before all of the other guests arrived. It was a calm and relaxed atmosphere which seemed to put everyone is a fantastic mood. There were auction items, book signings and an opportunity to sponsor a child to go to camp. It was so great to see such amazing and wonderful people come together for such a special cause.

After dinner was served, Julie and I hopped on stage and began our chat. It was such an honor and so exciting!! Julie is a down to earth person and so easy to talk to. We could have been up there for hours lost in conversation and laughs. I still could not believe I was on stage with her and that I was given this awesome opportunity.

I have worked with Camp Soaring Eagle in many aspects and I have to say this was one exciting evening. It is so awesome to see people come together and help such an amazing organization. The silent auction items included weekend getaways, a Tiles for Smiles mirror, wine tastings and pampering weekends at a spa, just to name a few. To be able to have someone like Julie Powell be able to be there as well made it a pretty special evening. There are so many children and families that benefit from events like this and I am more than honored and excited to be able to have a part in it.

You too can be a part of sending seriously ill children to camp! Come on in and paint a tile as part of our Tiles For Smiles Programs.  It costs jut $10 to paint a 4″ tile and $7 of the $10 goes directly towards sending a child to camp!  This summer as we send our healthy kids off to camp think about what it means to a child who is facing serious medical issues to be able to go to camp and experience the healing power of laughter!  Come on in!  Paint a Tile!  And be a part of making a difference in the lives of kids attending Camp Soaring Eagle!

We’d like to introduce you to Nicole! Many of you probably know her from our Desert Ridge and Deer Valley studios -she has worked for As You Wish for several years and now manages our Deer Valley Studio. We know that Valentine’s has past, but we have been talking about hearts and add-ons lately and we saw Nicole wearing this necklace and we just had to have her share with you all of the FABULOUS jewelry she makes with our heart add ons and more! We hope you enjoy this post from Nicole as much as we do!

I LOVE to show off the things that I make. What better way to show off your pottery painting skills than to proudly display your work around your neck for everyone to see? Now, I don’t really recommend stringing the handle of a mug and wearing it like a necklace, but our add-ons are a FABULOUS alternative! When I wear my “add-on” pendants at the studio I’ve found that our customers really enjoy looking at them and a few have started making some of their own, so I’m offering this blog entry to help inspire our friends to try it out. You will truly “heart” it, I’m sure!

A few years ago I bought a red, glass heart pendant at my favorite clothing store and I ended up wearing it so much that the clasp wore out. One day, whilst sweeping up the concrete floor in our Desert Ridge location, my heart slipped from my neck and shattered on the floor. I guess you could say I was “heart broken”. Then I realized that my favorite pendant was EXACTLY the same size and shape as our Puffy Heart Add-Ons and I decided to make a replacement. Being a bit of a funky chick I soon realized that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for me to paint something entirely one color. It wasn’t long before painting heart pendants became an obsessive hobby of mine. I give them away as gifts during the holidays, for birthdays, just because or wear them myself…I even had one admirer demand to buy one off my neck while I was just walking down the street!

I eventually branched out and experimented with other mediums besides the fired-on glazes. We offer Acrylic Bisque Stains at all our locations and they’re super fun to use on the hearts because we have the metallic and glitter paints. Acrylic painted pieces can be taken home the same day you paint so they’re a great idea if you need to make a last minute gift. When it’s dry, we can spray it with a clear gloss for shiny and protective finish. Another nice thing about the acrylics is that you can add other things to it - my faves are sparkly rhinestones and tiny flowers glued on as accents.

 Have you ever used Modge-Podge before? Modge-Podge is like clear shellac that’s water proof and allows you to seal on colorful images and stickers.

When creating a pendant from one of our add-ons, this first thing you should think about is how you are going to attach it to your necklace. We can drill small holes in them if you would like. Some of my pendants have a hole in each heart hump, some have a single hole in the “V” of the heart and some have a hole in only one hump so it can be worn kitty-wompus. Sometimes I don’t drill a hole at all and instead I glue an eye pin with a jump ring to the back of the heart and then cover the back with felt or suede. You can purchase suede scraps from leather shops for almost NOTHING! Make sure that if you want a hole drilled in it to let us know BEFORE you paint as sometimes the hole can break through the piece while it’s being drilled.

My favorite (and easiest) way to wear an add-on pendant is to just string some pretty ribbon through the holes but a hand beaded chain looks FABULOUS as well. The add-ons can be heavy so I would not recommend using your best silver or gold chain.
On almost all of my add-on pendants I like to use my favorite words for decoration. Doesn’t everybody have favorite words that just evoke happy feelings when they hear them? I like words like “Harmony”, “Breathe”, and “Beauty”…………and “Kitty-Wompus”…..”Fancy-Pants”……”Chimichanga”.

My Victorian-inspired pendants are the most popular with admirers so I’ve created a step by step process to show how EASY it really is to paint them with the glaze paints. For this piece I’ve chosen one of our “plain heart add-ons” which are about 2.5” tall and 3” wide, giving lots of space to work with.
1) Using a large fan brush, paint the entire background with Tweety Bird and allow to dry. Once dry, pencil a smaller heart shape around the contours of the heart.
2) Using a medium small round brush, paint two thin coats of Hint-O-Mint inside the penciled heart shape. Be sure to make long, sweeping strokes, this will allow the Tweety Bird to come through the Hint-O-Mint just a tad for light yellow tint.
3) Now for the roses! These dainty roses are painted in only THREE steps. Believe it! I’ve made a small reference chart for painting them. On this pendant, I made two large red roses, two large yellow roses, and three smaller white roses.
a. Using a small brush lay down your base color in one coat in a circular shape. Let dry.
b. Next, using your contour color, make two semi-circle strokes inside the base color. Let dry.
c. Use a long skinny brush and your petal color to make the petals of the roses. Once the petals are dry, you may choose to add accent colors like the white shine on the red roses. I put a little bit of light blue on the white petals to give them dimension. (Another note for the white petals…I mixed a tiny tad of white Puffy Paint in the Polar Bear white glaze paint to make it more opaque.)
VOILA!!! ROSES!!!
4) Use a small brush to stick some leaves in between the roses. I used Pea Soup for these leaves and accented them with Mocha Fudge.
5) Next write your inspirational word using a fun writer, for this project I chose Je t’aime which is a lovely French translation of I Love You, outline the inner heart and add small dots to accent. I used Mocha Fudge to pick up the color in the leaves.
6) Lastly, dot the yellow border with Pure White puffy paint. Make sure to smush the puffy dots down or they’ll fire up like sharp spikes!

Wasn’t that easy!? The hardest part is having to wait the three days to pick it up. *Le sigh*. This heart would look ever so lovely hanging on a strand of pearl beads or frilly ribbon. I hope you find inspiration in this blog entry and enjoy creating your own wearable art with As You Wish! Don’t forget to send us your pictures on Facebook of the wearable art you make using our add-ons.