Our Featured Guest Star- Andralynn Creative Designs

Our guest start this week is Andrea from Andralynn Creative Designs and Life According to Annabel.   Andrea specializes in wonderful whimsical paintings inspired by her children.  My buddy Tom Selleck and his mustache were nice enough to set up our Green Room with a large buffet in preparation for our guest.
Since Andrea is from Texas, we wanted to make her feel at home. After some research, we discovered that Texans love steak, so Tom set up the grill and made a ton of steaks to go along with the baked beans (to be eaten directly from the can), beef jerky, Barbeque Sauce, Chili peppers and other cowboy food. He even put on his cowboy hat that he wore in the movie, “Quigley Down Under”.
I was very impressed.
As usual, we have an unscheduled guest. Well, more than one actually. You see Britney Spears was supposed to be a guest on Oprah’s show today along with our buddy Charlie Sheen. Oprah really didn’t want them put together as she was afraid it might result in some bad influences. Really, I don’t think Charlie would be that susceptible, but if it makes Oprah feel better, we’ll keep Britney over here.
Unfortunately, Britney comes with a whole entourage including her security team, her manager, her assistants, her personal twitter texter, her hairdresser, her nail technician, her wardrobe folks, zookeepers for her white boa, and of course her ex hubby, Kevin Federline and her two boys. It didn’t take any time for the Green Room to become the center of chaos.
Kevin hit the buffet immediately and it is all Tom can do to keep enough steaks on the grill. The boys started pulling my craft books off the shelves, much to my distress. I asked Britney if she had a babysitter and she looked up from her National Enquirer long enough to point out Kevin who was currently looking in the fridge for more barbeque sauce to go along with is pile of steaks. Sigh. It’s gonna be a long day…
So Andrea, why don’t you grab a steak and a can of beans and we’ll go out on the patio where it is a little quieter.
Suzy: Can you tell us a few things that most folks don’t know about you?
Andrea: I may seem like a mild-mannered artist, but secretly I’m a daredevil. I say secretly, because neither my mother nor husband approve, and I have to be sneaky about my adventures! Besides go-kart racing and mountain climbing, I haven’t done anything too crazy (yet), but someday I hope to go skydiving. It may be awhile, since I can’t seem to convince my family that it’s perfectly safe. I mean, you wear a parachute after all!
 

Suzy: Your blog includes a wonderful collection of quirky, fun paintings. Can you tell me a little bit about your inspiration?
Andrea:  My inspiration comes from all the hundreds of stories and fairy tales I’ve made up over the years to entertain the nieces, nephews, daughters and little cousins in my family. I love the limitless imagination of childhood and I try to capture a little bit of that in my work. I like to think that each of my paintings tells its own unique story and isn’t just something that hangs on the wall.

Suzy: Since I’m kinda a crafty blog, I have to ask. Do you have a particular favorite craft?
Andrea: When I’m not painting, I’m trying to learn how to sew. I admit, I’m terrible at it and can’t make a straight stitch to save my life (sadly, my eight-year-old is a better seamstress than I am), but I’m having a blast trying. I would love to be able to make art pillows and fantastical plushies, but I have a feeling that’s something that won’t happen for a long, long, LONG time.

Suzy: I know you have a very busy life. I also know first-hand how time-consuming a good blog is. How do you schedule it all in?
Andrea: Luckily, my day is very open and flexible. I home school my girls, so there isn’t a strict calendar ruling our week. I work on my art (usually with lots of little hands helping me) whenever I can grab a free minute between studies, sports and play dates. That, and I stay up way too late. I’m an incurable night owl.

  





Suzy: Since I’m also kinda a sitcom blog, Tom wants to know if you have a favorite television show. Besides anything that stars him, of course…

Andrea:  Oh, that’s such a hard question! I have so many favorites it’s hard to choose. If I had to pick just one (and since Lost and X-files already aired their last episodes), I’d have to say Fringe. I’m a sci-fi kind of girl and that type of show hooks me every time.


  
Suzy:  This bloggy community is full of wonderful folks. Can you tell me what blogs inspire you?
Andrea:  There are so many wonderful blogs out there with great information and insights, but I particularly love the ones that make me laugh. One of my favorites is Confessions of an English Soapmaker. It’s a witty, helpful, fun blog and, frankly, I can’t get enough!

 

Suzy: Can you tell us a little about what you are promoting right now? Any upcoming events? Your Etsy shop?

Andrea:  I’m taking the plunge and trying my hand at a couple of craft shows this spring starting with Prairie Fest in Fort Worth. It’s something new for me–all my sales have been through word of mouth, commissions, and online sales before now. I’m a little nervous and keeping my fingers and toes crossed that I can pull it off!

Also, I’ve been trying to get ready for spring in my Etsy shop, so I’m having a 10 percent off sale to clear out some of the clutter. Of course, I’ll use any reason to spend all my time painting, but a new spring series sounds like a pretty good excuse to me!

Suzy: Thank you so much, Andrea for making the trip out here! It was such a pleasure meeting you! Please take a few moments to check out Andrea’s wonderful paintings in her shop Andralynn Creative Designs, and her blog, Life According to Annabel. 

Now we really need to get back in there. Apparently Tom ran out of steaks, so Kevin and his boys got into Tom’s personal cheeto stash. There are now orange fingerprints all over the walls, my craft books, my National Enquirer collection and Britney’s formerly white boa. Both Tom and his mustache are about to come unglued. Nobody touches his cheetos stash. And I mean nobody.

And someone please catch that cheeto-covered boa!  Last time it was here, it ate my favorite hot glue gun. And I’ve never quite recovered…