Custom Art
Let our professional artist create a one-of-a-kind masterpiece for your wedding, quinceanera, baby shower, or any event! She specializes in acrylic, oil, and airbrushed paintings, banners, and murals; wood burning and whittling plaques, ornaments, and centerpieces; silk floral arranging; chalk, charcoal, colored pencil, and graphite drawings; and various other crafts and sewing projects. She can create just about anything you can imagine!
Silk floral arrangements for the bridal party and customized wood-burned centerpieces or plaque to commemorate the bride and groom’s big day!
Handmade wedding invitations, table placards, and signs.
Facepainting for festivals, fundraisers, and birthday parties!
An airbrushed backdrop of your school mascot for your Graduation Party Photo Dojo shoot or a banner for your daughter’s quinceanera!
A customized wedding or baby album cover, painted or wood-burned.
A one-of-a-kind teddy bear for your new granddaughter from grandma’s old mink coat.
Meet the artist
A doodler since elementary school, Stephanie Merchant didn’t discover her true artistic skills until she signed up for Introduction to Art in 12th grade and won Second Place in a juried art show for her very first still life painting. She has worked diligently over the past three decades to teach herself acrylic, oil, mural, and airbrush painting; graphite, charcoal, chalk, and colored pencil drawing; whittling, sewing, floral arranging, needle felting, and pyrography, among other art forms. She founded “Stephanie’s Smorgasbord: The Fun and Fine Art of Stephanie Merchant” in 2009 to showcase her various talents to create one-of-a-kind art commissions and offer classes.
A Colorado Springs resident since 1996, she was excited to open her first art studio in 2009-2010 at Cottonwood Center for the Arts, where her art was displayed in several shows and she studied under well-known artists Kay Jeansonne, Chris Alvarez, and Dan Schultz. Since taking up chalk art in 2010, she has won 3 awards for her work with Imagination Celebration’s “What If …?” and Butterfly Chalk Festivals. Most recently, her work was accepted into Commonwheel Artists’ Co-op for their May Mushroom-themed juried art show.
After creating her first teddy bear out of an antique raccoon fur coat in 2000 for her daughter, and numerous bears since then, Stephanie launched “Bearing My Soul©” Custom Teddy Bears in 2009. She has created bears from a mink stole and rabbit muffs, a camel hair jacket, a suede leather coat, a 50-year-old baby blanket, faux fur, and even old baby clothes. Whether you have a late husband’s army fatigues, Uncle Joe’s favorite flannel hunting shirt, great granny’s muumuu, or little Sally’s denim overalls—Stephanie can create a bear for your loved one that can be handed down through the generations. Each bear comes signed and numbered, receives a Certificate of Authenticity, and customers can also request, for an additional fee, a photo album that documents the creation of their bear.
Nature, wildlife, and landscapes inspire Stephanie most often, but she especially enjoys the challenges that come from creating unique pieces for her customers: from transforming a moss-covered rock into a Rainbow Bridge memorial, to painting a family’s dairy farm onto an antique milk can, from a custom Neverland sign for a baby’s nursery, to a pyrography piece to commemorate a bride and groom’s wedding day, Stephanie is up to the challenge and can use several different mediums to complete it.
Stephanie’s work can be found at the following:
Facebook: Owner, Stephanie’s Smorgasbord
Instagram: @StephaniesSmorgasbord
Etsy: StephanieSmorgasbord
Blog: www.stephaniejohnsonmurals.blogspot.com
For your own commission, contact Stephanie’s Smorgasbord at 719-237-1273 or stepmercjohn@hotmail.com to see what you can “cook up” together!