The Cat's Pajamas!

Did someone say SALE?

2011-03-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I thought I'd do another celebration today to celebrate getting 100 blog followers, AND hitting 400 Facebook Fans!! Woo Hoo! As a thank you, I'm running a SALE in my Etsy store. Please stop by and see if there is anything you like. :)

If you want to buy anything, just use this coupon code LUVMYFANS at checkout and you will get 20% off your purchase!

I'll be running this sale until April 1st, so hurry up and shop!!

Okay here is the shop link...

http://www.etsy.com/shop/mfauss?ref=si_shop

Hope to see you there!

Babies, blogs, paintings, and fears.

2011-03-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Oh boy. As if I needed yet another reason to stay on the internet and suck up all my time. I just discovered the world of "mommy blogs". Since I'm about to be a mother, today I got the brilliant idea to join some mom groups, and check out some cool mom blogs.

Well. It's been a few hours, and I'm still reading. Yikes! I really really should be working or cleaning tonight, but I managed to waste so much time, that now I have no desire to wash dishes, vacuum, do the laundry, tweet, list any new products, read Etsy forums, or paint. All I want to do is find more blogs to entertain me, and watch Get Smart. Gosh I'm getting lazy in the 3rd trimester. Holy Moly, it's the 3rd trimester already!! I can not believe how fast time flew. I keep thinking I have many more months to go, yet I only have a couple.

And here's something interesting about me, most of you probably don't know. I've had a life long fear of hospitals. I mean really fearful, like I don't like looking at them even. Yet, in June I will be staying in one! Oh my goodness, I just can't believe it, but unless I'm lucky enough to have a very quick birth on the way to the big scary building I really can't get out of it. I went in the other day to see where I'm supposed to check in, and got my forms but that was all I was all I could do for the day. I'm hoping to acclimate myself to them before the big day.

At least at the end of my hospital visit in June, I'll get a prize! As the time draws closer and closer, I'm super duper scared, but at the same time, I'm really looking forward to meeting our little girl. I really think we will have a good time together, and I absolutely cannot wait to dress her in all the cool clothes we bought. :) But I was a little bummed when I found out they don't draw until a few years old. Poo. I was totally looking forward to arts and crafts time. I really really hope she likes getting messy too like with paints, because If I end up having a mini Felix Unger on my hands, I don't know what I'll do. Only time will tell.

btw the elephant painting you see above, is Elinor. A mixed media 12x12 painting on canvas. She may or may not be related to Ellie. And the original Ellie lives in New York now, so they don't get to see each other like they should. :) And, if you don't already know this, Elinor can be found kicking it over on Etsy .

And thanks again to all you guys who participated in my giveaway. I'll be sending prizes out soon. Some I need to make, like the necklace, but I'm hoping to get the print, cards, and postcards out tomorrow.

Giveaway Winners!!

2011-03-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

Well I'm so sorry It's taken this long to announce the winners. I just haven't been home much, and I had to wait a bit for my husband to be able to edit the video showing my trusty studio assistant picking out the names. He was a little less cooperative this time, and it took quite a while for him to finally get around to business, but eventually he did. Check out the video to see who won...

Congratulations to those who won, and thank you all for participating!!

Giveaway

2011-03-12T11:43:00.000-08:00

Alright the giveaway is officially over, and I will be announcing winners, either today or tomorrow. My studio assistant was a little uncooperative yesterday, and it took FOREVER to get a good video which my husband will edit hopefully soon, then I'll post and contact each winner. :)

Giveaway Time!!!

2011-03-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

Oh boy, I'm really feeling generous right now, and I haven't had a giveaway in quite some time, so I think it may be time for another, what do you think??

So here's how it will work.

First place will receive a giclee print of their choice!!

Just pick any collage/painting in my Etsy shop (click Etsy and it will take you there) that you would like a print of. Make sure you search the original section too, because not all paintings are listed as prints yet, so if you want for instance, a print of Frida the Fish, you won't see her yet in the print section, but she is still available of course! Just post in the comments section which one you want.

Second place will receive a necklace of their choice!!

Again just go to my Etsy store and pick out what image you would like as a necklace and post it in the comments.

Third Place will receive a set a greeting cards!!

Fourth Place will get a complete set of postcards!!

So there will be a total of 4 winners!

All you need to do is go to my Esty store and pick out an image for a print, and a necklace, and leave a comment on the blog telling me which ones you would like if you were to win.

If you advertise this giveaway on Facebook leave a comment here telling me, and you will have another chance at winning.

Same thing for Twitter, tweet this giveaway, and you get another chance! Just be sure to leave me a comment here on the blog so I know to enter you in again.

It's quite possible my handy assistant will be helping me pick winners again. It just depends on how lazy he is that day. :)

That's all there is to it. Giveaway will end next Friday March 11th!

Good luck to you!

2 new paintings and an artists spotlight!

2011-03-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

I have two new paintings to show you today, I couldn't blog yesterday so you get a two for one deal today!

The painting to the left is Harriet the Ballerina, and she is done on 12x12 canvas. Of special interest to those who like sparkle, are her little toe shoes, hair bow, and tutu. They are painted and embellished with pink glitter. :)

My next painting is Frida the Fish. After naming her, I realized too late, that many people, especially artists may think that I painted a Fish to look like Frida the artist, but that isn't so of course, it's just the first girls F name that came to mind, and I couldn't get it out of my head.

This little fish came as a surprise to me, as I was actually making a background for my pig painting, but as I was adding more and more blues and greens, I realized it looked like water. Well I just had to make a fish after that, and here she is.

Both of these ladies can be found dancing and swimming around my Etsy shop, so be sure to head over if you are interested in giving them a new home. :)

In other news, after spending all day Sunday and Monday organizing and doing business related things, I did manage to paint a bit both of those nights. I'm hoping tonight will be the same. It seems I'm forming a bit of a habit now, and that is to do business/computer stuff in the day and paint late afternoon and night. It's working out so far, and I'm trying to stop feeling guilty for spending my days on the computer. It's just something that needs to be done apparently when you are trying to run a business and market yourself.

I think my name is slowly making it's away into the cyber world and a few of my pieces have been featured in treasuries this week, and also a couple blog posts. In one case I was in the artists spotlight, which was really fun! You can find that post over at Renee Mak's blog Fuss it Up Designs she is a fellow Etsian and you can find her at her Etsy shop Fuss it Up! . She has some really great jewelery and mixed media art to look at. Definitely stop by and say hello.

Okay that's all for today, must get back to work! Have a great day!

Osgod the Owl, and new work coming up

2011-02-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

Well here's yet another post and a painting!! This has to be a record for me. :)

This guy is Osgood the Owl and of course he is available in Etsy should have a strong desire to purchase him. Just click the word Etsy and it will take you straight there.

He is made with acrylic paint, glitter and pretty yellow flowers on another 6in x 6in canvas. He's the last of the small canvases that are done for now. I am working on another cat in that size, since you all like kitty's so much, which of course I don't blame you since I have four of them running around the house myself. :)

Today I will hopefully spend some time painting. That is if I can get off the darn computer. I have a pig, a cat, and Easter Bunny in the works right now, and I hope hope HOPE to get at least one done by the end of the day.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, that I will stay off the computer and stop shopping on Etsy!

Bertie the Bird! A New painting, and what I'm up too the week...

2011-02-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

This little guy is already in the shop but I thought I'd post him to the blog in case some of you missed his debut.

This is Bertie the Bird, who reminds me of a chicken. :) He's painted on 6in x 6in canvas. Still loving that little size. So much fun! I love his sparkly blue background (can't get enough of glitter), and his collaged paper patchwork arm.

This one is my husbands favorite, and I think he secretly hopes he doesn't sell. I like him a lot too, but would love for him to find a home that would love him just as much or more! You can find him on Etsy of course.

As to what's going on now... Well, I've totally switched gears this week after my 6 day painting spree last week. Right now I'm spending most of my time working on the business side of things. Oh my goodness is it ever overwhelming! I'm learning about SEO's, proper tagging, keywords, backlinks, new social media, etc. etc. I so wish I got paid for the hours I put into this! It's interesting stuff, but very time consuming, and it totally sucks up your life. Hence, I haven't had a chance to paint yet this weekend. I'm hoping to organize my office area today and then paint later this afternoon. Wish me luck!

Meet Fang Jr!!

2011-02-25T11:55:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh, is it possible that I am blogging 3 days in a row?? I guess that's what happens when I have a bunch of new paintings to list. :)

I wanted you guys to meet Fang Jr. He is much smaller than the original, only 6in x 6in on canvas. I decided to redo him because he's such a popular piece. Most everyone seems to like him, so I decided to do a small and cheaper version for those who may want an original but couldn't afford the original original. Does that make sense?

Well that was fast, he sold already! I guess I won't go into my whole Etsy speech now. :)

Have a great Friday everyone! And Keep warm!

Another new painting!

2011-02-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

This is Fergie the Frog Princess. She is another 6 in x6in canvas. I have a total of eight of these cute canvases and so far 6 are done. A really fun size to work with actually. I was worried it would be hard because they are smaller than I'm used to, but it wasn't too bad at all. If you are interested in her she is hopping around Etsy I hear, just click this link: http://www.etsy.com/listing/68786598/original-frog-princess-painting-fergie

In other news, I think this week may be more devoted to business rather than painting. I'm trying really hard to get my name out there again, since after disappearing for 4 months, I kinda fell completely off the social media radar. And oh my gosh it's hard work getting back on. Stumbleupon, Etsy, Twitter, Facebook etc. The list goes on and on. I sure learned a lesson, and I dearly hope that when the baby comes I will be able to find some time to keep going at this. I think I hear many of you laughing right now, and I don't blame you. Obviously I have no idea what I'm in for, and I do realize all my time will be monopolized at first, but I'm really hoping I can find a way to incorporate my art into my life while raising a baby. After all we are going to be sharing the same room. Her nursery is my studio too. So hopefully she can play a bit while I paint a bit. That's possible right??

Have a good day everyone, I hope your day isn't going like mine right now. Too many computer issues.

a little hello and a new painting...

2011-02-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a long time again since I posted to my blog. I don't know what happens, but the time seems to get away from me and before I know it months have gone by between postings.

Plus, I've been pretty active announcing everything I do on Facebook, Twitter and Etsy, that when it comes to blogging I feel it's already been said and heard before. Does anybody else feel this way?

But today I thought I'd check in again, and say hi to everyone, and show you my latest painting. In case you haven't been on any social media sites lately (doubtful), and don't already know, I've been in a major painting frenzy for the last 5 days. That's alot of painting! I finished 9 of them. Can you believe that? Of course I'm only showing one right now, as the others will be announced one a day throughout the week. Need to keep you in suspense!

Anyway this little piece is an original painting on 6 in x 6 in canvas called Beatrice the Bee. If you are interested in her she can be found buzzing around Etsy waiting for a new home...Check her out if you like...
http://www.etsy.com/listing/68711114/original-bumblebee-painting-beatrice-the

Until next time,which hopefully will be sooner than last time. :)
Michele

Did you miss me? :)

2011-01-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Work in Progress

Wow! It's been ages since I've updated this blog. I don't know what got into me, well actually I do. :) Pregnancy threw me for a loop for the first 3 1/2-4 months. I hit a huge creative slump, and I just wasn't feeling well.

Needless to say no art was produced, and I accidentally slipped away from my wonderful online community of artist friends. I also managed to neglect my Etsy store, and I came back earlier this week only to find it was almost completely empty because most of the listings had expired! Whoops!

I am now slowly trying to get back into the groove of things. I still have some pregnancy issues, such as smell aversions that make me dry heave, but as long as I stay away from the refrigerator (why can't that happen when I want to loose weight?), I think I can manage to do a few paintings here and there. :)

I've been totally and completely inspired this week by Flora Bowley. I don't how I haven't discovered her sooner, I just love her work and the freedom with which she paints. Her work has given me the courage to I return to my studio. I have now spent the last 3 days in a whirlwind of painting.

I've managed not to finish anything, but I sure have started a lot. :) I've taken a bunch of old canvases that weren't working for me, and completely redid them. They are in the beginning stages still, but I already like them much better. I also was inspired to bust out my huge 36x48 canvas and give that a whirl as well. I'm probably going to work on that one today, as I seem to be most interested in it at the moment.

Here's a few pics of what I'm up to this week. Enjoy!


Work in progress. This has turned into my favorite so far, unfortunately that means I'm afraid to go any further with it. :) I know what i want to do, but am scared to ruin what I've got. Hate that!


Another Work in progress. Just trying to nail down the details on roof before I continue.


Wip. This is the big one. 36x48 and it barley fits on my table. The lighting is terrible, sorry about that, took the pic at night. The background it actually yellow, and I've already done much more to it. I had a totally different color scheme and idea in mind for this, but somehow this is what it wants to be. Not sure if I'll use my original idea or not. I'm really curious about how this will come about.

Last but not least, another wip. I was listening to Peruvian flute music when I painted this and now it has a native American feel to it. Again, totally NOT what I was trying to do, but it's what came out, so I'm going with it for now. I do love the smeary paint, and am actually a bit afraid to mess with it. I really need to work on being brave and just letting loose.

It's been a long time, plus a big surprise!

2010-12-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

Well it appears I was wrong when I thought working on the condo was only reason that was going to keep me from my artwork, turns out pregnancy is also a good excuse. This is quite a surprise actually. In fact I could not be more surprised if I were to wake up with my head sewn to the carpet.

I had pretty much given up hope for having a family, and was struggling with the question of whether or not to go down the fertility path. Which I didn't really want to do to be honest. Besides the expense, which wasn't affordable, and as much as I would like a family with mulitiple children, I certainly did not want to have a litter of them all at once.Though I have to admit it is more efficient that way to get it all over with in one birth. In fact, for awhile I was hoping I would be having twins for that very reason, but no such luck.

The strange this is, as happy and excited as we are, I'm still in denial that come June this baby will actually have to come out. Not really looking forward to that part. In fact I'm quite scared. I suppose when the time comes it will all work itself out. But really, it would be very nice, if science could come up with another way to have children that was less scary, painful and intimidating. I have 6 1/2 more months, anything is possible right?

In the meantime, I'm happy awaiting the time when the gag reflex turns off, and the heartburn and bloating go away or least subside. This is why I am spending most of my days like a beached whale on the couch reading instead of painting, updating Etsy and Facebook, twittering etc. If my doctor is right and these ailments go away in the second trimester, I expect I will return to the studio, and finish some very neglected paintings. At least I hope I do. :)

"Essie Car Go"

2010-11-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to introduce my latest painting! This is "Essie" the snail, short for "Essie Car Go", but don't worry she won't end up on anyone's dinner plate, thanks to her wide innocent eyes and friendly smile, no one can bear to punish her for eating all the pretty flowers in the garden.

Kind of like the banana slugs in my garden, they constantly munch my flowers but are so cute I feel sorry for getting mad at them, and of course I let them stay. Total pushover I know. :)

Anyway some of you may remember her as work in progress pic a couple months ago on Facebook. At that time all I had done was the shell and background. She's been waiting and waiting in my studio for me to finish her, because I couldn't decide if I liked her background or not, but after decorating it with bright yellow flowers, I decided it could work after all. She's been almost finished for a month, because I've been too busy and maybe a tad lazy to glue the flowers down, well over the past weekend I lit a fire under and butt and actually sat down did it. Finally she is finished!

You can find her on Etsy as an original right now. I will have prints up soon, and most likely postcards, necklaces, and greeting cards, depending on how popular she is.

Hope you all like her!

Sometimes you just have to believe.

2010-11-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

Well after a long accidental absence I'm finally back in the art world! I feel like I missed out on so much these past two months, and I can't wait to catch up with you all, and see what awesome creations you are making.

Thanks to everyone who left lovely supporting comments to my last post. I honestly didn't intend to ignore anyone, and I loved and appreciated everyone single comment, so I'm very sorry If I didn't respond to you. Things should be much more calm these days, so I should have plenty of time to do things properly now. :)

So our rental is renovated and finally rented, yippee! That's a huge stress taken off our shoulders. And frankly I was quite sick of going over there so it couldn't have happened at a better time. Now I can play with art!

Which reminds me the picture you see above is the first painting I've done since the rental remodel. It is a large 30x30 canvas and I just basically had a blast playing with colors and background. I made it for me, because right now there are things going on in life (which I will talk about another time, but not bad) that made me realize that sometimes you really just need to sit back and believe. Not only in the universe, but in yourself. I made this painting as a reminder to myself to do just that. The fact that I made it for me, gave me a lot more freedom to experiment. Or at least I thought it did. I didn't worry about how it came out, I just kept putting color on until I felt like stopping. It sure was a lot of fun!

I'm selling it as a print, postcard and greeting card. Not sure about selling the original yet, think I want to keep it around a little longer. But, today you can buy the Giclee print on Etsy if you are so inclined. :) The greeting cards and postcards will come later this week, and I will post them to Etsy then.

Thanks again for not giving up on me!

I won Another giveaway! And...just a little drama...

2010-10-01T13:53:00.000-07:00


"Finding Connections" by Elizabeth Gonzalez

First, I want to say, thank you all who commented on my last post. I'm sorry I didn't get back to everyone individually, but as you know, it's been crazy hectic. My computer time has been cut 95%, so it's been pretty hard to get things done. But I do appreciate you all, and thank you for sticking by me, during this non artistic time in my life. I can't wait to get back into my art community again, and start creating.

Second, I won yet another blog giveaway! This time from the lovely Elizabeth Gonzalez, who works wonders with ceramics. If you never seen her beautiful work check out her Etsy store, you won't be disappointed. Seriously though, this is getting a little weird. I've never won any kind of contests/giveaways in my life, and all of a sudden within the last few months, I've won three! I can't believe my good fortune, I sure must have done something right, to deserve all these lovely gifts. :) Thank you so much Elizabeth, I can't wait to get my beautiful mug!

In other news, I almost had a night to paint on Wednesday. Almost. You see Wednesday afternoon, Mr. F and I decided to forget remodeling, and made a very late descision to hop over to San Fransisco for very late lunch. Well we had a lovely meal at a Thai restaurant on the beach, but just as we sat down, he got a call from work saying he needed to come in. Of course we are over an hour away, so it wasn't until almost 7 pm that we made it back to San Jose. Long story short the problem was solved before we got there, and so we decided to go home early for once.

Of course this was the first time in nearly 3 weeks that I had any chance at all to paint, so I was just about to settle into my studio when the craziest thing happened. My vision went horribly wacky in one eye. Naturally, the first thing I did was panic. Actually that's an understatement, I worked myself into quite a lather.

I mean a sudden change in vision is never a good thing right? I totally thought I was either going blind, had a detached retina, or having some kind of stroke, or other neurological condition. All of which would require cat scans/mri's, surgery, hospital stays, etc. none of which sounded very pleasant.

See that' the problem with having worked in the medical field for 10 years. I know just enough information to be a danger to myself.

Anyway, after much drama, confusion, panic, etc, It went away. Just like that. By this time we were halfway over the hill on the way to the emergency room. Just in case, we continued over to the valley, and went to my mom's house. By the time we got there I perfectly normal, but I realized that I was absolutely starving, having not eaten much in the city due to needing to rush back. Being the perfect mom, she had dinner all ready for us, and managed to calm me down.

Thanks to Google my step dad figured out what the heck happened to me. Want to know what my problem was?

An Ocular Migraine. Yeah. All that fuss for a little eye headache. Apparently you don't need any pain with one either, which I didn't have. But all my visual symptoms were right on.

I feel like a complete dork now, but that was honestly one of the scariest things that has happened to me physically, well next to the time I drank too much Pepto Bismol, and well, I won't go into details, and completely gross you out, but let's just say strange things can happen, and I thought I was bleeding out. I almost hugged the emergency room doctor when she told me all I had was a side effect.

Anyway, thank goodness for family and a wonderful patient husband. It was so nice to have a place to go to, and people around me to help ease my fears when I was feeling so scared.

Still It's been awhile since I saw the eye doctor, and I do need new glasses, so I think I'll pop over soon and have everything all checked out.

Needless to say I never painted that night.

And now? I have to get back to spackling the baseboards. Ta ta for now!

I may be gone a while longer...

2010-09-23T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hi all! I just wanted to pop in real quick and explain my almost non existent online presence these days. Life has been crazy busy, and all my days are now spent helping my husband remodeling and getting our condo ready to rent or possibly sell. Not that I am in any way qualified to be doing carpentry/home repairs, etc, but someone has to help him, so I do what I can.

We've been at this for 2 solid weeks now, and of course that means no art time for me, especially since we get home every night around midnight, and by then all I can do is collapse on the bed, and watch I Love Lucy until I fall asleep.

I have about 10 unfinished projects waiting patiently for me in my studio, and no clue when I will be able to get back to them. I'm hoping within the next week we will be done.

Meanwhile, I haven't updated Etsy recently due to the fact that there aren't any new items to show, and I'm not tweeting or having much to say art wise on FB either. It's so strange being out of the loop. I sure miss my little art community!!

Anyway, I hope you all understand and don't forget me while I'm gone. :) I promise to come back soon with a bunch of brand new pieces to show off!

Changes, sales, and thoughts...

2010-09-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a busy week!

First I want to say thank you for all the congrats you guys left on my last post. I'm loving my prize from Juilette, and it hangs proudly in my studio and looks great!

I have a lot going on these days, and it's good stuff!

Right now, I feel as if I'm at a real turning point in my life. Like I'm on a threshold with one foot over the edge to a more successful art business, and one foot still lingering not quite sure if it's really happening.

This week, I had my first "big" sale on Etsy. One lovely lady bought 3 of my canvases. I had to say to goodbye to Ellie, Hootie and Heidi, some of my very favorite pieces, and it was a little sad, yet very exciting at the same time.

The piece I will miss the most is "Ellie". No doubt about it, Ellie was a turning point for me artistically. It was the beginning of a new look and a new, wonderfully fun series of animals. I loved the freedom I felt when I painted her. It was one of those moments, when you really let go of all fears, and just enjoy the process of creating and painting. It's one of the best feelings in the world, when you can just let loose have fun, and that's exactly what happened when I painted her. I hope they all enjoy their new home!

I've had a few more sales this week as well, another "large" sale and a few others, so I'm feeling like all my hard work is finally paying off. All the painting (well that's the fun part), listing on Etsy, hours on the computer, tweeting, marketing myself etc. seems to be working. My store is getting more exposure, and so is my art. It's all very exciting.

I feel like I'm on a new adventure, and I'm loving the ride, let's hope it keeps going!

Have a great week everyone!

Look What I Won!!

2010-09-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

"Me and My Monster" mounted print by Juilette Crane

I'm so excited you guys!!! I won this lovely mounted print by Juliette Crane!

Seriously, I tried hard to win this and left a total of 4 comments on The Handmade Gift Guide blog where the giveaway was taking place. Guess it paid off!

I really wanted this one so bad. I just love it, because I feel that I can identify with it so well. It will have a special place in my studio, and I can't wait to get it!

Thank you Juliette and the Handmade Gift Guide for having such a wonderful giveaway!

Hello, updates, and an announcement

2010-08-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Just popping in real quick to say hi, give a few updates, and to make a formal announcement (a bit late) about my artwork that is making it's debut at the Itty Bitty Boutique in Downtown Campbell! I'm super excited about this new venture, and I really hope I do well.

Right now I only took two shelves to start with. If things go well (hope hope hope!), I'll of course add more space and inventory. :)

In the meantime, I'm working hard on the business side of things. My new website is up and running, and I might add, very proudly totally updated!

I'm working everyday on the Etsy store and have been devouring many tutorials on how to make your shop more noticeable etc. It's a slow process I think, and definitely a huge learning curve, but I won't give up. There are times though, when I really think what is the use? But I'm guessing everyone has low moments like that when they are trying to start a new business. Please tell me I'm right!

Not much art is actually happening this week, simply because I've been so busy. I haven't been home much either, so that doesn't help. But I am working on new stuff, mainly a giraffe, a whale (still!), a hippo and a snail. I suspect the snail will be done first, probably because he's smallest. :)

That's all for now! Hope everyone is doing well, and has a great weekend!!

"Fang"

2010-08-19T01:11:00.000-07:00


"Fang" Mixed Media Collage available on Etsy

As requested, here is a cat painting for you! I just couldn't resist with the colors, they seem to be favorites of mine. :)

This Kitty's name is "Fang" and is on an 11x14 canvas. It is listed in my Etsy shop for those of you that might be interested. There are a ton of layers involved in this piece, and at one point I started to wonder if I was just wasting paint, but as usual things finally started to click, and now of course it's one of my favorites.

I'm also working on several new paintings including finishing my whale, a hippo, and a giraffe. So excited about these!

I'm sorry I've been absent from blog hopping lately but I found that I just needed to stay off the computer a bit, and enjoy summer while I can. I was spending all day long on the computer between FB, Twitter, Blogs, classes etc, and I had to put a stop to it, and unfortunately the blogs were cut out of my day completely as they were the ones that took the most time.

I'm working on slowly trying to implement them back into my daily routine but with a strict time limit. If I read a little everyday, I hope to be able to catch up with you all eventually.

That's about all for now, I hope to get more painting in this week, but we have family visiting, so It may be a tight squeeze trying to fit all that in.

Hope you all have a great rest of the week, it's almost the weekend!

Hope

2010-08-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

I've been really busy lately with family so not a whole lot going on art wise, but I did manage to do 2 new pieces. This one is called "Hope" it is 16x16 on canvas, and was directly inspired by "The Missing Face" with Ewen McGregor and Charlie Boorman.

You may remember that after watching that movie I was deeply inspired to become part of UNICEF, and help where ever I can. And since I can't exactly donate hard cash right now like I want to, I'm trying hard to sell some of my art for their wonderful charity.

This piece will be for sale on Ebay with the proceeds directly going to UNICEF. I so hope it sells. I will also be selling prints in my Etsy store, so if you miss out on the original never fear. :)

Now a few weeks ago, I asked if anyone was interested in making an art piece and selling it on Ebay with me to donate to this charity and this is piece I made for that. If any of you are still interested, let me know. I'll hold off on listing this one until we can all list together.

This next piece is 8x10 and is called "Give".

This one is also inspired by the "Missing Face" and will be sold (hopefully) for UNICEF as well. I am going to post this one tonight to Ebay though, so if you are interested please stop by here. I will of course have prints for sale on Etsy too.

In other news, I now have my artwork (prints, necklaces, postcards, and a few originals) selling in a boutique! It's the cutest place called appropriately, "The Itty Bitty Boutique" and if you are local it is in downtown Campbell. Definitely stop by if you can, it is a great place to buy handmade gifts from local artists.

I'm also working on potentially selling with another store, but I don't have all the details yet, so as soon as I know I will tell you!

A brief update, whale wip, and new things ahead...

2010-08-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

Well I thought it might be time for an update!

Lots of happenings going on behind the scenes here. Some very exciting stuff, which I will definitely tell you when plans are more solidified.

For now, I have this Whale WIP to show. It's what I'm working on lately. It's a little bit further along than you see here, since I worked on it yesterday, and I definitely hope to do more to it today. Maybe even finish it if I'm ambitious enough!

I just haven't been doing much in the studio lately. Everyday I'm off on a hike, motorcycle ride, and/or playing in the creek, so it's been really hard to focus on art, with all this summer weather happening. I'm also obsessed with traveling right now, and really wish I could do a mini vacation, I want to go to Oregon so bad!!! But unfortunately I don't see that happening this summer. So in the meantime, I'll make use of all our lovely resources we have in our mountains. Other people vacation here, so I can too!

Oh yeah! My new website should be making it's appearance later this week. I just have to figure out how the heck I transfer my domain name. Hopefully it wont be too hard. I think I'll be keeping this blog for now. I'm still liking it better, but eventually I will have to make the switch over to the website I suspect just so everything is more cohesive. Time will tell.

Also as some of you may know I got some new postcards in! 2 more designs are on their way, which is why I am waiting before posting them on Etsy. That will make a total of 11 designs now! I want to offer them all as a group, or in packs of five.

And of course, I'm still selling my art for UNICEF on Ebay so if you are interested in owning an original collage or my Ellie the Elephant print please hop over. All the profit will go to UNICEF which is a terribly worthy cause.

That's it for now folks, I'll have some exciting news to post later this week hopefully!!

New painting, hikes,motorcycle rides, and not much else getting done...

2010-07-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, I have a new painting to show you all! Actually it was finished a while ago, but I forgot to post it. I call this one Grow. It will be for sale in Etsy maybe tonight, but definitely by tomorrow. I'll also have prints available.

I'm still working on my whale, in fact I haven't done much too it except start the background, but it's coming along, I actually really like how it's turning out. I may even do a work in progress pic on the next post.

I've been busy going on hikes and motorcycle rides this week, so not much art or business stuff is getting done. I really need to buckle down this week and focus, but it is so hard with summer here, and the days being nice, all I want to do is play.

One thing I am focusing on though is finding a way to help my Unicef cause. I really want to be able to contribute to them but am finding it hard. Now that I am an official Unicef volunteer (!), I figure I best get going on my contributions, so I listed that Fairy Tale collage on Ebay in hopes that it would sell, but sadly, so far it hasn't. It does have one more day to go though, so there still is hope. :) I think I just don't have the audience to sell much right now so my stuff gets buried among the thousands of other things Ebay has to offer, of course, hopefully all that will change someday.

I'm also still working on getting more artists together to make an art piece in order to sell on Ebay with the profits going to Unicef, so if you are reading this, and interested in participating please let me know. A couple of you have responded and I'm so glad and excited you are wanting to do this project with me!

In other news, I am finishing up my new website, and I should roll it out later this week, or early next week. I think you will like it! I have the option of having my blog on there as well, and think I might use it, but am worried I'll loose followers if I switch, plus I really like blogger and am very familiar with it so it's hard to change. I'm still making my mind up on that. Of course I'll let you know when the time comes .:)

Oh yeah, my Hootie the Owl print has been sold and relisted on Etsy! If you are interested please stop by!

Fairy Tales, my recent obsession with Unicef and Ebay

2010-07-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been following my Facebook updates, you may recall that my husband and I have been watching a movie called "The Long Way Down." What it is, is an 8 hour documentary about Ewen McGregor and his best friend Charile Boorman riding their motorcycles from the tip of Scotland to the bottom of Africa.

Even if you aren't a motorcycle rider, it is still enjoyable and pretty impressive to watch. In fact I HIGHLY recommend this movie. I loved it so much I'm going to re-watch the first movie "The Long Way Round" (London to New York by way of Siberia) Fantastic!

Besides riding the bikes, you see gorgeous scenery, ruins, culture, exotic animals etc. But they also highlight several stops to Unicef sites in Africa. What you see there is very eye opening to say the least. I tend not to read the news simply because it's depressing. A terrible excuse I know, but the way I thought, was why insert more problem/drama into my life, I already have enough I don't need anyone else's.

Well guess what? My drama? Is nothing. Absolutely nothing. I feel completely spoiled and rich after watching this movie. I am extremely grateful for what I have, and I really don't need anymore. I thought I did, but I realize now, no I don't. I can't tell you how much it put my life into perspective after seeing children orphaned and living essentially on the streets because both their parents died from AIDS. Children who have to learn to be aware of land mines right outside their front doors. And on and on and on.

I don't want to go into too many more details for fear of sounding all preachy, but I want you to know it really touched me to see this. And I immediately felt I wanted to help in some way. I know it will have to be small, but something is better than nothing right? Well I thought and thought how the heck can I contribute? Yes I could donate money, but as rich as we are(compared to them) that needs to go to bills unfortunately. So I come up with a better idea. I will use my resources and sell one of my collages!

I found out if you list on Ebay you can set the amount of the sale proceeds to go to your favorite charity. So I did! I listed the piece you see above called fairy tales, and 100% of the profit will go to Unicef! I'm very excited about this and truly hope this piece sells. If you like what you see, and would like to buy it please wander over to my Ebay listing.

I sure hope it sells!! Oh and I really want to get a group of artists together to sell 1 piece of their art on Ebay and donate the funds to Unicef. I think it would be such an awesome way to band together as artists and give a little something to those who are less fortunate. If anyone is interested let me know!!

Thanks yous, a commission and few other things

2010-07-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say thank you so much to everybody who participated in my blog giveaway!! It being my first giveaway, I didn't really know what to expect, but I found out that is was really a whole lot of fun! I definitely plan to have another one, and yes, I will have my handy assistant pick the names again. :)

I'm so glad you all enjoyed the video of him. At first I was only going to take a bunch of step by step pictures, but then my husband said why not take a video? Well yeah, why not? That was a great idea! Anyway, don't be surprised if you see him staring in another video at the next giveaway. :)

Now the picture you see above is a commission I did for a friend of mine. It is for her little girl Zoey. My friend is a huge lover of ladybugs, so it came as no surprise that when she asked my to do a painting for Zoey that a ladybug would be involved. I had a lot of fun making this, but I have to say I had trouble with the face. For the longest time, this poor bug looked like Al Jolsen. I found it was a lot harder to paint facial features, when the whole face is black. Anyway, I'm off tomorrow to give her the painting, and I really hope she likes it!

Right now I'm currently working on a lot of things. I've got 2 other commissions to get done for friends, and I am still trying to make more of my animal paintings. I've already got a whale started, and really want to do a cat right now too. Unfortunately I haven't had much time to paint, well no time actually, as I've been busy outside of the house enjoying summer. Finally!

And also trying to get a lot of the business side stuff done. I just ordered new business cards, mailing labels and a set of postcards which I can't wait to get, and show you. I'm also working on a new website, and I'm so excited about it. I can't believe I'm saying that because I hated the making of the website I have now.

In fact my husband did it for me, bless him, but the problem is I have no clue how to update it. None. And he is always so busy working that I hate to bother him with it, therefore nothing new has been posted since it first went up. Obviously this won't do. So I took matters in my own hands and went to Squarespace. So far I'm loving what I can do there, and the best thing is it's all on my own!!

And one last thing, I've been trying so hard to get around to everyone's blogs and see what you all are up to, but this past week has been super hard to keep up. I'm so sorry I've been missing in action lately, I assure you I love reading and seeing what you all post, and am trying to make it a point the rest of this week to properly catch up with everyone.

Thank you so much to everybody who has been dropping by and leaving comments, I just love hearing from you, and I am truly thankful for all the new friendships I have been making. This has been a wonderful experience for me, and I couldn't have gotten this far, without all of you! Love you guys!!

And The Winners Are....

2010-07-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

Okay all, it is official!! The giveaway results are in. I had my handy assistant pick the names.

Of course he needed to be bribed a bit. Here he is right before the pickings.

Naturally I didn't want to disturb his slumber, so I made a few preparations in the meantime. I laid out all the names of everyone who commented and placed a crunchy treat on top. Then we took the treats and made trail from his box to the names, well, take a look for yourself, click the video to see what happened...

Don't worry you aren't going deaf, there isn't any sound. It's not the best resolution (sorry 1st video), and of course while trying to film, we had a incident with a skunk and another cat, so that confused things a bit.

Now In case you can't see the video for some reason, here are the winners...

1. Is Curly Girl Art!! You are now the proud owner of this print!

2. Is Michele From Pipi La La! Congratulations you won my CupKate Necklace!

And last but not least, Sunny Lee won a set of postcards!

Okay winners, please email me your address, so I can ship your prizes to you!

Thank you all so much for participating!!

3 new pieces and a bunch of inspiration!

2010-07-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

I have a few new pieces to show you all. I'm on a huge roll right now, and I'm painting like a maniac, right now I'm working on a commission but I have lots of new art lined up.

This past week, I was totally inspired by a post by Ophelia over at Ophelia's Art. She talked about how her daughter just jumped in and starting painting a canvas with no care as to how it might come out, whether or not she would muddy her colors etc.

She was just being a kid and having fun and letting the creativity flow without worry. It totally came out awesome too!

When I read that post, I had spent the last few days trying so hard to catch on up on blogs, Twitters etc, that I was sick and tired of the computer. I wanted to paint, but felt physically and emotionally drained.

After reading about her daughters painting, I was so inspired to try and paint as freely as a child would, that I ran to my studio at 11:30 pm and went for it. I created two canvases that night and finished them the next day. That started the ball rolling for a series of paintings that I want to do. Different whimsical cartooney animals! They are so much fun to create, and I now have a very long list of critters I want to paint. I'm so excited about this, and I have Ophelia's daughter to thank!

So here we go, I have to two animals to show you, and one canvas from a while ago that I finally finished.
The little guy you see above is called Hootie, and he is on a 12x12 canvas. His body is actually fuzzy! I used hot pink flocking on him, and I love how it came out!

This is Ellie, and is actually the first canvas I did that night. It's so simple but I love it, and it was the best painting experience I've had in months!

This is the piece that was inspired by It's A Small World. I gave her a slightly crazed look, and I used gears because I always liked the gears the Small World Castle had, so I made my own and put them in her hat. Somehow it just seemed to fit.

Tonight I will be listing these paintings on Etsy along with a bunch of new prints, so keep your eyes peeled for new art!

Also don't forget I'm having my first ever blog giveaway which ends on Monday July 19th, and there is a 20% discount on all my Etsy items for those who participate in the giveaway! All you need to do to qualify is leave a comment on this post!

My First Giveaway!!!

2010-07-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

Alright everyone it's here! Just like I promised, in the spirit of good fortune, and just because I feel like it, I'm having my first ever blog giveaway starting right now Monday July 12th!

I will be picking and announcing winners in 1 week on Monday July 19th. Names will be picked at random, quite possibly by my studio assistant if he's up to the job. :)

All you have to do is post a comment in the comment section. That's it!

There will be 3 winners! The first will win a giclee print of your choice of these pieces....

Make sure you let me know which print you prefer in your comment!

2nd prize will be a necklace!

And 3rd prize will be a set of postcards!

EVERYONE who participates will get a 20% discount in my Etsy store for the next two weeks! Starting today Monday July 12th and Ending Monday July 26th!

Ok go post your comments! Good luck to you all!!

Patchwork Bird

2010-07-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

Finally!! I have new artwork to show! Some of you may recognize this one as the bird with purple glitter spots. Well those are long gone, and now we are sporting a nice patchwork look. Which I totally love!

I'm so thrilled to have this one done, as it has been sitting in my studio for several months waiting to be finished. The tail feathers are a tad hidden within the background but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I may or may not add a lite outline to the bird to make him stand out more. Not sure yet, but I am considering it. What do you think?

In other news, I'm a little bit pleased with myself right now, because I have been semi keeping to my schedule I set for myself. I basically got rid of the time slots and just make a list every day of the things I want to get done.

It works much much better as so many things pop up all day long for me, it's hard to assign specific slots of time to do things. Though I am keeping myself limited on the amount of time I spend checking emails, social media and blogs.

Believe it or not, yesterday I managed to cross everything off! Including getting through a lot of blogs. I still have a few more to catch up on which I will be doing right after this post, but I'm really, really close to being caught up now, and that is a HUGE relief.

And, I'm still planning my blog giveaway for Monday, so be sure to stop by and check out the goods. There will be a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for winners. I'm pretty excited about it. It's the first one I've done.

Also, I have a question for those who use Flickr. Is anyone else having trouble logging in? I'd say about 75% of the time the Flickr page refuses to load. This has been going on for months, and needless to say I have just about given up on the site. Is it just me or does this happen to anyone else?

I think that's about it for now. I'm just working my way through blogs and to do lists today. I even managed to put the computer down, and do some gardening. Finally! I now have very pretty colorful flowers all over my deck!

Ta Ta!

Look What I won!!!

2010-07-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

"Possibility" by Erin Carver

Woo Hoo, I'm so excited! I found out yesterday I won a print of this lovely Possibility piece from Erin Carver!

It's the first thing I've ever won, and I couldn't be happier. This is a perfect piece for me right now, as so many new doors are opening, and I'm taking very scary steps trying to start a creative business and putting myself out there.

I love that is says, "You are Full of Possibility". Because it seems to relate so well to what is going on in my life, and that really the possibilities are endless. The only trouble is, I don't always remember or realize it.

Therefore, I'm going to hang it up in my studio so I will always be reminded of this very important truth.

Thank you Erin!

But wait, I have more exciting news!!!

I made my first ever Etsy sale! Yipee! At first I thought I was being charged something that I didn't buy when I saw the email, but then I realized it was an actual sale! I can't tell you how exciting that was. Now I just need to keep the store updated, so I can hopefully continue getting more sales.

Anyway, It's been a very exciting week for me. :)

And, since I seem to be having a run of good luck lately, I thought I'd spread this good fortune amongst all my blog, Facebook, and Twitter friends, and have a giveaway myself. This will happen on Monday so please stay tuned for the official announcement.

I've also got new work photographed which I will post tomorrow. Now however, I need to catch up on emails and blogs. I can't believe how fast it all piles up when you take 3 days off for a Holiday. I'm going to be crazy busy all week it looks like.

Hopefully soon I'll figure out this time managing thing. I went out yesterday, and searched the stores high and low for the perfect day planner. I'm like Goldilocks, I need one not to big, and not too little, not too bulky and not to ugly etc. It has to be just right. I'm picky that way.

I finally found one for 20 bucks at Staples which honestly seemed a little steep for nothing more than a spiral notebook with a calendar in it, but it did have all I asked for so I made the sacrifice and dished out the dough.

Once I got home, I sat down to fill it out, only to find that I really can't put myself on a schedule very easily. Especially this coming week as I have out of town relatives coming. It seems like every day I seem to have some kind of commitment come up that throws a huge monkey wrench in my creative schedule.

Plus I can't figure out if I should give myself specific times to actually make art. I'm afraid if I tell myself I HAVE to paint everyday at 5:00 pm, that I won't feel like it. I tend to paint at totally random times, when the mood strikes me,sometimes that is midnight, so having an actual time slot might not work well for me, and I'm afraid I'll rebel against my own rules.

On the other hand, It is very clear that I can't be trusted to use my time wisely when left alone without any kind of discipline (or supervision for that matter), as I'm inclined to accidentally while away all the hours of the day on the computer, so a strict time schedule might actually be good for me.

But that means I have to be the one to enforce it. Which is a total joke. I'm giggling just thinking about it. It's a known fact that I don't have a good track record with either discipline or willpower, so I honestly don't know how this schedule thing is going to work. It will definitely be interesting.

And the bottom line is, I just spent 20 bucks on a calendar, I better make it work somehow. Wish me luck!!

Kicking Fear to the Curb!

2010-06-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

Thank you everyone who posted such encourging and lovely commets to my last post. It felt a wee scary to put myself so out there, but I'm very glad I did. Apparently I'm not the only one with these fears. :) And it's good to know I have some company in this area.

Because of your generous support, I was able to push some of those fears aside and finish two paintings! A 3rd one is super close to being done, and yet a fourth is just beginning!

I'm so so proud of myself for leaping into my studio and picking up the paintbrushes. Granted I still haven't gained control of my time managing skills, so by the time I actually make it in to the studio is quite a bit later than I originally wanted. Yet the fact is, I am getting in there even if it is at 10pm. Will work on that!

On that note, I thought I'd post a couple pics of how things are coming along. These are not the finished products, as I want to save that unveiling until I get everything photographed properly next week.

Here we go...

So remember the purple glitter spot diseased bird from few posts ago? The one you see above? I just could not get past the tapioca/disease look this bird was sporting, so here is a sneak peak of what I've done to improve it...

Sorry, you can't see it all yet. :) But seriously, I like this much better. And that reminds me of something one of the commenters shared in the last post. It was Chrissy who relayed something that Kelly Rae said to her. And that was, "There are no mistakes!" I loved that saying the minute I read it, and you know what? It's so true. Had I not made the "mistake" of putting the disease spots on this bird, I would not have thought to cover it up with tiny scraps of paper, thereby creating a patchwork effect, which I'm such a sucker for. Thank you Chrissy for sharing that!

Now, remember this photo from last week?

Well here is a preview of what's happening with it....

And....

Getting my painting skills on!

That's all for now! Working on the Mad Hatter piece and the Small World piece today, hope to have pictures to show soon.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Afraid To Paint

2010-06-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

So this week, I've done nothing about my time management issues. I managed to get caught up on the Flying Lessons class last week, and was pretty proud of myself for that, only to fall seriously behind again this week.

Then I saw the A-Team over the weekend, and well that prompted a serious bout of nostalgia, which meant of course I needed to watch re-runs all night on Hulu.

On Monday, I spent nearly 3 hours agonizing over the best feed reader to use, in order to read my blogs. That whole project initially started as a way to save time. Yet, quickly became the complete opposite.

What I really really wanted was something like Tweetdeck to read blogs in. No such thing exists, so I settled on Bloglines, which is working out fairly well. It does indeed save me time, and it is really nice to see at a glace who has updated their blogs all in one spot. Though, I think Tweetdeck should do us all a favor, and add blogger and Typepad etc. to their list of social networking sites.

And of course, I'm still busy keeping up with all the tweets, FB updates, blogs etc. of all the new artists I've met, and have been having a great time. The only snag is, I haven't done much art. Oh I've been in the studio. Once or twice. I've looked around a bit, sat in the chair, got on the computer to print a few things, only to be distracted by itunes looking up songs from The Andy Griffith Show, (yes it was that important that I downloaded the Crawdad Song), picking up supplies, and moving them around, staring at the walls... well you get the picture. I didn't do squat.

I had a bunch of excuses as to why I couldn't finish the half dozen or so paintings that I've started. None of them very good.

The only thing I've really done is make yet another background, which is the picture you see above. I seem to be specializing in those lately. Part of the reason is I'm busy using my time in not the smartest of ways, part of it is I've been gone a lot, and the other part is, well probably the biggest part, is because believe it or not, I'm afraid to finish the paintings.

Does that make sense? I'm actually scared of my own art. You see each background I do, I have a plan for. I know exactly what I want on it for the most part, but I'm afraid to start that part of the process because I'm afraid I'll mess it up. I seem to moving into a new direction, and I am wanting and trying to draw and paint more in my work.

So the collages, I'm working on require me to draw the subject, and then paint them, and that worries me, because I feel I'm not good enough yet to try doing that. I'm worried that it won't come out the way I see it in my mind.

I'm feeling a lot of the things we've talked about in class too. Mainly, who do I think I am to think others will be interested in my art? and Will I be able to make enough money to make art my career? ( I've been on disability for the last six months, so I'm using this time to see if I can start a creative business, hoping that I can a least contribute to a few household bills again.)

It's true I'm feeling intimidated (and inspired!!) by a lot of the wonderful art I'm seeing out there, and I know I've read on other blogs, some of you are feeling the same way. It's a nasty thing being intimidated, but like Kelly says, we need to be true to ourselves. Put ourselves into our art and into our blogs etc. Well I'm putting myself out there for you all to see. Hope I don't scare you off. :) But the honest truth is I am afraid. This creative journey can be crazy scary, frustrating, overwhelming etc. BUT it is also exciting. And most of the time, it is the exciting bit I am concentrating on. But for now, I'm letting the fear in, acknowledging it, and hopefully waving good-bye to it very soon!

Time management problems....

2010-06-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

I have been having so much fun connecting with folks and finding amazing artists from my Flying Lessons class from Kelly Rae Roberts. It has taken up a lot of my time lately all this blog hopping, Facebooking, Twittering oh my! I am still seriously behind in my class, which I'm trying somewhat unsuccessfully to catch up on today, If only I could stay off my Tweetdeck!

Also I've spent entirely too much time, fiddling with my blog appearance. I have changed to the lighter background, which I think is easier to read, but not the best for my photos. Hmmm.... Still deciding on that one, and things may change again, not sure yet.

Also I still have the 3 columns as you can see, but now I notice that when I post my blog link anywhere like Facebook, it brings up the stuff in my left sidebar, instead of the blog post and picture. Argh! Not sure how to fix that one, I may go back to two column because of that. If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know. :)

Anyway, despite all that business, I do have a few things in the works artistically that I've been fooling around with this week. So I thought I'd give you a peek into what's been going on...

The first pic you see above is one I just started the other day. This is the start of the background for a Mad Hatter piece I want to do. I sure hope it turns out!!

And this is another work in progress, that is actually almost done now. I was inspired by the characters in "It's a Small World" for this piece. I think I'm also going to do one of the Small World Castle. Hopefully. :)

And finally, my studio apprentice hard at work!!

That's all for now! I'm off to school now, hopefully I can better manage my time next week. Have a great weekend!

A little something you probably didn't know about me...

2010-06-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, so I thought I'd post a little something about myself for a change. I mean I know I always post about myself in a way, but I don't really post about who I really am.

I have noticed that most of my posts tend to center around what I am making artistically, and that's it. As this is an art blog, I thought that content to be most appropriate. But then after taking Kelly Rae's Flying Lessons, I am learning that I need to put ALL of me out there for you all to see. You know, so we get to know one another, and connect better right?

Well here is a little story I am sharing with you about a phobia of mine. If you are going to get to know me, you may as well know the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Now, some of you may recognize this post from my first blog, which was actually non art related. That's right. I had another blog. It became pretty popular too. I even got a little award. But then the pressure to create a post all the time for my "public" got to me, and I gave it all up when I found art again.

Originally I wanted to keep the pressure off, and keep this blog mainly about art, but I realize this might make things a tad stale. I'm thinking there isn't much personality to it. And I'd thought I spruce things up a bit.

So here you go, a glimpse into my neurotic side...

This is a little story about ticks. Just to give you some background here, I hate them. With all my heart. They gross me out and scare me silly. In short, I have a HUGE phobia of them.

Now, this little phobia of mine has become quite dangerous and is very likely to get me into trouble sometime. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Last summer I was driving to the grocery store. Earlier that day, I had been on a hike, and as it was getting cool out, I had put on a black sweatshirt (the color is important here).

About halfway to the store, I am stopped at a stop sign and notice something moving on the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

As I start driving again, I simultaneously inspect my sleeve. Big mistake! It was a tick. Just one lone tick, making it's way down my arm, along my black sweatshirt.

Black.

Ticks are also black.

Do you know what went through my mind after I finished screaming? Yes I did scream. Loudly.

I kept thinking how many other ticks were on me, that I couldn't see because they blended into my black sweatshirt. Not only that, but where did the first tick come from? My neck? My hair? My shirt? My pants?

The possibilities were endless.

I was positively freaking out. Shudders, screams, much flailing of the arms, hyperventilating, and rising panic all ensued, at the thought of the possible hordes of ticks dispersed along my body.

And all this was happening while I driving on a two lane, windy, mountain road.

As I tried to brush the phantom ticks off me, I would swerve into the oncoming traffic, but luckily pull out, just before a car sped past.

Sensing imminent danger. I hastily spun my car around, and sped home as fast as I could. Once there, I ran into the house, shedding clothes along the way, and jumped into the shower.

After a good, thorough scrubbing and inspection, I was convinced that it was safe to leave the confines of the shower, and put clean clothes on. I never went back to the store that night, as I was sure my car was positively infested with those bloodsuckers.

All that commotion for ONE tick.

And that? Wasn't the worst episode. Allow me to share just what happened on the night of the scariest tick moment of my life.

The scariest tick moment of my life happened when my husband and I were very first dating.

Since we were a new couple, we did wild and crazy things, such as staying up late on weeknights, eating junk food, and go for late night bike rides and hikes.

As usual, one night after work, I made my way over to his place for dinner. It was pretty late, since those were the days when I worked until almost nine every night.

Sometime after dinner, we decided it would be fun to go on a late night hike. There was a nice hiking mountain right near his house, so we drove up there.

Technically, I don't think you are supposed to hike there at night. Especially at 11 pm, but what the heck. Rules were made to be broken right?

The view was spectacular.

The weather comfortable.

The trails, thin and grassy.

Grassy. Tall grass to be precise.

That should have been my first clue. Long grassy weeds in the hills? Tick city.

Just so you know, I have been on hundreds of hikes, in all kinds of terrain, and I have never once picked up a tick. Never. Ticks were the absolute furthest thing from my mind.

Our walk was lovely, but was stopped short when I felt something crawling up my leg. As I bent down to brush it off, I noticed it was a tick.

Trying to be cool, in front of my relatively new boyfriend, I tried to minimize my panic and flailing arms as I furiously checked myself for more.

When I noticed yet another one, all hell broke loose.

Obviously, I didn't mean to shriek so loudly. But, I just couldn't help it. I flew towards the car, and started a massive inspection.

My boyfriend somewhat alarmed by my loss of composure/coolness, followed at a more sedate pace.

The more we inspected me, the more ticks we found.

Clothes started flying off of at a rapid pace. Ticks were hiding in every nook and cranny. Apparently they like armpits.

Soon I was .... well naked. As in buck.

I was still furiously inspecting my body, when I noticed the bright police lights shining in my direction.

Oh dear god.

I flew into the car, but was too scared of my clothes, to cover myself up, so I just huddled with my arms crossed over me, as best I could in the front seat, with the cop light beaming into the car at about a million watts.

I can only imagine what our little scenario looked like. A young couple in the mountains late at night, near a parked car, the woman completely naked. The only odd part would be the fact that my boyfriend was fully clothed, and we were standing outside the car.

At any rate, he managed to talk to the cop and convince him nothing untoward was going on. In exchange for not getting written up for trespassing, and or indecent exposure, we were told to leave. Which we gladly did.

We drove the short distance home, but I was still huddled in the front seat without a stitch of clothes on, as we made our way down the city streets and stopped at all red lights.

Back at his house, I ran from the car to the bathroom at top speeds, lest his roommate, and or a passing neighbor saw my nekked self.

Another furiously long shower, and I was deemed to be tick free.

That was almost 3 years ago, and despite the episode last summer, I am actually getting better now, that I live among the little buggers on a daily basis.

Just the other day, I found one, lodged in my jugular.

I really feel like I'm improving.

After all, I only screamed once, and hyperventilated maybe twice ...

A Few Things I'm Working On

2010-06-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't been in the studio much in the last few weeks, which means I have loads of projects lying around waiting to be finished.

After spending almost the whole day on the computer blog hopping, checking Facebook, and Twitter, reading my class notes, etc. I finally got sick and tired of sitting in one spot staring at a monitor.

I was starting to feel anxious in a way that meant I needed to create. The only problem was I didn't feel like it. So I sat and wasted even more time contemplating whether or not I should paint, when finally after some Twitter encouragement, I decided what the heck, and gave it a go.

I'm working on the middle piece right now, but it is drying so I gave myself permission to take a break (like I needed one), and post this real quick.

So the picture you see above, are 3 WIP's. I've been hanging on to them for a while now, and just can't seem to finish them. The bird on the right, I'm kind of skeptical about since it looks like he has a disease. Which reminds me of tapioca pudding. Which to me looks like a disease. I can't eat that stuff with all those little bumps floating around it grosses me out. Always has. I don't eat rice pudding either for the same reason. Yep I know I'm strange.

Anyway, the bird looks like a flapper chicken with a disease worthy of Bewitched, something along the lines of "purple glitter spot syndrome".

But I am really curious to see how these guys turn out. The middle and left one, I have specific plans for. It will be interesting to see if they turn out like I am hoping.

In other news, I'm sure you have noticed that I changed the look of my blog. That's another thing I spent far to much time on today. I really wanted to make it a 3 column layout, and after fighting with the new blogger design center for a hour, and finding out my blog template no longer exists (what the heck?), I finally found a proper tutorial. So I got it done, but now I don't know if I like it.

The blog looks really busy to me now, and I'm not sure how good that is. In one way it is awesome to have the extra room, but on the other I liked the simplicity of the two column look. Decisions, decisions. What do you think? Is it too much?

Although if you say it needs to go back to two column, I don't have a clue how to change it again. Doh!

Such a Lovely Day!

2010-06-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

So today, I finally got the inspiration fairy to come by and say hi. I wasn't in full blown artist mode, but I did get the urge to go into the studio and create something. I ended up making a bunch of backgrounds, and while they were drying the hubby and I set off down the road to the Scout Ranch.

The "Ranch" is a park (for boy scouts actually but they are never there) that has lovely hiking trails and a creek (the same creek that runs through our yard).

What we usually do is walk to the park, pick up Rico who's a dog that lives next door to the ranch, take a small hike to a little beach area, and then walk the creek back home. Rico as usual follows us the whole way through the creek, so we have to to drive him back home when we are done.

Since I don't have any art to show, I thought I'd show you some pics of our adventure today.

I wish I had the camera for our walk through the creek, but as we have to wade up to our shoulders in some parts, I thought it best not to bring the camera along on that part of the journey. One day, I'll have to bring it when we don't take the creek home. It's amazingly beautiful out there.

Anyway when we got back, we ended up taking our cat Monkey for his daily walk, and since I was inspired to take pictures, I brought the camera along. So come along, and take a walk with us. Here's a small peek into my neighborhood...

This is outside our front door. Our front yard is actually one huge deck, and a driveway, and this clump of trees is what you see right away.

Monkey walking the hood. Notice how important he is.

Another shot of the hood. I love how nature-y it is.

Here's some flowers from the field above...

A bit of the neighborhood road. Notice how it's not paved...

This is Lily one of the neighbor's cats. Secretly she is Monkey's girlfriend, but he won't admit it. Actually when he comes up to her, he stops walking, sits down and refuses to move, until she leaves. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't because he's scared of her. Nope, he's actually jealous of her, because whenever she is out we shower tons of attention on her and ignore him, and she eats it up too, twirling and prancing like a little ballerina.

Well, that's it for now, I took a ton more shots, but they didn't come out so well, so this is all I have for today. The photo of the tree with a face in the beginning, is a tree sitting right in front of our deck. A friend decorated it for us on day while we were gone. I love it!

BTW please excuse the amateur photography. I am experimenting with effects, and can't seem to get the rounded corners right. Plus I don't know how to get rid of the frame around the photos, so I realize it all looks a little hokey.

WIP Update

2010-06-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update to show what I've done to my WIP from last week. It is definitely not done yet, but I can tell you it has gone through so many stages.

This last stage was an attempt at covering up the houses and basically starting over. But after a few swipes with the brayer, I kind of liked how it was looking, so I stopped. Now I'm letting it sit for a bit, while I figure out what do next. Any thoughts?

So, I haven't been spending any time in my studio lately, which is really starting to bum me out. It's not that I don't have the time, though I admit with Kelly Rae's ecourse, I find myself on the computer much much more, trying to catch up with all her wonderful posts, not to mention all the comments, Holy cow! And, I'm also trying to blog hop and meet the folks in class. Which is a full time job right there. :)

It has been such a wonderful class and experience, and I'm so happy I signed up for it!

As expected, I'm learning tons of cool stuff in class, but for some reason, my desire to create actual art has vanished. Again. I so hate when that happen. , I wish I knew why I go through these phases, but at least I now know lots of other artists struggle with it too. I always sympathize when I read on someone's blog how they are in a creative slump. It just isn't any fun! And I really hope it returns soon. Because honestly, I miss creating.

Fortunately, through class, I've been finding some really cool blogs and artists out there, and that has been inspiring me a lot. Now I just need to step in the studio and start painting!

This blog in particular by Chrissy has totally inspired me to be creative in a new way for me. I now want to bust out the camera, and take a zillion pictures. Perhaps to use in my collages somehow? Hmm... Anyway, I'm so inspired by her photos of San Francisco and Napa Valley, that I want to head out there tomorrow and see if I can get a few cool shots too. Luckily I live an hour away from SF so this is very possible.

Then there is Juliette's blog who's adorable whimsical creations are getting my creative juices flowing again. (Thank goodness!) I just love her characters!

Actually I found a lot more people that have been inspiring me, but if I list everyone, this post would be about a mile long. No lie. I'm loving what I see out there! It's so awesome we have the internet to meet people and see each others art, I can't begin to imagine how people connected artistically with out it. It sure is a whole lot easier!

Work in progress and other news

2010-06-03T14:11:00.001-07:00

Oy, it's been an interesting week.

The main thing I did was poison myself eating too much health food. Yes, it is possible to do.

I am living proof, that too many vegetables=a lot of time spent in the commode. And I don't mean reading! Unfortunately it's taken until today to recover.

Luckily for me I finally realized I was overdosing on vegetables and whole grains, AKA fiber, so naturally I switched over to pizza, nachos, and ice cream. Feeling much better now!

In art news, above, you will see a disaster... I mean work in progress.

Actually that piece looks nothing like that now, but I don't have a recent photo, because I was too lazy to take it when I thought about it, and now I'm not home so I have no choice but to make due with this one. Of course I could wait until I get back home, and take a proper photo, but why do that, when I can waste a whole paragraph explaining why I posted this one?

Anyway, this is what happens when I paint, rather than do a collage. It's been forever since I've done a real honest to goodness painting, no help with papers, embellishments etc. that I forgot what to do. So bear with me, while I get my painting wings back on, it's going to be a bumpy ride I suspect.

In other even more interesting art news, yesterday I packed up all my art again, and took it over to the local library for it's summer vacation! I'm sad to see it go, since my walls are uglier than homemade soap when bare, but I know my collages will have a good time hanging out with the fine folks at the library.

Now, this is where thing go fuzzy. Somehow during the two hours it took to hang the work, I managed to agree to teaching a collage workshop.

I know!

If I woke up with my head sewn to the carpet, I couldn't have been more surprised than I was yesterday when I agreed to do a class. Me? Teach? Other people? As in, I need to speak in front of a crowd? Of people not of the imaginary kind?

Who took over my body, and said yes to that?

Now, I'm the kind of person that during collage on the first day of class, if any kind of public speaking was mentioned, as in you need to give a speech for your midterm, or I love to torture students so much that everyone will give a speech every other week kind of thing... I would walk out at the break, and scratch that class off my list forever.

If we were halfway through the semester, and the instructor announced a surprise speech, I would drop the class right then, no matter how much work was invested or if I needed that class to graduate. No way, no how. Not going to happen.

You get the idea, that public speaking terrifies me no? Though, perhaps this is why, I haven't graduated from collage, even though I've been out of high school for nearly 17 years?

Yet, despite all the shaking, hyperventilating, panic attacks, and sweating, I usually go through when I so much as think about talking in front of people.

It looks like I will in fact be teaching a workshop. Fancy that.

1st Day of School

2010-05-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

So today Kelly Rae Robert's e-course begins and I'm super excited. It couldn't have come at a better time for me, and I can't wait to meet everyone in "school" and learn all that way cool info!

So I'm off to class right now, and hopefully if I get up enough drive, I'll head into the studio to paint.

It's a little hard this weekend, as it's so completely nice outside, that all I want to do is play around, enjoy the warm weather, and swim in the creek in our backyard.

Anne Boleyn (The Most Happy)

2010-05-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

I made this one last night. It's 18x24 and is the 4th wife in my series of the six wives of Henry the Eighth.

There are tons of layers and textures in this piece which may be hard to see, but I tried a cool thing with gesso, which I've seen others do.

When I put the gesso down, instead of just spreading it on like normal, I made some areas super thick, some where very thin, and some areas I made patterns with the palette knife, which made a really cool crackle looking effect.

I really had a ton of fun with this piece, and these kind are my most favorite to do, because I totally get into the groove, and just have so much fun putting layer after layer of paint down, and trying all kinds of techniques and textures.

You really can't ruin it, and there isn't much pressure to get many details right, not like if I was painting a portrait or something, you know? They way I look at it is, if it doesn't look right, add more paint! It's always worked for me.

Anyway, just in case you are curious, the collage elements used were, Anne's portrait, her signature, her badge, her motto (The Most Happy), and a love letter written to her from Henry (oddly enough none of Anne's responses have survived, but there are quite of few of Henry's).

To be honest, I'm going to be sad when this series is over. I'll have to think of a new theme to do with this style.

Oh, I need to add a side note. I'm coming to realize my brand new computer has terrible color management, and when I look at photos of my work, it looks awful. Really washed out and greyish, etc. So I often will alter the colors to make them look more like the original painting. However, since everyone's monitors are different, I've no idea what you folks in cyber land see. So, if the colors you are seeing are really crazy bright, or dull, I'm sorry. The real painting, I promise, is very vibrant.

Okay, I'm done.

Stay tuned for Jane Seymour!

All Clean!!

2010-05-24T15:38:00.001-07:00

Showing off CLEAN studio pics. :) I redid the whole thing yesterday mainly by converting the closet into an extension of the room. Taking off the closet doors helped wonders! This photo is shot from the back corner looking towards the entrance.

Taken from inside the closet. My room appears so big now! :) In reality it's pretty darn small, hence the reason, I moved into the closet.

Again this is taken from the closet, looking at my sitting area, which frankly I do not use often enough. Usually when I'm in the room, I'm painting, so not much sitting going one. Though it is nice to know it's there, just in case. :) Also, you may not be able to see it that well, but the space inside the window seat is painted hot pink!

Another view of my painting desk, and my regular desk looking out the window. I LOVE my overflowing bookshelves on either side of the wood desk. At one point I aspired to be a writer. And this is where I was supposed to be writing. :)

Finally a pic of my new and improved closet. I now have a place to store all those canvases and a put that black shelf thing in there, that hold all my misc art supplies, that were crowding my desk. It's great to have because it's out of the way, but easy enough to get to when I need them. Sorry about the shadows though. :O

This is a shot just outside of my window. Love this view! You can't see it in the picture, but the hill goes all the way down to our creek. I shot this looking to slightly to the left, but if you look straight on, you can see down the creek further, and the land across the creek. No one can build on it, so we will always have a beautiful view!!

Cleaning up the Mess

2010-05-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

My "Art Day" turned into clean the art studio day. I haven't exactly accomplished a whole lot, except to take everything from my closet and throw it on the floor thinking I was "reorganizing" it's contents, only to realize in my over-enthusiastic cleaning frenzy I have thrown away all the boxes, from whence the contents came, and now have no where to put anything, thus creating a much larger mess than before.

On the bright side, I found my official membership to the A-Team fan club certificate! Which I'm totally going to hang up. As soon as I find my walls again.

Lady With The Blue Dress On

2010-05-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Here is some new art for you!

This piece is another 8x10 mixed media collage, with the image by Itkupilli. Like I had to even say that right? I think we all know how much I love love love her images!!

Anyway, she is up for grabs should anyone be interested. I will be posting her on Etsy this week.

And speaking of Etsy, I'm getting the hang of this store thing now, so I'm gradually filling it up. Come on by and see what' s new.

I'll be adding more tonight, including the batch of necklaces I made, and finally art prints!!! I'm beyond excited about being able to offer those, as I'm finally getting my printer/paper situation sorted out.

In other news, I'll be taking my first art workshop this weekend with Kelly Kilmer! I've been wanting to take a class from her for awhile now, so I'm pretty excited to get this special opportunity. I can't wait! If you don't know her awesome, fabulous journal work, check her out. You won't be sorry. I promise.

Two For Tea

2010-05-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

So this is a Mothers Day present I made for my mother in law. It's 8x10 and on canvas.

She really likes chickens, and I just couldn't resist making this for her once I saw this image, which btw is from Itkupilli.

These guys are so cute, I may use them in another collage. As of now they are available in prints and necklaces!

And speaking of necklaces, I've been busy. I've got about 25 in the works right now. They are all dried, and ready to be assembled.

They will be photographed on Tuesday, and hopefully I will have them up in the Etsy store within the week. Lots of new images, so be sure to stop by and check them out!

I Have Necklaces!!

2010-05-13T00:35:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited! I finally have some necklaces!!!

There was a lot of trial and error involved in getting these suckers right, but I finally found the secret.

I don't know what I was doing wrong, but every glue I tried made my images run and fade. Not only that but it would not stick to the glass.

I even bought that fancy Microglaze that is supposed to fading and running, and it did nothing for me.

I was so bummed, because it seemed that all over the web and Etsy everyone was making these fabulous necklaces with no troubles, and here I was struggling, and trying a zillion different products with no luck.

Well finally I found the trick. 5 minute Epoxy! That stuff rocks. It dries right away, doesn't run nor does it fade. Believe me I was shocked too, but I'm super happy it works.

So anyway, here are a few to look at. I will be making a lot more this week with new images. They are so much fun! And, they will be for sale on Etsy tomorrow should you want to get your hot little hands on some. :)

You Can Fly When You Want To

2010-05-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

New art! I gave this to my mom for Mothers Day.

This one is 24x24. A new size for me, and I love it. I don't know why but I really like working on squares. The only problem is they aren't a good size when you are trying to make greeting cards and postcards out of them. Oh well, you do what you gotta do.

I've been planning this collage for a few months, but wouldn't you know at the last minute, I changed a major component and basically had to start over. So in the end I was rushed to get to it done, but I'm so glad I made the change, because it is 100 times better this way.

I used a bunch of techniques here, including a new tissue paper one I read about to give the background more texture. It's the wrinkly bits you see. I also drew, cut out, and painted the butterfly on Bristol paper and then glued it to the background.

I usually prefer using this technique as opposed to painting directly on the canvas. That way I can build up the backgrounds as much as I like, and not have to try to paint over it. I feel you get a cleaner more vibrant look when it is painted separately on paper. And for this piece I really wanted the butterfly to stand out.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how this one came out, and I'm thinking I'll have to do more like this.

And for those of you who pay attention to the sidebar widgets, you will notice some new decorations there. Yep it's official. Finally! I have a functional Etsy store, where you can buy original artwork, prints, postcards, necklaces etc. Now before you rush over there, please note, that I'm still setting everything up, so right now there are only a few items listed, but each day I will add more and more.

My first priority is getting all the originals posted. Right now the 5x7's are done, but the bigger ones will take a bit more research into shipping prices. Anyway they are all for sale, and I hope you visit soon! Need to make room for the new stuff!

Dancing In the Trees

2010-05-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

More new art! This collage is 8x10, and the image is from Itkupilli. I just love her pictures!!

I had a breakthrough with this piece because, I think I finally have come to terms with using purple. I love the color but we have been enemies in art for a long time. However, with this picture I did not struggle with the color like I usually do, and it was awesome!

It might help too, that I finally found a shade of purple that I like from Liquitex. Man I've gone through so many tubes of that darn color only to be disappointed with the results after it dries. Thankfully that all seems to be in the past.

Now, about the name. I was originally going to call this piece "Birdhouse in your Soul", partly because I was listening to the song when I made this, but also because looking at the finished product now, it looks to me like she's in a tree, which is a birds house. I don't know where the soul fits in, but it's a cool title anyway.

So, long story longer, I didn't use that title because I have another painting in the works that will have it. So I chose dancing in the trees because in the image the lady seems to be dancing, and like I said, it looks as if she is inside a tree on the branches or something.

Don't see it?

Ok Moving on. :)

Things are bit busy for me right now. I'm learning tons of new things trying to make a business, and name for myself in the art world, and it's taking a lot of time. I haven't spent as much time creating as I would have liked, but hope that will change soon.

I am however in the process of making necklaces!! I'm using glass tiles, but I'm having a horrible time getting glue to stick. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but as soon as I figure it out, I will have them for sale, so keep your eyeballs peeling for some really cool and colorful necklaces on Etsy!

And speaking of Etsy, I haven't finished it yet, but finally I will be making a site, and selling originals, postcards, prints and necklaces!! I cannot wait, but again it all takes time to list and put everything together. Sometimes I can be so impatient. :)

That's all for now!

My new postcards are here! My new postcards are here!!!

2010-05-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Ha! I can't resist stealing that line from "The Jerk", but it's exactly how I felt when I saw the package on my deck this morning.

So here they are! Since I didn't know how they would turn out, I only ordered 5 different kinds. I tried to pick ones that would capture the different styles of my work, but it's not an easy decision to make! Now I wish I had all the others, because they look so cool.

I'm really loving these guys! The quality is excellent. I can't believe how perfect the colors are, and the image is so crisp. I know it's hard to see from the photo, but they really are great quality.

I ordered them from Vistaprints in case anyone needs to order some of their own. They were highly recommended by other artists, and I'm glad I listened! Also they have fabulous sales. The only bummer is, the lowest quantity is 100. Which is another reason I only ordered 5 different images. I now have 500 postcards to get rid of!

Which brings me to my next topic. I will be selling them for a dollar apiece or you can buy the set of 5 for 4 dollars. The cards measure about 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 and the back has a greyed out image of my Dreamy collage, plus lines to write the recipients address on, and a little stamp box. Keep the card for yourself or send it to others! It really is a win win situation no?

If these end up selling, I'll definitely start adding more images to the bunch. And until I get them on the website, and in my Etsy store, if anyone is really interested in buying them right this minute, just email me and we will work something out.

The Red Dress

2010-04-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Another new piece hot off the press! This is another 11x14 collage on canvas. The picture is from Itkupilli. Actually there are two photos, the background and the lady.

And if you can believe this, I actually used Photoshop (which I hate) to merge the two and change the colors. I know! Don't get used to it. Photoshop and I do not get along, so I this won't happen often.

I had a lot of fun with this piece, creating a sort of Alice in Wonderland-ly feel, or so I think anyway. :) I have the perfect home for her too, because my living room walls (only two of them actually) are red, I think she will look awesome there. That is until someone buys her... hint hint...

So I'm off now to bring ALL my artwork home! It has been vacationing this spring at a lovely local cafe, but now it must move on to bigger and better things. The Library! I will be hanging my art in to the local library in June, so this is really perfect timing. Now I won't have to worry about having enough pieces!

See ya!!

Angel Of Harlem

2010-04-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a brand new piece, fresh off the studio table. An 11x14 collage on canvas, and I call it Angel of Harlem.

Now, I actually have no idea who this is or whether or not it is in fact an angel of Harlem, but as I was making this, the song Angel of Harlem came on, and well, the name kind of stuck. It just seemed so fitting somehow.

I don't normally do religious pieces (for no particular reason), but I thought this lady was so pretty I could not pass her up.

My recent flurry of sales has totally inspired me to go back in the studio, and create like a madman, so I have several pieces in the works right now. Only 3 made it to the photo shoot today, but two more are very close to finishing, and I have many more just waiting to be started.

Now, I have a super dilemma though. I'm not sure how many artists struggle with this, but I'm guessing quite a few do. My problem is I want to do so many different styles and techniques (so many possibilities out there!), that sometimes I get quite overwhelmed, and when that happens I tend to freeze up. Not in a bad way, it's just I can't figure out what to do first.

It's kind of hard to explain I suppose, but that's where I am right now. I have a few different styles I play around with, and I have a long list of many more I want to try, but it's like I don't know where to start, or even if I should.

I wonder if I should be sticking with one style, and make it my signature look you know? Or is it best to keep playing around, and it doesn't matter if you do multiple styles?

Any thoughts??

Goodbye Pretty in Pink!

2010-04-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

I sold this one today!

It's been quite a week! Besides the fact that some artwork is selling, I'm very excited that I am able to create art that other people resonate with. It makes me feel good, that others appreciate the piece as much as I do. And maybe even more! :)

In other news, I spent this weekend doing some marketing for myself, and managed to waste a ton of time researching places to get postcards. It took several hours, but I finally got it done, and now I eagerly await those 14 days it will take to get them!

Once I have them in my hot little hands, I can sell some online for those who may want some artwork, but can't afford an original.

I'm also looking into making greeting cards, and if all goes well finally some real art prints! The fact that I probably need to buy a fancy printer is holding up the whole process, but I'm hoping I'm getting closer to resolving this issue. When all that is done, I will for sure offer them for sale on the website!

Another One Bites the Dust!

2010-04-23T15:46:00.001-07:00

I'm a little sad, but also super excited to have sold "Someday her Prince will Come"!

This piece went to a lovely 6 year old artist who wanted it for her room. I'm thrilled that I could contribute to her decor!

Enjoy!

Sold!!

2010-04-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, I sold my first piece today!! I got the news this morning, and it took me a long time before I was able to stop shrieking. Too cool!

A lot of good things are happening art wise right now, and it is such a good feeling to be able to sell a piece that someone else will enjoy as much as I do.

So long Beautiful Dreamer hope you like your new home!!

Big News!!

2010-04-20T00:27:00.000-07:00

I'm finally official! I have a website up and running! I have business cards that I can pass around now, and I have my art on products over at Zazzle!

Now all I need is an audience. :) I'm very excited about this because it's been a long time coming. I am concentrating almost exclusively on art now, and that is a very good feeling.

I am also in the midst of proposing a project so hopefully I'll have more good news soon.

Anyone interested in checking out the new digs, come on over to Polychrome's Palace! That's my new name! Like I said several blog posts ago, The Cat's Pajamas was already taken as a website, so I had to come up with something new.

Well the story behind the name is on the website, but the gist is, polychrome means lots of color! And we all know my artwork if full of that!

Don't worry though, I know I'm breaking the rules, but the blog name will remain The Cat's Pajamas. I like it, and I want to keep it. So I will.

Now about the art you see. That is Catherine of Aragon. If you know your history you will recognize her as Henry the Eighth's first wife. That's 3 Henry wives down, 3 more to go for a complete series. I love doing these collages, though I suspect they aren't as popular as the other stuff I usually do. Too bad, because I'm having fun!

Oh and feel free to stop by Zazzle. I've got a lot of new products in the store this week. New things are posting everyday!

That's all folks! Hope to see you over at Polychrome's Palace!

CupKate

2010-04-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

Meet Cupkate! She's an 8x10 mixed media collage on canvas.

Her creation took several months believe it or not, but I'm glad I persisted with her.

For the longest time, I just wasn't satisfied with the background. It took many many layers of paint and papers before I could actually start feeling like I could go somewhere with this one.

Now the cupcake was a different story. I knew right away I would do that, but the problem was how to create it.

Since I'm not a magician, and I never took any ribbons with my drawing and painting skills, it was quite clear from the start that I needed to find an alternative cupcake creating method.

The cupcake wrapper was the easiest, it is folded and painted tissue paper. Pretty standard. But the frosting, I wanted to make as real as possible.

So, I created a combo of molding and fiber paste which I then put into a plastic bag, snipped off the tip and then squeezed the "frosting" out just like I would with a real cupcake. Once it dried I painted and embellished with glitter and beads.

The face however, came a lot later. I had created her sometime last year as a doodle, and then brought her to life with paint just last month. She has been patiently awaiting a body and a home, and neither were forthcoming. It wasn't until this week that I realized she would do very nicely on this canvas.

You can't see it in this picture but she is 3D as well. In order to make her even with the frosting and to glue her on, a background of molding paste was built up for her to rest on. I then painted the sides to match her hair and hat, and viola! She is complete!

Oh and before I go I want to mention again that I have a new Zazzle store! You can click on the word Zazzle or click on my store widget in the sidebar. Also If you hadn't noticed I have now added pages at the top of the blog so if you clink on the store link it will take you there as well.

I add new products almost everyday, so you should come and check it out sometime! Also Zazzle is having a Tax Day Sale. Here's the info below in case you get the urge to shop:

Tax Day Sale at Zazzle- 10-40% off ALL ORDERS!

Use Promotional Code: TAXDAYZAZZLE

Ends Thursday April 15th

Thanks for stopping by!!

Anne of Cleves

2010-04-06T23:53:00.000-07:00

Well here she is, Anne of Cleves, Henry the Eighth's 4th wife. The lucky one, as she was so repulsive to Henry he decided to divorce her as soon as he could, which I'm sure saved her neck. Literally.

As is the case with all my favorites, this one gave me big trouble in the beginning. I kept adding layer after layer of the same colors, and it just wasn't popping for me. Finally after deliberating about it for days, I decided to add a new color, and chose the green for a little contrast.

Finally things started to come together, and now, I am pretty pleased with the results.

In fact I had so much joy after finishing this piece, and since I really wanted to do another collage in this style, I went and did one of Henry himself. The old beast. I really don't like him, but he is part of the series I suppose.

I actually was not intending to do him at all, but since I had his image already printed (I was going to do him at one point but changed my mind, then changed it back again. Confusing I know), and I had just run out of ink and could not print Katherine of Aragon like I wanted to, I did Henry instead.

Unfortunately his collage did not come out as good as I wanted. I still may touch it up later, but for now he is hanging with Katherine and Anne over my couch, soon to be joined by Katherine of Aragon. Hopefully I get my ink soon!

Collage elements used were the agreement to divorce that Anne wrote back to Henry, her motto, her signature, her portrait, and her badge. I also used fluid acrylics, and oil pastels to create texture and depth.

That's all for now!

I finally got my groove back!

2010-04-02T22:13:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, the last 10 days or so have been extremely frustrating for me. I've been completely blocked artistically. Nothing was inspiring, nothing I tried to create came out, I couldn't draw, I had no imagination... You get the picture right?

I couldn't believe this was happening to me again, and just when I had gotten started making art again this year.

Last time this happened it took over 3 months for me to get back into the swing of things, and I was so worried that was happening again.

It definitely was not a good time for the artistic well to run dry either. So many new things are happening art wise, and it would have been terrible if I just stopped creating again.

Oh, I wish I could divulge everything that is happening, but I can't just yet. There are still a few loose ends to tie up that are taking longer than I anticipated. Which is a big bummer, but there isn't much I can do about it.

Anyway, the collage above is an 8x10 I did last year, titled "Wonderful", the photo in the middle is from Itkupilli. Another canvas that missed the boat. Apparently there were several pictures that never got posted to the blog last year, I guess that was during the dry spell of 2009.

So, back to the present. Last night, I went into my studio to try to fix the 5 canvases that are sitting around waiting for me to finish them, and I couldn't do it. I just sat there, staring at the walls. Oh I dabbled around with the paint a bit, but nothing was turning out. I wasn't getting that spark, that a-ha moment, when you just know the painting is turning out good. So I quit, and played games the rest of the night.

When I got up this morning, I felt hopeless. Then I got an idea. Why not go to the cafe that has my art on display. Maybe seeing it will help fuel my muse.

So we went and had breakfast, and seeing my art was definitely fun and cool, but it didn't quite inspire me. Though I must say It was nice to the paintings again, because looking at pictures just doesn't do them any justice at all. They are so much better in person.

Oh and one cool thing happened while we were there, some customers came in and complimented my artwork to the lady working at the counter. Of course I didn't actually hear them because I was busy reading the comics, and stuffing my face with biscuits and gravy, but my husband let me know what they said.

Now all this back story is actually leading up to me telling you, that somewhere between the biscuits and gravy, the flat tire we got on the way there, going to the post office, coming home and surfing the internet, taking a nap, and making dinner, I actually got the urge to go back in my studio.

And thank goodness I did. I managed to finally finish my Anne of Cleaves painting, which will sit proudly next to Katherine in the living room. I wish I had a picture to show you, but I won't have one, until Tuesday. I also managed to touch up 3 other canvases, and this time every color and swipe with the brayer was right. It all came out! I finally was able to fix my cupcake canvas too, something I've been working on for several months.

I'm telling you, when I finished Anne of Cleves, I nearly cried with joy. It felt so good to be painting and creating again, and have things come out, and like them. It was the most awesome feeling. And now, I can't wait to go back and play again tomorrow!

All is right with my world again.

Katherine Howard

2010-03-23T23:51:00.000-07:00

Finally!! I finished the Katherine Howard piece. As you can see, It's another new technique, which I actually really like, and originally wanted to do collages like this about 10 years ago, but never managed to quite get it.

If you remember I started this in early Feb, and absolutely hated how it was coming along, so I set it aside for nearly a month and a half hoping I would grow to like it.

Just the other week, I picked it up, and started playing with it again, and I managed to finally get the look I was going after, for the most part anyway.

It's not perfect, but I am pleased with it. And believe me, if you saw it before you would see the improvement.

This is a collage on canvas (of course), and for the collage pieces, I used her signature, her portrait, a letter written by her, her motto, and her badge.

As usual this was done by trail and error, and there are several layers involved, some covering up the original papers completely, and I actually had to print them out again, because too much was becoming obscured.

Most of the painting was done with a brayer, but some was done with a wet paper towel if you can believe it. I actually really like that effect, because it's blends the paints so nicely and discovered it by accident when I was trying to wipe off a mistake. Love it when that happens! Though if you aren't careful, the paper towel starts to shed all over the place which of course could be really uncool.

I also tried the paint splattering technique with red paint. It wasn't until after, that I realized it looks a lot like blood splatters, and gives the piece a rather gruesome effect.

Especially if you factor in the fact that she had her head chopped off. I could see how that might lead one to think that the red splatters were meant represent her blood, but honestly that wasn't what I meant to do. I kept it in because I like the accent, but I do wish the splats were bigger.

That's all for today!

Things are a changing...

2010-03-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

First off, I'm sure you've noticed that I've changed my blog look. I was getting tired of the old one, so I had a peek over at Itkupilli's again, and chose these cool steampunk one.

She has so many cool backgrounds, and I really wanted something colorful this time, but I swear I must have tried nearly every design, but the colors just didn't go with my art, so to compromise, I chose this one. Then I went over to Pigs in Pink, and was wondering why I was looking at my blog with someone else's artwork on it. It took me a minute to realize she was using the same background too. Guess it's a popular one. :)

Now, I know the black background highlighted the pictures better, but I'm so done with black right now. Spring is coming and I'm looking for a new start.

In case you are curious, this picture is another oldie that I did last year. I guess I forgot to post that one too.

It's a 5x7 on canvas with images from.... uh oh. I totally forgot it was so long ago. I know it's someone on Flickr. Forgive me for not remembering at this time, if I remember I'll update this post it may have been Lisa Kettell. Gee whiz, It's been awhile It could also have been Suzee Que.

Anyway, I'm super excited right now, because yesterday I got my new business cards!! The only bummer is, I can't give them out yet because the website listed on them is still very much under construction.

So that means I still can't reveal my new name and site, but I hope to soon! Also I'm still waiting to clear a few things up before I talk about my other exciting news. It's not terribly exciting to others I suppose, but it's a huge step and beginning for me!

Exciting News!

2010-03-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a piece I did last year, and totally forgot to post it. And thank goodness I did, because I have news to spread, and I didn't want to do a new post without a picture. That would have been terribly boring.

So, first things first. This collage is titled "Lily", and is an 8x10 canvas. The picture of course is by Itkupilli. It is pretty simple for me, but I actually like it that way.

Okay enough of that, let's move on to more exciting things...

I have a new online store!! No it isn't Etsy. Yet. I will get one set up soon ( I hope), but I do not have the ability to make prints yet, and all my originals are on vacation around town, so I don't even have those to sell.

What I do have is a Zazzle account, which can be found here and also on my side bar there is a Zazzle widget you can click on.

Right now I'm sticking to basic stuff like mouse pads, mugs, magnets and totes. I won't have any prints or cards made from them, because they put a Zazzle logo on the back, and call me fussy, but I don't really care for that.

I'm adding new stuff everyday, so keep checking back!

Also I will have a new web presence soon. I'm in the process of creating a website (yuck!) and changing my name. I'm afraid the Cat's Pajamas has to go because that domain name was already taken, but I did pick out a new one, which I hope you all will like.

Of course I'm not going to tell you yet. :) I'll reveal that when all is done, plus I will have some other exciting news to tell soon too! So stay tuned!

Flower Power!

2010-03-09T23:41:00.000-08:00

Here is my latest piece. I only did one this week, due in part to "artist block", and not feeling well.

This is done on canvas as usual, but I totally forgot what size it is. I could get up right now, and measure it, but I'm pretty lazy at this moment, so let's say it's somewhere in the range of 18x36.

Anyway, this piece was originally supposed to have a Venetian Carnival theme, I even drew a mask and everything, but no matter how hard I tried it wasn't coming together.

Most of the original work is covered up in paint now, but underneath there is actually loads of paper pasted down. I was doing the patchwork collage technique, but as I went along, more and more would get covered when I tried to cover up the colors I didn't like.

I can't even remember the original colors for this but I do know it had dark purple in it, and that was messing me up big time. It threw everything off. This is not the first time. Purple and I have a somewhat spotted history when it comes to my using it in artwork.

For some reason, I can never get anything to go with it. Although the purple that is left in this piece I do like, and goes really well I think. Go figure. I've now come to the conclusion that it is fine for a supporting color, but not as the main character.

Anyhoo, a few hours in, I was fed up with the whole mess (this happens often I know). I took the cat for a walk to get a break, and then it came to me. Make a flower! The colors by now, were perfect for flowers, but not so for the mask theme I wanted.

So, as soon as I got home, I sat down and drew the flower, and after screwing it up big time trying to color it with pens (the color would not match), I decided to paint it, which surprisingly took several hours, and half a pint of ice cream.

Long story a lot longer, this is end result of a huge mistake, and guess what, I actually think it might be my favorite. :)

Ta ta for now!

Mushroom House

2010-03-07T17:34:00.000-08:00

This piece is a 15x30 canvas. One of the biggest I've done with this technique.

Believe it or not, this was inspired by my Kelly Rae book. It looks nothing like her stuff, but I did use her patchwork collage technique, or my version of it anyway. I can't actually follow directions, so whatever I try to copy always ends up totally different. Which is good and bad at times.

On one hand, I certainly don't want to copy an artist outright, but on the other, I would like to actually learn the technique I'm trying to do. I guess I end up learning it in my own way, and usually things turn out nothing like I'd imagined.

That is exactly what happened with this piece. Like I said, it's good and bad. Oh well. It's all definitely a learning experience.

During the creating process I took pictures of every step I did. Which is the first time I've done this, and I really like going back and seeing how it all developed. I might actually post all the pics on flickr someday to show a step by step process.

Now however, I need to get back to painting!

Yes We Have No Bananas

2010-03-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

You will have to excuse the title. I couldn't help it. What with her banana outfit and all, it was only natural that the "Yes We Have No More Bananas" song would get stuck in my head. Obviously I had to give it that name.

This is another 3x3 on canvas that I did a few weeks ago. I thought I'd already posted it, but I don't think it did. I do remember posting it somewhere though, I wonder where that was? If it is a repeat, so sorry about that.

I've been trying all week, to get some art done but for some reason, I seem to have artist block. I'm not really coming up with any good ideas and it scares me. I think tonight I will just sit down and play around and see what happens.

I've been scared to do that for fear of "ruining" or wasting canvas and supplies in case I don't come up with anything, but I really need to create. I think if I don't I might get discouraged again, and I do not want another 3 or 4 months to go by before I can paint again.

Wish me luck!

Suzy Homemaker

2010-03-05T00:31:00.001-08:00

I'm really liking this collage now. It's a 10x10 canvas, and believe it or not, I started this last September.

I drew the girl and started the background, and then never did anything else. It sat on a shelf until now.

I just saw it again the other day, and thought I wonder if I could apply Kelly Rae's technique to it?

So I stuck a bunch of papers on and slathered it in paint, added embellishments and this is what happened.

The dress I actually did last year too, and it is made up of various fabric scraps I had lying around. I was afraid at first that it would be too busy, but I think it actually works ok.

That's all for now.

Learning to Fly

2010-03-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

This is one of the Kelly Rae inspired pieces I've been working on lately. In fact this is the piece that had the brown pastel mishap. I think I fixed up pretty well. Thank goodness.

It's an 18x24 canvas, which means it took a lot of paper and glue! Wow. I was super surprised at how much gel medium it actually took. The other collages I do, are usually smaller, so I don't normally use half a bottle of glue in one piece! And it was new too!

Originally I wanted this piece to be titled You can Fly When You Want To. Which to me that means, you can do whatever it is you want to do in life, whenever you are ready to let go of everything that is holding you back. Such as fears, anxieties, etc.

I really wanted to put that saying in this piece somewhere. However, I did not have all the letters to complete the saying, and my handwriting looks like that of a three year old, so I chose to omit the phrase altogether. I just couldn't justify yet another trip to the art stores when I'd been there 5 times this week already.

I'm not sure why I think we have money to spend on art supplies seeing as I've been on disability for the last six months, and therefore not contributing to our household income. But whenever I step into a Michael's or Aaron Brothers it's like I forget all financial woes, and go crazy. That feeling lasts until the credit card slip is signed and then I'm like holy cow, how, and more importantly, why did I just spend $130.00 on embellishments and paper?!

Anyway, getting way off track here, (perhaps I'm feeling a wee bit guilty about my art addiction?), basically I could not go back to the store, and get what I needed to make the painting complete so I altered it a bit. Which now makes me thrifty right?

Anyway....

In other exciting news, I got a call yesterday from someone who had seen my work in the coffee shop, and they loved it so much they want to display it at the library too!

The only teeny tiny snag is... Almost all my work is at the coffee shop. I'm not sure when exactly they want to display my art, but I hope it's not right away. I sure hope they like the new techniques too, because that's what I'm working on right now, and all I have. Yikes!

Green Fairy

2010-03-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

Here we are. Another 5x7 collage on canvas. The image is from Itkupilli, and you may recognize it from my big patchwork quilt collage.

A lot of those images I used in the patchwork collage, I really liked, so I'm probably going to do a bunch on 5x7's just to show them off better.

I finished that piece that was giving me problems the other night, and I think it came out quite good. It's very colorful! I'm having it photographed tomorrow so I won't be able to post it until then.

Now, I'm working on another Kelly Rae inspired piece, and as usual I'm having trouble. A brown oil pastel is to blame. I was using it to cover up a mistake, and well, things kinda got out of control, and now it looks like a brown pastel exploded on top of my collage.

I've been thinking all night and morning how to fix this little boo boo, and I think I might have an idea. I sure hope it works!

East meets West

2010-02-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

This piece is on an 8x16 canvas with pictures by Itkupilli. I've used them before but separately on 5x7 canvases. I really like these two ladies, so I thought I'd give them a chance to do a duet.

Now I know the title is misleading. It isn't really east meets west, but for some reason when I was trying to come up with a name, that's what entered my mind first, and I liked it. It's art, it doesn't need to make sense right?

I'm especially fond of this piece too. I really like the colors and how certain areas came out.

As usual my favorites are very problematic pieces to begin with, and this was no exception. The last half of creation on this one had me completely stumped, nothing would situate properly, and I felt I would never get it right.

But finally with a lot of persistence (working til 3:30 in the morning) things finally clicked. At least I think so. :)

Right now, I'm working on another problem child. Same kind of situation. I'm almost done, but it's not coming together. Something is missing, but I don't know what.

In this case, I'm trying out my new Kelly Rae techniques, so I'm in unfamiliar territory. I've been taking pictures of the process all along the way, and I admit that I have been pleased up until now with how things are going.

I sure hope I can fix this one, it was such a cool idea. And pretty too!

Fabulous Fifties

2010-02-25T16:57:00.000-08:00

I was shopping around the other day for collage supplies, when my eyes landed on these cardboard ladies. Now most of you probably don't know this, but I'm a secret wannabee fifties housewife.

You would never know this if you knew me, because it's not like I clean, cook, and sew all day, but for some reason the "idea" appeals to me. I can't seem to put it into practice, so I'll just let it be a fantasy for now.

Anyway, I could not pass these gals up, and had to pay a little tribute to the fabulous fifties with this collage.

It's an 8x24 canvas, and I wish I had more, because I really like this size. I'll have to wait though, because I've been banned from buying any more canvases. If you saw the plethora of new canvases strewn about my art room you would understand why. Better get busy painting!

Under the Sea

2010-02-23T23:53:00.000-08:00

Ooooh, I'm in love with this piece! I don't normally gush about my own art, but I really love this. I just love how the colors turned out.

I also really like the size and shape of the canvas. For some reason right now I'm into the long skinny canvases, and this is a cool in between version.

I'm supposed to take this in to the coffee shop to sell, but honestly I am not ready to part with it just yet. In fact I made five canvases this week, and they are all supposed to go to the cafe, but I just started filling my walls again, and I don't want to go blank again so soon. Still, it must be done. Guess I just have to keep making more!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I'm over on Deviant Art now where you can go and buy prints, cards, mouse pads, magnets, postcards, mugs, even puzzles of my art.

I'm giving this site a shot, since a fellow art friend highly recommended it to me. I've been meaning to set up an Etsy site like everyone else, but this was so much faster and easier. Yep, I can be lazy like that.

Anyway, if anyone is so inclined, Go on and check it out over here ....

Red Fairy

2010-02-21T18:46:00.000-08:00

No more 3x3's right now, though I am working on an ATC sized Alice in Wonderland canvas. It's pretty cool, but I need to find a couple of tiny Alice-y embellishments to stick on. I didn't realize I had almost nothing to add to it, when I started it last night. Gives me another reason to shop!

Anyway, this picture is a 5x7 canvas. It's actually the first old style piece I did after my little hiatus from art last year. I liked it enough that I just kept going to make the 3x3's and a couple more pieces that will be revealed next week after I get pictures taken of them. One of them I adore, and can not wait to show off. I think it might be my new favorite.

Right now I've got 4 pieces going at once if you include the Katherine Howard mess that I put away earlier last week. I have to admit, when I walk past it now, I don't cringe nearly as much, and I am starting to think it might actually have possibilities.

I wish I could say the same for the collage I started in December and am still trying to finish. I tried working on it again last night. I can't figure out what is wrong, because the picture I used is really cool, and it has all my favorite colors, yet no matter what I do it will not come together. Anything I try to add to it, looks terrible.

I'm at a total loss, and seriously think I should paint over the whole thing and start again fresh. Yesterday I added more paint and color to it, and now it looks like a preschool. Very frustrating. Thank goodness I have a new one to work on with a theme I love. Think I'll go work on that right now!

Lounge Lizard

2010-02-20T21:07:00.000-08:00

Okay working backwards, this is the first 3x3 canvas I did. By the way, all these inchie pictures are from Itkupilli.

As you can see this is a lot more simple than the others. It also seems kinda of clumsy, but hey it's my first time working so small, so I'm giving myself a bit of a break. :)

I do love the colors though!

Oh yeah! I got my new Somerset Studio magazine today (can't wait to read that!) and no, my Alice in Wonderland piece didn't make it. I am bummed, but I understand. I really didn't have time to make it like I wanted.

I'm pretty sure if I was able to submit that first one it would have gone in, but unfortunately I didn't think about copyright issues until nearly the deadline, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to come up with something new. Oh well. Live and learn right? I am submitting for the Halloween piece though. Maybe I'll make it then.

Right now, I need to get off my butt, and into the studio. I spent all day yesterday and today shopping for art supplies, so I have tons of new toys to play with. Plus, I'm in desperate need of creating about 20 more pieces so my walls don't look like someone broke in and robbed us. I can't believe what a difference it makes in the atmosphere to have blank walls now that all my art is gone and living elsewhere. It's so lonely here. Time to fill it back up!

Another 15 minutes of Fame!

2010-02-18T18:09:00.000-08:00

Here it is! My own "exhibit" at the local coffee shop.

The owner is super cool, and let me put my stuff up wherever I wanted, which means I had 4 walls to play with! I only used three, and now that everything is hung, I realize how small my work is. It's really hard to see in the pictures. Guess that means I'll be making bigger pieces in the near future. :)

Those are all my pieces in the back, except for the one on the very left, that looks like a peacock.

This wall especially needs larger work. These pieces are pretty hard to see, but hey it's all exposure right?

Oh and please excuse the photos. This day is very cloudy and the shop wasn't very bright at all. It looks much nicer on sunny days.

This shows my largest piece which was in the gallery last year. I really still like it so it's the only one that is not for sale. Someday I'll let it go, but it was such a project and my biggest accomplishment that I can't bear to part with it just yet.

That's it for now!

Blueberry

2010-02-17T22:50:00.000-08:00

Well here is the 2nd 3x3 canvas. The one I posted yesterday was actually the 3rd one I did, and I think you can tell, because it is a lot more detailed and put together than the first two.

For some reason, I'm posting them backwards. Once you see the first one, you will see that this one, is a little bit better than the first with details, and paper/paint placement. Then by the 3rd (Pink Lady), I think I'm finding my groove with these tiny pieces.

The more I look at this one, the less impressed I am with it, but I don't think I'll change it. It's kind of fun seeing the progression of each canvas as I go.

Though I do wish I posted them in order... Ooops!

Little Pink Lady

2010-02-16T23:22:00.000-08:00

I mean LITTLE. This canvas is 3x3 inches! The smallest I've done so far, and probably the smallest I'll ever do. It's loads of fun, but man working that small and finding teeny tiny embellishments isn't easy.

Since I've done my Om piece, I have manged to do 4 new collages in my regular style. I haven't done one since Christmas for my mom. I finally want to do them again. Very cool.

I found these 3x3 canvases by accident in an art store one day, and since they were so darn cute, I had to buy 5. Now I wish I bought more, because I have a whole sheet of these inchies that I want to use for the canvases. I'm going to make them all, and then maybe hang them together like a quilt.

I'm still working on my other techniques that I'm learning from my Kelly Rae book, but to be honest I got quite fed up with a particular piece, and switched over to my old stand by's.

The problem piece is my Katherine Howard collage. I'm trying to redo it, to make up the one I did last year, which came out terrible. I'm trying it again, using the new techniques, but unfortunately I chose a very difficult palette to work with, and I'm having a devil of a time getting the colors to flow together.

I'll take it out again, but right now I need to concentrate on these other pieces. Why? Well I'll tell you. It just so happens that ALL my art will be showing in a coffee shop here in my town! I'm know! I can't stop shrieking!

I'm setting it up later this week, and I'm super excited, because this will give me way more exposure than the gallery. Everyone goes to a coffee shop right? Plus I can put up all my pieces, and I get all the commission if anything sells. Eeeek! Keep your fingers crossed for me, I sure hope someone likes something I did, It would be neat to sell at least one thing.

Thank you Kelly Rae!!

2010-02-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

I'm a little shy about posting this, since I haven't been around a loooooong time. I'm not exactly sure what happened to me, but somehow my creative juices dried up completely.

For 3 months, I had no desire to make art. At all. Even looking at my collages on the walls, left me feeling blah.

This was totally weird, because I was just getting into my groove art wise, and then all of a sudden it was like someone turned off a faucet, and left me dry. I beat myself up and felt guilty about this for quite awhile. Not surprisingly that didn't help me create anything new.

Thankfully a couple weeks ago, I found myself wandering the aisles of Michael's when I spotted a book, that changed everything.

It was Kelly Rae Robert's "Taking Flight" book. I picked it up and started flipping through the pages, and all of a sudden I felt the familiar stirrings of excitement running through me. The more I looked at the book, the more excited I became at the thought of trying a new project and new techniques. I couldn't put the book down, and decided to buy it right away.

When I got home, I immediately made for my new art studio upstairs (mold free!!), and got to work.

This is what I produced following her patchwork collage technique. A totally new concept for me, but totally fun. Right now I'm working on three more projects out of her book, and I can't thank her enough for publishing this gem, and giving me some inspiration again!

This piece is titled "OM'. I've been wanting to do a spiritual/budda piece for a while now, and so I'm super excited about this one. It has a place already picked out on my wall near my meditation area in my studio. Thankfully I have orange walls so it will fit right in. :)

Fairytales

2009-12-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness. I feel so ashamed. I can't believe how long it's been since I posted, and even worse since I did any art.

I don't know what got into me, but right after finishing that large gallery piece and the painting for my mom, I kinda checked out of the art world.

In fact, I can't seem to get back in. I have zero motivation, and It's really weird, because it seems like things were just starting to go well for me art wise, and for some reason, the fire went out.

Does this sound familar at all to anyone? I keep feeling so guilty for not wanting to go and create, which of course makes things worse. I even try flipping through magazines, for inspiration, but it doesn't help.

I think this whole thing started with my teeth. I know that sounds weird, but the day after my mom's painting was done, I came down with some serious tooth pain, which led me to seek a dentist, and find out I need a root canal. Well money isn't flowing that easily, so I decided to wait a bit.

I went for two weeks of serious agony, where the only thing I could do was stare at my computer screen, and watch my screen saver bubbles. Meds wouldn't touch the pain, and I seriously considered more than a few times, of pulling the tooth out with pliers.

Luckily after two weeks, the pain disappeared and I've pretty much been fine ever since. But the problem is, even though I feel better, I have no desire to do my art now. Arggggh! It's frustrating.

In fact, I've been addicted to the food channel lately, and I all I can think about is cooking now. Btw this is not a good addiction to have, as now I find I'm about 4 times as hungry as usual watching these shows. Crazy!

Anyway, this picture you see now, is a 5x7 collage on canvas I did right before Halloween. It's actually hanging in the gallery now with 6 other 5x7's for their Gift of Art show, but honestly I don't know that I really want to sell it.

I priced all my pieces high partly because of the commission the gallery takes, and partly because I won't be at all sad, If I get to bring it back home at the end of the month. I mean really, the wall looks kinda empty without it. This kind of attitude gives me pause. What kind of artist am I anyway? Isn't selling your work, supposed to be something we all strive for?

Okay so you can see, I'm in a serious rut here, and I need to get out fast. I do not want to stop creating my art, because I know how much I love it when I do it, but I just can't seem to pick up that darn paint brush. Help!! Please tell me this is normal....

Zen

2009-11-03T00:37:00.001-08:00

Just when I thought I would have time to roam around and blog hop, I remembered I needed to make a piece for my mom's birthday. This is what I came up with.

Something new and different. It all started when I read the new issue of Cloth Paper Scissors and saw the article on Zentangles.

Boy did those look like fun, and they reminded me a bit of Hundertwasser's art, which I love. Needless to say I was totally intrigued to try some. I made one that night, and then another the next night which is the one I made for my mom.

This drawing was originally made on a square piece of paper, about 4x4, and then I took our handy dandy art projector and projected that bad boy onto a 10x10 canvas. I traced as best I could in pencil, and then set about to painting it.

What a change to be painting again! A lot more detail work that's for sure! But it was fun and it was meditative which was nice. I have another one in the works, which is more Hundertwasser-y I think, but I'm guessing it will take awhile to make. I definitely can't bust 6 of these out a night that's for sure!

Soooo, now I think I'm ready to finally catch up on blogs. I feel really bad, I've been neglecting everyone out there, but I hope to remedy that real soon!

Wooo Hoo!

2009-10-25T15:01:00.001-07:00

Finally! It's done! Now I can get back to normal and start visiting everyone again. I know I've missed a lot of cool art out there, so I have tons of catching up to do.

I'm off to submit it to the gallery now, I hope it makes the show.

P.S. Please excuse the photography, no matter how hard I try I cannot get a real good picture. There is too much detail to try to capture for my amature photography skills, and the piece is 30x30.

P.P.S. it's really a lot brighter in person. :)

Boo!

2009-10-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

Halloween is right around the corner, so I thought I'd post another seasonal collage.

Now I have no idea what my pictures look like on your screens, but on mine they are always dull, (the photographs are excellent), but they look washed out on my computer.

Therefore I usually end up fussing with the colors a bit, but then it dawned on me that other people may be seeing some pretty crazy looking saturated photos on their own screens. I really hope this isn't the case, but if it is, I'm sorry.

On another note, things here are bit crazy at the moment. I'm getting ready to submit my next piece to the gallery next week, and since it needs to be huge, it's taking me sometime to finish. I can't wait until it's done so I can show you all, I think it's going to turn out really cool.

You should see my house though, it's turned upside down for this project. Since I don't have a worktable big enough in my studio, the kitchen has now become a temporary art headquarters, everything had to be moved upstairs, and my pantry is stocked full of supplies, to keep away from the inquisitive furry occupants of my home. It's a little disconcerting when I open the doors to grab a snack, and find a mountain of ribbon instead.

Anyway, now you know what's been keeping me away from talking to folks, blog and flickr hoping and even hanging out in my Ning groups. This will all be over in a week, and then things should get back to normal.

Mushroom Land!

2009-10-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Here's another piece I made recently. This one is 10x10 on canvas.

This one was a hard one, and believe it or not nearly the whole original piece was covered up in pink and yellow paint.

Nothing I did worked for this originally. I usually use bits of paper in my collages, and many of them have designs. Well no matter what I did, almost all the designs clashed or were too busy with the mushroom house. I usually work with images of girls so they are a bit easier to place with backgrounds I guess.

This piece ended up working once I got rid of the busy-ness of the background and used more solid colors.

It's a fun piece, and definitely one I could see hanging in a little girls room someday.

In other news, I'm getting ready to start my piece for the next gallery show next month. Who knows if it will be accepted, but I sure hope it is. And this one is a biggie. At least for me. The minimum measurements allowed for the show is 30x30. So that's what I got, because honestly trying to fill anything larger than that with the way I work, is gonna take my whole stock of supplies!

Also I really wanted to thank everyone, who has commented on my work and congratulated me on the gallery show. I love receiving your comments, and try to get back to everyone, but lately I have fallen grossly behind and I'm very embarrassed. :") A few things have gotten in the way of having me attend to my blog duties lately, so please know that I do appreciate each and every comment and am trying hard to reply back as soon as I can.

Oh and one more thing, I desperately need help finding a name for myself. I'm trying to open an esty store, and in the process of getting cards made to hopefully sell in stores etc. I need a name for myself now, and somehow the Cat's Pajama's doesn't quite convey an art image does it?

I was thinking somewhere along the lines of Pixie something or other, stuidos or gallery. I like fairies a lot, and thought it would be fun to have that in my name. Unfortunately Pixiedust Studios is already taken.

But what about Pixiemadison Studios? Or Pixie Madison Studios? Madison was going to be the name of my child if I had a girl. I've had that name picked out since I was like 12, so I really like it. But it never happened, soooooo I'm thinking of using it for me! For some strange reason those two words sound good together. Or so I think.

Then again, I could always try to use my real name and something with Mixed media in the title. But somehow, Michele's Mixed Media Madness seems a bit much don't you think?

So, does anyone have any ideas?

Magic Carpet Ride

2009-10-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

So this is the piece I was talking about last night. It was such a troublemaker in the beginning, but I love it now. I think it's the sixties look to it. Plus, the colors are my favorites, and it just looks so fun.

My very favorite bits are the candy looking necklace at the top, and the bits of fringe on the door. The door by the way is a picture I took in San Francisco. I altered the colors in Photoshop, to be more exciting, because the original brown just wouldn't cut it for me. The canvas is 11x14. I really seem to like that size. So much so , that I just received my shipment of 10 more today.

When ever I get my new shipments, I always feel a little overwhelmed looking, at all those blank canvases and thinking, holy cow, now I have to fill all those! Then before I know it, they are all used up, and I'm ordering more.

Oh yeah, I finally sent my Alice piece off to Somerset today, so I guess I find out in March if it made the magazine or not. That would be so cool if it does!

Have a great weekend everyone, I'm off to the annual Artists Open Studios tour tomorrow. I was too late to sign up this year, but hopefully next year I'll get in.

My 15 minutes of fame!

2009-10-02T00:27:00.000-07:00

I went by the gallery that is showing my work today, and just had to take a picture to capture this monumental occasion.

Then because I'm still so excited about being in this show, I thought I'd post it! Tee-hee.

So back to business. First of all I finished my Alice in Wonderland piece for Somerset, it will be shipped out tomorrow and I'm so keeping my fingers crossed that it will be published.

I'm still bummed I couldn't enter my original one, but with the Disney characters on it, I guess it would be kinda stupid to send it in. I totally didn't think about copyright issues, until someone brought it to my attention. Whooops! I have learned my lesson though, no more Disney characters for me!

I also finished two other pieces tonight, and one that I hated in the beginning is now one of my very favorites, I cannot wait to post it, it's so much fun.

Unfortunately the one I'm working on now, is a bit of nightmare. I had to leave it be for the night, because we just weren't getting along. Pooh.

Other than that, I need to play catch up on blog hopping, and emaiing, and I'm trying so hard to find a place to get prints made of my work. I really want to try to sell stuff in Etsy, and I do not want to rely on my printer as I don't trust it.

For any of you out there that sell on Etsy or anywhere really, can you tell me how you get your prints? Are you running down to Kinko's every time you get an order, or is there a good place online to go?

Someday Her Prince Will Come

2009-09-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is one I finished last night. A little something different. She is another sketch I drew, and then pasted onto the finished collage.

Now this character started out on sketch paper, and then was glued to watercolor paper. Originally I was going to make my own book filled with characters like this. Diamond Lady was also one.

But, I can't seem to stay away from using canvas. And while she looked pretty and really cool on her watercolor journal page, I couldn't help but wonder what she would look like in a collage. The problem was I like the idea of making a book, and the journal page looked really good. But I think I may not have the patience to do it. I like to see results pretty quickly, and the book would take me forever to do. Hmmm...still it sounds like fun.

Anyhoo, I made the background on the canvas thinking there is no harm in doing that. I didn't have to put the picture on it after all.

I started out slopping on some gesso and heavy gel, like I usually do, but I stopped mid swipe with the palette knife, and thought, hmm I wonder what it would be like if I tried to duplicate the journal page? So I left the blobs of gesso and gel where they were and started experimenting with stamped and designed tissue paper.

Oh my goodness, I found a new friend. I love tissue paper for collages!! Especially the ones I stamped, so many new possibilities there.

I eventually ended up smearing around the blobs of goo, and added paint, and well the whole thing just took off from there. Tons of fun to make, and I need to sit my butt down and draw another character, so I can do more of these collages.

On a side note, I will never use watercolor paper in collage again. I could not for anything get it to glue down. Not only that, it was two pages glued together so it was extra thick. It was so hard to rip from the journal page. I actually tried setting it on fire, but the darn stuff wouldn't even burn! Ugh.

Pumpkin Surprise!

2009-09-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

I know it's not even October yet, but I've been in the Halloween spirit, for about a month now, so I thought I've give the fall season a little kick start with this collage.

I found the pumpkin image on Flickr, and I'm almost positive it was from Suzie Q. She has a lot of good vintage Halloween pics for using in art, so I'm pretty sure it was her. If it wasn't I'm really sorry. Sometimes I download so many pictures at once, and occasionally get the owners mixed up.

This piece is an 11x14 collage on canvas. I have to admit, I really like this one, and surprisingly it has become a favorite of my family. Usually my collages look better in person, because they are filled with sparkles, embellishments, etc, but this piece looks awesome as a print. I love it!

My grandfather has been taking professional pictures of all my artwork, and he prints out copies of each one, well this one looks so darn cool, if I ever get my Etsy site up and running, I'm selling it for sure.

Oh yeah, and before I completely forget -though I can't see how I would really, as I can't stop smiling for the last 24 hours- is that I actually made it into a local gallery!! I'm so excited with myself for actually following through on something and making this happen. The show goes for 1 month, and who knows someone might actually buy and or like my work, and if I never get shown in a gallery again, at least I knew I did it once. Whooo hooo!!

Diamond Lady

2009-09-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

Well! Here is something completely different. This is the one I was talking about the other day. I drew the girl on sketch paper, colored her in with colored pencil, pen, paint and glitter,and then added her to the painting/collage at the end. I love her hair!

It came out totally different than what I was going for, but I'm still happy with the results.

I tried doing tons of texture in the background, and the houses were scrapped out of gesso in the first layer.

I liked the result, but as I was wrapping up dinner in tin foil, I noticed how lovely and silver it was, and wouldn't that look good in my collage! So I made the houses out of it. Fun!

The only thing I'm really bummed about on this piece is the lips, which I assure you, looked good until I put that string gel over it, and the ink from the pen ran. Ooops!

I'm finishing another one today, which came out pretty cool too. My new favorite tool, is stamped tissue paper, love it!!

Dreamy

2009-09-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

I made Dreamy about a month ago. This started out as a problem child, but I'm really warming up to it now. I think it turned out alright after all. It certainly was a challenge color wise!

This canvas is 11x14, and the image is from Lisa Kettell. Now I'm not sure how it looks on your computer screens, but on mine, the colors seem off. I assure you it's really bright in real life, as are all my collages. :)

Oh, and thanks for those of you who posted helpful comments to my gel dilemma. I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong, it has me so perplexed because the product worked so well, until last week.

I think now I'll try some of the products you guys use, just so I don't have a repeat offense, it has ruined two collages now.

On another note, I made a collage last night, that is totally different from what I normally do. I've been creating little characters and drawing them on sketch paper, then placing them in my painting. It came out pretty cool I think, I even used tin foil in it! Hopefully it will be dry soon, and I can post a picture of it soon. I hope to make more of them, and eventually learn to draw the character and do the background all in one piece.

Beautiful Dreamer

2009-09-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

I did this one so long ago! It's another 5x7 with images by Itkupilli. I'm a little bummed as the image is somewhat cloudy from the gel I put on, I think it mixed with white paint, so It didn't dry completely clear.

Speaking of that gel, I'm totally dumbfounded right now. I can't figure this out. I've been using string gel by Liquitex to cover my collages from day one. I've always had beautiful results.

Until now.

The other day, I decided to to do a second coat of gel on one of the collages I just finished. Well I went downstairs to collect it the next day and the image was gone!!! I'm not kidding it completely disappeared. In it's place were a bunch of cracked lines.

The only thing I could think of was that the second coat must have somehow messed with the inks. So I used it again on a collage I finished yesterday, only using one coat. It did the same thing!! But only on half. See, that particular collage I had printed two pages of inchies, and it only ruined one of the pages.

So naturally, I thought it was the paper. I had used different papers to print the images, and maybe that was the issue. To experiment I took one of each paper, printed out an image and coated it with the string gel. I let it dry overnight and guess what?

Nothing happened!!! The pictures are perfect. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! I don't know what to do now. It was such a good product, it sealed everything, enhanced the colors and dried perfectly clear, but now I'm afraid to use it for fear of ruining even more collages.

Has anyone ever had this happen to them, or do you know of any good varnishes/sealers, that don't ruin your photos??

Sassy!

2009-09-14T18:17:00.001-07:00

Oh my goodness, I've got so many collages to show you all, that I can't seem to keep up. I've done five more in the last couple days too which doesn't help matters.

Sassy I did so long ago, and I really like this one, though it started out a bit rough. I know you won't believe this, but the image is not by Itkupilli. Did I just hear a gasp?

Well as shocking as this may seem, it's actually by Lisa Kettell, and if you don't know about her yet, you have to check her stuff out. It is so much fun to look around her magical faerie world. Plus she has this awesome set of images on flickr to use for free in your artwork . I think you have to friend her first, but believe me when you see her art, you will want to.

Anyhoo, I'm off to go finish some more pieces, I'm totally on a roll right now. OH yeah and I just signed up for one of Monica Zuniga's classes over at her Hands and Heart Ning site. I'm super excited about this, she's another artist to check out if you don't know who she is yet.

Now, I'm off to paint!

Oooh La La!

2009-09-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

Time for a new collage! And no it's not the purple disaster I've been talking about. I can't post that yet, because I've somehow lost my brush that I use for applying the string gel to my collages as a final touch. I can't figure out where it went, but I do have my suspects. One furry black one in particular.

Anyway today I will go on a massive hunt for it, and hopefully be able to coat that darn picture, so I can show you all what I've been complaining about for the past two weeks.

Anyhoo, this collage to my left is titled Oooh La La, and I really like how this one came out. Somehow it all seemed to come together so perfectly to me. I really liked playing with this color palate. Lots of fun.

She is another 5x7, and yes the main image is from Itkupilli. One of these days I'm going to shock everybody and do one without one of her pictures. In fact I might do it today, because the Halloween bug has hit me, and I may not be able to contain myself once I get down to my studio.

With that in mind, I'm off to paint!

Dancing Girls

2009-09-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

One of my latest creations. I actually have about 10 or so that are done and hanging on walls, that need to be photographed so I can upload them to the blog and Flickr. I feel so behind, but at the same time I have plenty of material to post about.

Anyway Dancing Girls is an 8x24 mixed media on canvas, with images provided by the lovely Itkupilli. One of these days, I'll have to use someone else's pictures, but right now I can't get enough of her stuff.

This one was a challenge, as I'm not used to this size canvas, nor did I have a lot of supplies in the right colors. As you can see, I had to seriously improvise with the glass rocks at the top and bottom of the canvas. I didn't have anything else that would look good there. However, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it forces me to stretch my creative boundaries, which is something I need to do on a frequent basis.

In other news I finally finished the purple disaster which turned out not to be that purple. Feeew! It didn't come out that great, but I think it's okay. It just needs a layer of string gel and it will be ready for photographing. In fact I think I'll post it next just to see what other people think of it. Maybe I'm crazy, but it is one of my least favorites right now.

Alright I'm off to have dinner and read me some Somerset magazine. Have a good night everyone!

La Vie En Rose

2009-09-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

Collage number 5! It's a 5x7 mixed media collage on canvas. Another lovely image from Itkupilli.

This is the one that I rubbed the face off of while trying to wipe paint off. I had to wait until my new printer ink came, so I could print another photo and finish it.

Finally here she is, in all her pink and brown glory. I do like this one a lot. It's weird to for me not to make it all bright and colorful, but it's also a challenge to explore new color combos. So it all works out good. I can't make ultrabright rainbow collages all the time right?

So I'm still working on my purple disaster. In fact I haven't really touched it since that first night, but I did make a run to Michael's today and grabbed some new purple paints and a few other lovely items, so maybe I'll be able to finish it this weekend.

In other news, I set up a new art station upstairs in my writing room. I'm beyond excited about this, because truthfully, I really don't like going downstairs to the real studio. I have a very nice space set up there, and it does look out on some beautiful nature, but I can't stand the mustiness. It stinks to high heaven, of dirt and mold. Our house is on stilts on a mountain side, so part of the downstairs is underground and all I can say is peee ew!

Originally I wanted to set up the whole shebang upstairs in my little room. I measured everything, and though a very tight squeeze, it all would fit. When I told the Mr. about this new plan, he was somewhat bent of out shape. You see he likes to be able to do art together (this is some dream of his) , and we have desks that sit side by side. He likes the fact that we go and create together, and feels that if I move upstairs that would be too much separation.

It's pretty sweet, but I still don't like going down there much. So I compromised. I kept all major stuff, for painting and collage making downstairs, and upstairs I moved an old art desk and very minimal supplies. I plan to use this space mostly for art journaling, drawing and stamping. Stuff that wouldn't be too crazy messy, but I can still go to, and create if I/we don't feel like breathing mold spores. Plus it's close to the kitchen. Never a bad thing.

Wonderland

2009-08-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

This is one of my newer collages. Just finished it the other day. I really like how this turned out. Once again it was a complete accident.

I knew I was going to use the window and originally I was thinking of a theme along the lines of something deep, such as the window to my soul kinda thing.

I pretty much had this collage done (or so I thought), when I ran across the Alice in Wonderland stickers.

Seeing how the Cheshire Cat matched the decor, I put him at the top of the window. Well I liked what I saw, but he didn't really fit with my theme so I took him off. I was still hunting around for a couple more pieces, but couldn't really find anything.

Just for giggles I stuck Alice on. As soon as I did that, I knew it would be a Wonderland theme. Besides the mushrooms totally matched too. How could I not do it? As a fan of the movie and the story, it just seemed right. In fact the decorating of our house was very much influenced by it. It's sort of Alice in Wonderland, meets Tim Burton, and they go to Disneyland.

After the stickers were in place, I went crazy embellishing. The little square blocks with letters on them spell out "curiouser and curiouser". I have to say, the cat dangling the clock on a string was my husbands idea (he always comes up with good ideas) I wish I could take credit for it .

I can take credit for the window though. It is a picture I took in San Francisco a few weeks ago. I enhanced the color in Photoshop. I have a slight obsession with windows and doors now, so you may start seeing them in more of my art.

In the meantime though I'm working on a disaster. I don't know what's happening, but it just isn't working out. Part of the problem is I don't have the right colors. For some weird unexplainable reason I don't have much of anything with purple in it. And I really like that color! I can't figure it out. Obviously I will have to remedy that problem, but for now, I'm trying to use what I have, and it is giving me a ton of problems.

I think I'll stop for the night, because only time will fix this collage. I did however make a really cool one tonight, that won't be ready for public viewing for another few days (it needs to dry). Plus I still need to finish showing you the last 3 of the six I made that one night. I'm really behind on getting pictures taken and up on the web.

The good news is I now have 2 weeks worth of blog material. I should probably post more frequently huh?

Pretty In Pink

2009-08-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

This is collage number 4! It's another 5x7. Image once again from Itkupilli, and scraps of paper from K&Company.

There are going to be at least 6 of these 5x7's as I'm using images from a collage sheet I bought. There are 8 ladies altogether, and I will most likely do them all, but I'm not sure yet.

This one was interesting to do. Like the black and white one I did, I was a little daunted at first with the all pink image. I'm so used to many colors, that this was a bit of a challenge for me.

It was actually fun to do though, and I like how it turned out. It's very "soft". Naturally, this one is titled "Pretty In Pink".

Girls Just Want To Have Fun!

2009-08-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

Alright here's the 3rd collage out of the 6 from my very productive art day last week.

This is an 8x10 mixed media collage on canvas. The picture once again is from Itkupilli, and the papers and some stickers are from K&Company. They have the best papers don't they? I know they are for scrap booking, but I find so many cool ones, that I just buy those big books. I love them!

This one is called "Girls Just Want To Have Fun", because for some weird reason the girl reminds me of Cyndi Lauper, and all the bright colors make me think of fun and happy times, so naturally I thought of her song, which in turn reminds me of my childhood, and this collage is very childlike to me. Strange how thoughts go round in your head isn't it?

That's it for now. Right now I'm taking a break from painting to eat dinner. I've got 3 collages finished today, and a fourth one waiting to be finished. Not bad. Those 5x7's go fast though and I made two of those tonight.

Just when I thought I was in a slump too. All this week I've been sort eh about creating anything. It was fine to roam around everyone else's blogs and look at their art, but me? Nah. Didn't feel like it.

So, inspired by a show that's coming up at our local gallery I wandered downstairs and picked up an image I wanted to use in a collage. The next thing I knew I had completed three of them! Love it when that happens!!

Some Like it Hot (This one's for you Tony!!)

2009-08-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

This piece is one of the 6 collages I did the other day. Maybe I made enough for the week, because the last two days I haven't been all that inspired. Weird. Tomorrow is my Friday, so hopefully my creative juices will start flowing again on my days off.

Anyway, this piece is inspired by the movie Some Like it Hot. My all time favorite film. I had this image from...can you guess? Yes that's right Itkupilli. It came on one of the collage sheets I purchased. I always loved the photo, but the fact that it was in black in white threw me a bit.

At first I was thinking what the heck can I do with this? Is has no color! Ahhhh... then a light turned on over my head. Let's make it a black and white collage! That will be something different!

In fact I always thought it looked just a bit like Jack Lemmon's character in Some Like it Hot. The face does anyway. :)

I am a HUGE fan of classic Hollywood. All the old films, the actors and actresses, the era, everything! This piece reminds me of that, and the whole time I was making it, thoughts from Some Like it Hot and Tony Curtis's recent illness (did you know he's an artist) were "Running Wild" in my head. So even though there are no actual images from the movie, it was definitely my muse for this collage. Hope you get better soon Tony!!

Joyful!

2009-08-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I had a seriously productive day! This doesn't happen often. Believe me. I was lucky enough to be able to spend pretty much the whole day in my studio, and I finished 6 collages!! I have one more that partially done, so that will be a total of 7. Not too shabby.

Before you think I'm some kind of artistic/creative genius (snicker), I must admit that the canvases in question were pretty small. 3 5x7's and 4 8x10's. So it wasn't that hard to finish them. I kind of got on a roll and just kept pumping them out.

It helped that I had a ton of cool images from Itkupilli who does an amazing job manipulating images and then lets people use them! How can I not love that? You'll be seeing her name a lot as I've used her images in almost everything I've done lately. Except for today's picture actually. The image of the dancing lady is from Lisa Kettell who has a very fun blog over here. If you don't already know her, check her out, you could get lost in her magical world.

This painting came about in a funny way. I had the image forever, and never got around to using it. Well one day I finally fooled around with it in photoshop to change some colors and decided I would use it in my next collage.

Well! Those darn colors! Believe it or not, I didn't have the right shades. I tried so many different things to create those colors, mixing paint, pretty papers, beads, etc. Nothing worked. I was so disgusted, that I gessoed over almost the entire collage.

What I created totally grossed me out. I let it sit for a few days, and in the meantime made sure to purchase the correct color paints.

What a difference that muted yellow makes! Man, when I started again, the collage just flew together. I just kept adding piece after piece. All of a sudden so many things went with it, where before I couldn't find anything to complement it.

Long story short, it is now one of my favorite pieces. It reminds me of Christmas! I guess it's the colors. I just really like this one a lot. It sure came a long way from the disgusting mess I made earlier!

Goth Lady

2009-08-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Please excuse the really bad photography. I am not and probably never will claim to be a photographer. I know what button to push to take a picture and how to turn off the flash. That's about it.

Anyhoo, this is my newest. 5x7 mixed media on canvas. Image credit goes once again to Itkupilli

Love her stuff so much! Also the background papers are mostly from K&Company. Love them too!

This one was fun, as it is the tiniest piece I've ever done. I bought a collage sheet from Itkupilli and it had 8 ladies on it and I plan to do a series of these 5x7's with those images.

Since it is so small it sure is quick to make, I think I'll bust out a few today. If I ever get downstairs. I keep lolligagging on everyone else's art blogs, now the afternoon is almost gone, and I've yet to put paint to canvas.

Oh and I'm so excited because I just recieved my shimpment of canvases I ordered online. Yea! It's like Christmas in August. Plus a few days ago I hit up Michael's and Joann Fabrics and they are having huge sales right now and I got even more canvas, paints, and fun papers to use! I can't wait to create.

I better get my butt downstairs.

Que Sera Sera

2009-08-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

My latest creation. Yet another mixed media collage on canvas. This one is named Que Sera Sera and is 10x10. I'm slowly working my way towards smaller and smaller surfaces. This is the smallest I've done so far ever! I really do like the smaller sizes right now.

I've named this one Que Sera Sera, because I like the meaning. Whatever will be will be. Something I need to remember on a daily basis, as I have a propensity to worry about unnecessary things. Especially the future.

The girls are images from Itkupulli and I chose them to hopefully convey a fun and carefree attitude. Basically worry free.

The rest is made up of various scraps of paper, stickers (some from K&Company), acrylic paint, buttons, glitter, and colored fibers.

Anne of Cleves

2009-08-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

Oy! I spent too much money today. I went to the scrapbook expo, and oh my goodness, did they have loads of good stuff.

Now I don't actually scrapbook, but I do use a lot of the supplies, like paper, stickers, glitter etc. So I still managed to do a fair amount of damage to the 'ol pocketbook.

It was fun though, and I got tons of cool things to use in future collages. I would take a photo of all my loot, but seriously, I couldn't fit it all in one picture, so you'll just have to see in worked into each collage.

Anyhoo, today's painting is a collage based on Anne of Cleves, Henry the Eighth's 4th wife. I'm not sure those are the colors she would have used, but the rest is all her.

In fact the alll the written words are copies of her signature, her motto, and a letter she wrote to Henry agreeing to their divorce. Pretty cool.

I don't know why but I totally took to Anne and Katherine Howard. I guess it's because I feel sorry for them. Well I suppose you could feel sorry for all of Henry's wives, but Katherine and Anne really got to me for some reason.

I did a Katherine Howard collage last year, and I really don't care for it, so I think I'll redo it more in the manner of Anne's.

As you can see, I tried using the same technique as the last one. It didn't come out nearly as involved as the Fear collage, but I still think it's alright. I especially like the beads and glitter I added at the end.

The rest is acrylic paint, heavy gel medium, gesso, beaded medium (for texture), fabric, string and images copied from the internet pertaining to Anne of Cleves.

I put that string gel on it, and for some reason the painting seems to be a bit glare-y. Which bums me out, but in certain lights it's not so bad.

I really like this kind of collage, it's a lot of fun to make a big mess, and see what come of it. Plus it's pretty easy to cover up mistakes! I think I'll be doing a lot more of these. I'm still trying to find my groove, but I'm slowly getting there.

Now tonight I get to play with all my loot!