At last!!

Finally, after ages and ages of not drawing and not posting anything substantial here, I have BEEN CREATIVE!!! Let the trumpets sound!

Above you will see my beautiful, beautiful shoes, lovingly rendered in colored pencil. It's just about warm enough to wear them!

Materials: 11x14 inch Strathmore drawing paper, Prismacolor colored pencils

More New Shoes

Yeah, so I still haven't done anything creative. I did, however, buy these shoes today, and their extreme awesomeness must be shared with the Internet community!! They are so pretty and delicate and unique, and they fit like a dream. If I get a chance to tonight, I am going to draw them! The picture simply does not do them justice!

A Little Thing Called Life

Sometimes life gets in the way of being creative. This is what's happened to me over the past two weeks since I last posted. In that time I interviewed for a new job, got the new job, quit the old job, my boyfriend had a death in the family, and I've gotten sick with allergies. Hopefully after I start my new job on Monday I can settle down and get back into painting or sewing or SOMETHING productive.

Stick around!

Northern Gannet

A new painting! Finally. I had a few failed attempts with painting since my last post, but I'm pretty happy with this one.

The Northern Gannet bird is tall and graceful; typically they are 34-39 inches tall! They eat a diet of fish and sometimes squid. Yum? One thing I like about this bird is that they tend to mate for really long times. Loyalty!

Painting is available in the shop! UPDATE! This painting has been sold!

Materials: 6x6 wood, acrylic paints

Unrolled Fern Frond

Two posts in one day! Wow. I'm really making up for lost time, huh?

Anywho, I painted this little beauty a few weeks ago. I was inspired by the nice weather out, and I opened all the windows in my apartment and sat on my couch for a long time, just listening to the wind and to the birds chirping. I decided then and there that a nice little nature painting would suit me just fine.

This little guy is an unrolled fern frond from Costa Rica. He was painted on 6x6 inch wood with acrylic paints. He is also available in the shop if you'd like to own him yourself. I think I might do a little series of ferns since they are so curvy and luscious and sweet.

Materials: 6x6 inch wood, acrylic paint

Mother-of-Pearl Madness!!

As mentioned in my last post, I've been working on some jewelry lately. I find that it sells much better than my art at craft shows, and I'm hoping to do a few this summer. I recently ordered a big batch of beads from my favorite online beading supply store and finally had time to sit down and create!

The picture above is an example of the mother-of-pearl earrings I made. I made quite a few, all in several colors. To see more of them, go to my Flickr page here. If you see something you like, drop me an e-mail and I'll create a special listing for you in the shop. Earrings will be $10.00/each or two for $17.00.


Materials: Mother-of-pearl, surgical steel ear-hooks (silver), gold-plated ear hooks, silver and gold-plated head pins.

Wahoo!

Perhaps being in the dumps in my last post was worth it, because I made a sale today! I sold the "Seahorses in Love" painting (click here to see it) out of the blue! So unbelievably satisfying. It's so nice to think that someone out there liked my work enough to purchase it.

In other news, I've been preparing for spring/summer craft fairs and have made some lovely (in my eyes, at least) jewelry. I'll be posting pictures of those tonight (possibly) once I take them!

Existential Crisis

So, I haven't created anything new since my last posting. I've been looking at lots of books on felting as well as some books on fashion design and drawing. It's all very overwhelming; I feel that I will never be as good an artist as I want to be and that I'm just spinning my wheels. I want to have a cohesive style, and I'm not sure that I have that yet, despite having been drawing and painting my entire life. I look at other people's work and am stunned by the innovation and ingenuity involved. I want to create BRILLIANCE! I feel as though I am always reaching upward to some hidden goal that I just can't seem to find. Feeling this way has been quite discouraging, which is why I've not even attempted to pick up a pencil or get out the glue or paper. I think I'm going through a phase where I see failure everywhere and feel that there's no point in making something else mediocre.

I will probably end up deleting this post at some point in the near future, but I felt like writing it all out anyway. Hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

Hand-Felted Beads

Last year I bought some lovely wool roving and needle felting tools, intending on embarking on a new craft. I ended up putting all of the felting tools up in my closet, but recently they have been calling to me. Over the past week, I made a few embarrassing attempts at needle-felted brooches and so forth, when I decided to try hand-felting some beads since it looked like a lot of fun. Last night, I made my very first batch, which you can see above. I'm quite proud of them!

Basically, you take some wool roving, wrap it up into a ball, very carefully pour hot and soapy water onto the wool, roll it about in your hands for several minutes (add more water and soap), add pressure more and more as you go, until you are happy with the shape. Once you are, rinse the ball in hot water, and then rinse it in cold. Let dry overnight and you have your beads! I plan on doing more experiments with this new medium because I find it so very fascinating and so much fun.

I love new crafts!

The Yellow Bird

I'm always inspired by nature and particularly by graceful, sinuous birds like the Snowy Egret. I decided to draw upon this bird for my latest collage, which I call The Yellow Bird. I like the curving shapes and how they are contrasted by the squares of blue sunlight in the background.

This image is now available in the shop.

Materials: Mat board (11x14), card stock, handmade papers, glue stick.