More custom fairy names almost complete.

I've been back to work now for a little over a month. It's put a bit of damper on my creative mojo. I seem to be finding little snippets of time to slide in a bit here and there, but not anything link the time I'd like to be spending. Now with the holidays fast approaching, my spare time, what little I have, has dwindled down to almost nothing. Not that I haven't been trying to find time to make some art in some form or shape.

I spent most of last weekend doing cookies for a cookie exchange. I wanted to plan one for my family this year, but didn't have the where-with-all to get it under way. However I stumbled upon one someone else was hosting. Now I've got 7 or 8 dozen cookies, and only had to bake one kind, instead of the 8 different kinds. That's nice! I have other things I want to make, but don't know if I'll find the time to get them completed. I made butterscotch cheesecake bars for the cookie exchange. I didn't do them with nuts as a few of the people I was exchanging with had nut allergies in their household. So I plan to make an extra batch of them with cashews .. mmmmmm

I'll be posting a few of the last custom fairy ornament orders that went out in the next day or so. I loved the way they turned out and can't wait to have some time to make more. I've got a bunch of things to list on etsy and artfire, but I need to get some sort of prelisting file or something to get everything ready and then just drop and paste things into the upload boxes.

I'm hoping to start selling more of the custom fairy names too. I just ADORE doing them, they're so fun. I think for Valentine's day I'll be making a few special Love ones to post and sell.

Custom Fairy orders

I've been working on custom fairies like crazy these last couple of weeks. Here are a few of the ones that have gone out. Lots of pink and purple this year. I usually do a lot of different colors, but this year seems to be mostly pink and purple...and straight pink and purple...not a mix of colors. I really like how these all turned out though.
This one needed red hair. So instead of doing the typical "red" hair red..I did a lovely shocker red and russet color. It turned out LOVELY. I usually have a standard red for red-heads, but I'm really glad I mixed it up this time.

This one was all pink. I needed a bit of a break up of the color though so put on lovely crystal green shoes and some green bows in her hair. She's a pin. Not the standard ornament. I need to get the other pins I have completed listed. They're just sitting here waiting for pictures and editing.
This one was requested to look like a fairy I had made before. She liked it so well she was hoping I could recreate it almost exactly. I got pretty close. The only difference was the hair (it's impossible to do the hair exactly the same anyway) because she wanted two buns, and the color of the star on the ring on the original was purple. The other thing I did was put an overlay of pink over the melon colored shirt. It looks like a little raglan t-shirt with different colored sleeves. Other than those three differences it's pretty much the same.

I missed taking photos of a few of the others that have gone out, and have two that still need photos taken before they're shipped off.

I LOVE doing custom fairies for people. It's fun to make something special for someone. Now I'm off to do some work on the last few Custom fairy names I need to finish so I can get them out this week.

Black and White Zentangles

I've been working on Zentangles again. I love these because they're very easy for me to tote around and work on in little bits and pieces. These are a few pieces I've done for a swap recently and I found them a bit hard to pass on. I love henna/mehndi designs and was inspired by them for some of the art in these pieces.

This piece here reminds me a little bit of lace. Well the top design does, but not necessarily the rest of it. I love to do these sorts of images and then do washes of watercolor over the top. It adds that little bit of extra pop to it. I've also done things like this in the past where I've then added blended sharpie over the top. I'll have to dig through my past art files and see if I can find any of those older pieces. A lot of those are from about 14 or so years ago and I don't know if I was scanning things at the time or not.


I think this piece is a little too higgelty piggilty. Too much going on and not enough contrasting design work. It just doesn't seem to flow as well as the other pieces. I think my next attempt will be to do a larger zen piece and then dice it into atc size, or even 2x2 squares. I'll have to see how to work it out and exactly what I want. Atcs would be ideal.
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I loved the way this one turned out. I started with the little round in the corner and was going to work it outward in shapes, but liked the round effect so just continued on with it. It reminds me of the medallions around light fixtures on ceilings, or a fancy carved wall hangings.

For the rest of the weekend I'll be working to finish up a few more custom fairy names, and a few custom fairy orders. I'm amazed at how quickly Christmas is sneaking up on me. I guess that's what happens when you go back to work. Time flies and you seem to get less and less done.

Keep watching! I'll be posting a few of the newest custom fairy ornaments and pins I've done this past few weeks. I'll also be loading a lot of new fairies in my artfire shops.

Time Flies!

Well here it is, nearly midnight again. I've been back to work now for a few weeks. Needless to say, I've got to get better at the juggling act. I once had it down, little snippets of time here and there to really make a dent in art/crafting. Now, not so much. The sad thing is I really need the creative time. My head is so much clearer after a good creative dumping of my brain. Even if it's just five minutes of mindless sketching, I feel better.

Tomorrow it's off to work in the later afternoon. I've never been one for working at night. Night is when I really come alive and want to create. If I were sleeping like a "non-mom" I'd have no problem running myself until around 3 and popping into bed for a few hours to awake and go about my day. Now I pop myself in and out of bed at two to three hour intervals as my son reverse cycles since I'm back to work.

I do have a bunch of crafty images to upload of new things and the custom fairies I've done this past week, but I need to edit the images and all that happy stuff, so instead I leave you with a few random images from my trip to our local lake this past year.