Green Postcard Swap on SwapBot

Here are two of the three postcards I did for a green postcard swap on Swap-Bot. Swap-Bot, I could get into a lot of trouble over there. Right now I'm sticking to a few things at a time. I just sent out my first two swaps. A doodle page (which is SUPER easy for me since I doodle all the time) and these postcards.

I had a blast doing them. Trying to come up with ideas that kept pretty much to the greens. I of course had to throw in a little pink and blue to highlight the greens.:)

Older Mother Earth Cards

my cards from September October. My best one is missing from here as I sent it out this afternoon without scanning it. DUH! But I hope to get a scan from the girl I sent it to. The pink on the cheeks isn't as garrish in person as it looks in the scan. My computer really skews pinks and purples. I love the way her hair turned out though. It's so not my typical hair. I stink at doing hair to make it look realistic.

Gaia/Mother Earth cards from today

Mother Earth cards I was working on today. I was sorting my cards for a swap and it sparked more ideas. So I sat down with my sharpies for the first time in almost three months. It was nice for a change. It's been so long and I was missing them something fierce. The Kuan Yin Gaia isn't done yet, still a work in progress. I think I'm going to try to translate some of these into paint at some point. I mailed off one of my older mother earth pieces, so I hope to get a scan of that from the person I sent it to. It was my favorite.

More art/crafts on sale.

Hi all! I've been felting again! I created a few more of the pink pin in different variations. I really like this one with the black beading in the middle. It really lends a nice touch and highlights the middle well. It's up for sale in my etsy shop . It's made from a wool/soy blended yarn from Paton's. I really like the color way. It's really pretty. Nice dusty roses to a pinky pink and then to a pinkish beige. Very pretty.

I then felted this stunning blue number. I called it Vintage Serenity Blues since I used a vintage reproduction button in the center. I left this one minimal as I thought the lovely blue and the button was enough to make it sing. I've got more in the works, but I'm missing my bead box at the moment so I won't be able to list more until I find it. You can count on seeing some more vintage repro buttons and more beading. I'm doing some with leaves and without and might come up with some more interesting ideas to do with them. Here's the blue

Here is a keychain I made as well to sell on etsy. It's got this cute little blue bird image on the front and a lovely heart on the back. It's really easy to pop the back piece off and add a picture of your own if you should choose. The art is all original, one of a kind. I didn't do editions or prints of it.

More Art Cards for SAC

I've been doing rather well with the challenge. I am however 210 cards lacking. Thankfully I have13 days to make that 210. Geez that's a lot of cards in 13 days. I hope to make a huge dent tomorrow. I'll be spending most of the day in art mode. I've got a few swaps to complete and some personal swaps. Then I'll be all caught up and can play at other things. My card goal for tomorrow is 25 cards. If I can do 25 cards or more, I'll be over the total card count I need to do daily to make my 300 mark by the end of october. So here is a picture of the 85 I have made thus far. These pictures don't count the 6 or 7 I completed tonight. This image above has my faux postage cards I did for a group swap I am in. I did two different ones. The star image in the center, and the little space man at the top. These cards are all original colored images. I had to make 9 of each. You can also see another of my kokeshi images. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll work on an alphabet set, and perhaps some fabric cards. It all depends on what I get done in the morning. I'm hoping to get my images done for an eyes swap. I have a few already, but need to do more. I also need to complete all my mother earth cards. I haven't completed mine yet as I wanted to do some research on differnt cultural ideals on "mother earth". Hopefully I can get some of that completed tomorrow as well.

A friend of mine (Rose..**waving**) has told me that I should enter a competition for a rubber stamping company. They are running a contest where you get the chance to win Designer for a stamp set for the company. I'm feeling a little leary about it, but might do it as it's just a bit uncomfortable and I'm beginning to find that when I feel that discomfort I need to jump in with both feet and break that comfort zone. I'm still not sure yet however.

My beginnings for SAC

I am participating in an art by the card event through Sharpie Scouts. I'm having a great time already.It's based loosely on the Art by the Inch challenge as we were all lamenting the fact that the site hasn't been updated in awhile and we thought we'd do our own little challenge. We decided to cut from the square inch idea and go with art by the trading card. We have different levels...and silly me picked the highest (i like a good challenge) I took the 300 card challenge. I need to make 300 atcs by the end of October. So far I'm not doing too badly sticking to my quota. I'll be trying to make extras tonight to give me a bit of a buffer incase I run into a glitch in scheduling time to do art. :) So here are ones I completed last night.
the birds are based on a theme week I am doing with a new art friend. We've decided to help inspire each other to art and the theme we agreed on for this week is birds. So I've been thinking birds lately. The kokeshi doll is just one of those things that pops up while you're randomly looking for things and then gets stuck in your head. I've got a few worked up that I haven't colored yet. I might be trying a fabric version soon or perhaps even a amigurumi version. This is an image of all 15 cards I did last night.

KLIMT and Me

I've been working on self portraits this week and this one really grabbed me. Granted it doesn't look like me much, but i had fun doing it. I love Gustav Klimt. Especially his really detailed works. I patterned this after Judith 1. I love that picture.

Now I'm having a hard time parting with this one. I've made plenty for the portrait swap, ones that look more like me and less stylized. I'll probably hold onto this one for awhile.

I'm off today to spend time with my friend Lois. She and I have been having a great time getting together for art dates. We go to each others houses and sit and talk the day away and art. It's so much fun.

I'm thinking of taking more time to do Sharpie versions of Masterpieces. I had such a great time with that challenge for the Sharpie Scouts. I cannot wait to get my book! I'm so excited. Our fearless leader put a little full color zine out with submissions from the group. It looks really cool, but I can't wait to get my hands on it and pour through it! here are a few of the ones I did for the masterpiece swap.

I've been wildly crazy about henna patterns lately. This is a 7x5 card that I've been working intricate patterns on. It's still a work in progress but I had to share. I'm loving the way it's turning out already and plan to do a series of ATCs based on henna designs. I love the look of actual henna on the body. The burnt umber color just appeals to me and there is something so powerful and drawing to me. I've been hoping to find a local henna artist so that I could get a good henna tattoo done. Heck, I would like to learn to do henna tattoos. They're so beautiful . I love reading about henna and the history and importance in the cultures it appears in.

Another canvas

This is another sharpie canvas. I love putting sharpies to canvas, although in doing so it can really RUIN you sharpies. I was just going to leave this black and white, but found that it lacked a certain "punch" that I tend to favor in my art. I decided that just a few blasts of color would do the trick and set to work. Just like it happens with shiny surfaces, I found that the ink I had put down previously was lifting to a certain degree while color some spots. I don't know what it is that does this, I've talked with others who say they've never had that problem. It unfortunately makes a dead spot on the head of the marker. I'll be working on more shiny atcs here in the next few days. I love working on it and love the effects (you can see some below) but I have to be very cautious. This canvas is on sale in my etsy store located in the links to the right.

Fab Sista finshed! ...FINALLY

I've been working on these little pins on and off for WEEEEEEEEEEEKS now. At first I couldn't get the felt to stick to itself. When that started happening, I thought "Well I can always hand sew every piece"....ugh..but the thoughts of that made me bored almost instantly. They worked out rather well in the end. When I started working on them I wasn't sure how many I was going to need. So I started 12 turned out I only needed four so now I have six extras (two were lost to appease the creative gods apparently ...small sacrifices that ended up in the great craft heaven in the sky) I think I'm going to dress them up with different dangle type earrings and maybe a cute bow or something in their hair and sell them on my etsy shop. They're really cute, don't you think?

Another mural for the Scouts

Did another mural. This one I had no problem slicing down. It looks really good even when it is cut. I've been trying to get caught up on all the swaps and deadlines I have. I just haven't felt in a big creative mood lately. I have a few digital swaps I have to finish up and get printed out, that part always makes me nervous. I can make something that looks amazingly wonderful on the computer screen and then I print it out and it's crap! Oh well I guess there's learning curves in all mediums.

I did this piece after trying out the technique for Try It Tuesday. Check it out if you're looking to learn new techniques. It's going to be a blast. This was the first technique to be featured. I missed the entry for the contest by about 15 mintues (DOH) but that's ok ..It was still fun learning something new. This was basically three washes of acrylic on canvas board. I put a great canary yellow down first. It's barely visable after the last two layers. Then I washed over the bottom layer with a turquoise blue/green color. Then lastly I put on a minight blue and spritzed with water and blotted it off. It turned out ok, but not like some of the amazing pieces I saw on the flickr group for Try It Tuesday. I did another one in oranges and red, but haven't done anything with it yet. I'm not quite sure if I'm going to sketch over it like I did with this canvas, or make it a more multi-media /collagey piece. I haven't done collage in a long time, but dread digging out the large box of stuff i have to get into it.

So Try something new and check out Try it Tuesdays....you never know, you just might win ;) http://tryittuesdays.wordpress.com/

These abstracts were done for Sharpie Scouts abstract swap. I love doing abstracts. I can do them so easily while watching tv at night. All of these are nothing but sharpie markers.

Another mural atc set that isn't.

Another piece that was to be cut into atcs...but again can't bring myself to do it. For some reason the scan came out way darker than the actual picture in some spots. and the yelllow bird isn't NEON. I just realized that my cardinal looks like he has a mohawk.

Here it is, three am and I'm still awake. I'm just now starting to feel the droop of a night of burning the midnight oil ...errrr..wait..burning the candle at both ends? Is that the right phrase I was looking for??Anyway............this is what I spent my evening on. I've been up since 7:am yesterday morning from which I had very little sleep. I think tomorrow I'll be sleeping in. I'm participating in a mural swap at the sharpies group. The Queen of hearts is a 6 atc mural (which is shown here uncut) I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I think once it is sliced apart into it's various sections, it'll still have apeal even pieced.
This piece should be cut into four pieces, though I can't quite decide what I want to do with it. I started out with the intention of putting it in for the mural swap, but since it won't fit into a 9 pocket trading card page without separating one piece from the grouping, it's kind of silly to send it in. I know that when the dear hubby is up, and I won't be running the risk of waking him up with the incredibly loud scanner, I'll be scanning it in to put into my cafepress shop. I think this would make a lovely tshirt and if I scan it right, perhaps even a small framed print. I don't know though....guess my brain is foggier than I thought. :) Well I should really think about heading to bed at some point before I hit the 24 hours awake mark. I'm starting to revert back to old sleeping patterns and that's not a good thing for me. Sure, I get some killer art done, but at the cost of my own health, it hardly seems worth it, oh plus the fact that it drives my dear man totally nuts. He's so sweet that he says he can't sleep when I'm not in bed (inset cuteness sigh from the viewers...either that or the typical gag response my sisters have) Nighty night all! I'll be posting someo f the other random cards I made tonight, soon.

Check My New Magnet Sets!

Here they are! My latest creations! I love doing marble magnets and finally decided that I'd try selling some with my art attached to the back. I have a ton that have the typical magazine clippings attached to the back. I'm hoping to get some better way to tranfer bits of art to print and get copied. I love doing hand drawn things and making them slightly differnt each time, but it's a bit time consuming. Not that I mind the time consuming part, but I'd like to be able to produce a horde to sell. I'm hoping to go craft showing this year. There's a first time for every thing I guess. We'll see what happens. :)

New Sharpie Art

Out of my love for turquoise and brown, I tried a little sharpie art to reflect that. It didn't work as I had hoped. The blue was too blue and not turquoise enough and the sharpie brown was too dark , while the crayola brown was too light. I'm going to have to try in acrylic as soon as I get my creative mess sorted out finally.

These were something new I tried. I found some photo stock for the printer for $1.00 on clearance at target. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but for a 1.00 my muse couldn't pass it by. I've found it's best not to argue with my muse, she can get bitchy and pouty like a little kid. Then she'll go into hiding for awhile. While it's hard to get the sharpie colors on close to each other without smudging them together, it made for some realy neat effects.

Then of course this silly swirl keeps bugging me and popping up in my art, so I figured I'd let it free and go with the flow. So here it is in two forms.

New things for etsy

All this fun artwork went to my etsy store. They had the big crash and I figured it was time to get some more new artwork up. Unfortunately since they offered free listing, my stuff didn't stay on the front page long. That really stinks, so I'lll have to make some more and get myself up in lights once again. I don't have enough of a draw to the store yet and no one "hearts" me. Which is just being a favorite seller of someone's ...Oh well..I'll get there someday. ;)

My Hearts chunky book pages.

I did these pages for a chunky book. Took me awhile..but I'm happy with the results.

I love this piece. I loved it so much I had to turn it into clothing on my cafe press shop. My mother (my biggest fan) Told me she'd like to see it on a mug, so I took it to cafe press and made a mug for her. I then decided to put it onto shirts so I could wear it. I've since worn out two shirts with it on. I'm on my third one and it's looking a little worn. Squiggles show up a lot in my art. I find it fun to scribble for hours at a time making art like this. It relaxes me and makes me happy.





This is a sketch I did for an illustration class I took about four years ago. We had to pick a theme and base all of our artwork around the theme we choose. I did it on poor quality paper unfortunately. You can tell in the background especially, there's a roughness to the stroke marks that is a bit childish. I liked how she turned out. My other pieces are large, three canvas pieces (not pretty. I was still very new to painting people ) and about three pen and ink pieces. My pen and ink pieces turned out well, though they have no background and look a bit bare.










The Moon Queen. One of my most favorite pieces. She's done in Sharpie marker and gel pens. I've found I do a lot of "star gazers" and I'm not quite sure why. They just seem to flow from me. Usually when doing a giant bunch of cards, I tend to turn out at least one star gazer in the grouping.




Celia, made for a swap on a group I'm in. It was a things with wings swap and I did all sorts of things. Angels, pigs with wings, even a cow.