I'm gearing up for the holidays!

I've been working like crazy getting stuff ready for a local Christmas shop. I'm hoping to have a bit of a stash made up in the next few days so I can get my product out to the lovely lady running the shop! I can't wait to see all the stuff she's got. I'm going to be dragging my sister along as we go to look.

Hopefully with all I've been working on I'll still have things to add to my etsy shop. It's been a little stale in there as of late as my "day" job has been taking up a lot of my time and energy. I'm quite exhausted when I come home and find it hard to sit down and do much artwork.

I've been participating in Swap-bot a bit, and doing a few other random swaps and charity donations, but other than that, not much else. My house is a mess and my crafting space is even worse. Hopefully I can get up the get up and go attitude in the coming week and really whip this place into shape. With the holidays fast approaching it seems I'm quickly running out of time!!!

I'll be posting some photos in the next few days of randon assortments of things that I've been making for swaps and to sell. Well, some of the things from swaps. I've been terrible at recording what I've been making and sending out as of late. My favorite swaps so far have been the goddess doll (see the post below) and the BATSTRAVAGANZA swap. I had to make bat things for the swap and made two lovely stuffed brown felt bats. It was great fun. I've also made a black bat, but I don't like him as well as I liked the brown ones. He's still cool though :)

Alright, it's getting late and I've got a KILLLLLER headache, so I'd best be on my way!

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.:)

Coffee Cartel book pages

My pages for the Coffee Cartel book. I worked for hours staining and layering more staining and even more layers of staining to get the pages a lovely coffee color. I was almost sad when it came time to decorate the pages. It seemed almost a sin to ruin the beautiful markings left by the coffee. I decided that instead of covereing up the coffee stains, I'd use them to my advantage and create from the shapes left by the stains. We play this game in my family, something my parents started when I was small to keep us busy while we waited in restaurants. Someone will make a scribble on a sheet of paper, then the next person will take that scribble and make something of it. That is essentially what I did here, used the "images" i saw in the coffee stains and created something out of them. So the front of my pages are the "Coffee Stain Scribble Game" and the back has my psyeudo hot sleeve with my contact info , the chemical breakdown of caffeine, a small Coffee Love and a small quote.

I've been playing a bit with digital manipulation lately. This was done for a challenge in the digital group I'm in. It's a blue themed challenge and all our art had to be blue in hue. I had a really great time taking this picture of my nephew and making it into this piece of art.

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.

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.

alice

This is a watercolor I did. I've got to work on profile eyes. For some reason mine always look too big, or deformed or something.

So now I'm currently working on some faux postage. It's not going as well as I had hoped. I'm having a bit of a problem reducing my image while keeping the image intact and viewable. **sigh** some day I'll get it.

The mask I did for the trade on SP. I like the way it turned out. I had a different idea when I first started, but love the way this turned out instead. I was originally just going to leave it full florals and hold them on by eyelets, but I love the way this looks so full with the florals pulled apart and glued down. It just seems more natural.

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.

More Old Works.

These are Animal Spirit atcs I did. I was in a swap where we were to take our animal guardians and make them into cards. I love little indian fetish animals and took my inspiration from those. I wanted to do a whole animal series like this and make up a deck of cards. I might still do so in the future. These have been traded away though. I'll have to start all over again. I enjoy the process though and I think I will have fun playing around with the ideas again. Coming up with interesting backgrounds to put with them and making them. These were done in colored pencil. I'm sure you can tell that though. You can see the pencil marks in the scan. I hate my scanner because it skews the colors to a certain degree. The purples turn out blue which really bothers me, but the blues stay blue...how strange is that. I'm going to have to work on sketches for these.

Some early Sharpie Artwork

The Fire Queen mask. I love masks and have made a bunch of different sharpie works in the mask theme. This one I found particularly fun to make. I tend to start with a basic mask shape and then slowly alter the shape until it inspires some sort of idea for the type of mask it would be. I do believe the gold in the background was gel pen, but I'm not exactly sure. That was three years ago.

Carrying on the mask theme...
Not one of my favorites..the Water Witch mask. I used a glossy stock and you can see the stroke marks. Glossy works on occasion, but this time didn't work at all.









This set of images was for a swap at nervousness. They are all sharpie works. I particularly loved the high priestess and the bottom two. They just worked out so well. I couldn't have been happier with the results I got . The top left and the bottom left cards are both done on glossy stock. This is an instance where the glossy stock worked well for me and really made the piece extra special. Here's a larger version of the High Priestess of Night card. A really nice piece of work with the color blending on the hat. Unfortunately the scan was a little darker than the actual piece was.


Twilight Beauty. I loved the way this one turned out. I was playing around the silouettes, and came up with this one. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it when i just had the pencil sketch. So I laid out the purple background first, thinking that would direct what i wanted to do. Boy did it ever! From the purple background I got the feeling of the night sky and constellations. So Twilight beauty ended up being a constellation.

Magnets

These are little wooden magnets I made awhile ago. The three last pieces are ones I carved into the wood to make. I have yet to put magnets onto those as I think I want to turn them into pins. The rest however have a sturdy circular magnet attached to the backs. All but one of the squares went in a swap with a group of people.

SHARPIE ARTWORKS