Yippie! I Won!!!!

I'm so excited! I opened my email this morning only to find a lovely surprise! My friend Aileen from Outside The Margins http://www.outsidethemargins.com/ informed me I won her blog

http://aileensmusings.blogspot.com/ giveaway for the lovely Sorbet Color Mists! I'm so excited! I just ADORE her color mists! Aileen is one of the most colorful, and creative people I know! She is so generous with sharing her great ideas, and has constant inspiration on her website and blog.

And she sells the most awesome stuff! ALL kinds of cool supplies and tools and ephemera that you would have to look forever to find yourself- if you even could! And you should see the adorable hand crafted art pieces she sells in her "Boutique!" I am in love with her Smidge Fairies!

I particularly look forward to Fridays - she posts "Crafty Blogger Blurbs" with links to all sorts of scrumptious other creative and crafty ideas!

I can't wait for them to get here! I'm going to go home and line up things to get ready to mist!

Faith Journal "S"

I'm slowly but surely working my way thru my faith journal. It seems fitting that this is "S"

I guess I'm always amazed whenever anything is created. (Even by me!) I've been "saving" this painting to use as a background for this page entitled "strokes." I can't wrap my brain around how with a few strokes, so many different men, through so many different eras were inspired by God to write the books of the Bible. (And to have such consistency!) What a project! (I mean sometimes if an art project goes on for more than a few weeks, I lose momentum, and have a hard time completing it! (I call them UFO's (Un Finished Objects.) How do you keep the momentum over hundreds of years?

Oh- and why did I save this painting to use? My tastes are fleeting, and my interests change from season to season. THIS is my favorite piece of work I've ever done. Maybe it's because I started and kept on this oil painting as a gift for my Dad. It represents weeks and weeks of work for me, looking at it daily. I was inspired by a photo of steps in a Spanish Convent.

Here's a quick grab shot from my phone of the actual painting. It's quite large really.

Ties that Bind

Awhile back, it was my pleasure to take part in a collaborative art project called "Ties that Bind". The completed project will be auctioned or raffled off and the proceeds will benefit the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Approximately 88 Artists contributed either hand made charms or hand crafted ties, and Artist Jan Brown created the Art Doll to showcase them all off.

Kris Henderson and Aileen Roberts were each big helps in maintaining communications with all the artists and getting the ball rolling.

The finished Art Doll is practically life-size and just stunning to look at. Right now she is at the publishers for her photo shoot, but if you would like to see- they've put a wonderful sneak peek album up on the blog, as well as close ups of all the charms and ties as they arrived in. I encourage you to dive in and enjoy the eye candy! (I've pictured a few of my charms here- but REALLY- GO VISIT and SEE what they've done with them!)

http://projecttiesthatbind.blogspot.com/

Busy Busy Busy

I've been down with that awful stomach virus that is going around in the area. Can't really get far from the house to get anything done, and so I've been busy working at the house online. Besides trying to get caught up for work, I've also been busy busy busy creating my booklets for the classes I'm teaching at Artiscape in April. It's funny how my hands can fly and do something so much faster than the time it takes to write it down so it makes sense to someone else step-by step. I am having fun with them, enjoying the process.

As the time grows near, I'm getting very excited about Artiscape this year, as it will be the first year it's here in Columbus. I've gotten my teaching packet, and with a big sigh of relief I found that my classes are nicely filling up, with only a few spaces left in each. Shew! I've got tons of piles of delicious stuff in my studio that will be going into the class kits. And it's an all time record for the Annual Artiscape fatbook I am hostessing-42 copies!!! That's alot of covers and punching and binding! Thank goodness for Mike helping me!

Before I came down with the virus I was able to get my charms done (over 100) for the swaps and trading sessions...so that's one major project completed. (Sorry for the poor picture- I just didn't have the energy to get the big camera out- so the cell phone was handy.) It's tough to photograph those little glass bubbles, the light plays havoc with them, but they are really cute in real life-both the front and the back are decorated.

Wild Women

I am just finishing up a fatbook swap on the theme of Wild Women. I must have been releasing my inner Andy Warhol as I worked on these pages! I picked several women, All Artists or Photographers. Amazing how many were considered cold, or harsh, or unfeeling because they devoted so much of themselves to the perfection of their art. Many of them married or associated with famous male artists or writers, who were consumed by their own craft, but were NOT considered cold or heartless. The men were considered devoted, or passionate, or gifted with an "artistic temperament". Now how fair was that?

I just LOVE this one! Usually I see photos of Frida where she is less than "delicate" looking with her fierce eyebrows. I created this inspired by her photo on the cover of Vogue magazine, and think she looks so haunting here!

Margaret Bourke White has always been a heroine of mine. She literally took every destructive thing men could throw at her, and still came out on top. She was an awesome photographer, and she got her start in Ohio!

I've adored Mary Cassatt's works since I was a child. She had such a tender style, really capturing the bonds of human love and friendship in paint. For her time, she was quite daring too. She bucked many of the social and political views of her day, and befriended many controversial artists in order to expand her own world view.