One Down, Another Million To Go!

I decided I would set up an account with Zazzle to turn my art into a wide array of merchandise for sale. I've heard great things about the site and like the ability to make a sales commission as well as a referral commission. So we'll see where that takes me once I start promoting my sites. I think once I get started things will work out.

In the meantime, I was inspired to create a poster while working on the banner for my Artfire studio. I'm revamping that site and was making something a little more season inspired as I'd like to change things up to go with the current holiday or season. This is what we like to call a happy accident, and I tend to get a lot of these happening when I start playing around with my art! So I present "Lilies en Bleu" which is also available as a canvas tote bag.


I haven't decided if I'm doing more with it on Zazzle or not, but its a start. I have so many other pieces to work with that I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed right now. But, I will get it all figured out and it will be more fun making designs once I know what I'm doing! lol

Distractions

It's been a little crazy around here with my last few days of working and trying to get everything together for our camping trip. Can you really call it camping when you have running water and a nice comfy bed? Lots of cleaning, organizing, list making, and making sure we still have people available to take care of the pets and the house while we're gone. With all of this insanity, I'm going to need a vacation after our vacation! lol

I have a lot of ideas brewing, but nothing finished yet. I took some pictures and need to edit them, working on a few crochet projects, did a few rough sketches for my next few art pieces and started thinking about maybe putting some of them on t-shirts as well. Maybe mugs and other items? There are way too many project ideas in mind and not nearly enough time, supplies, or energy to work on them all! But not to worry, there will be a bit of an image overload once these things start hitting the "Finished" category! lol

Busy as a Bee!

Despite working evening/night shifts and being able to sleep in anyway, I had forgotten what it was like to really enjoy sleeping in! Well, except for the weird dreams about vampires trying to eat me! Anyway, I had a fairly productive day while still maintaining a bit of laziness. I started and finished 2 digital pieces which will be available in my studio shop soon. The first was more of a happy accident while playing around with different brushes and filters to get a background layer. The second was actually inspired by a pair of earrings I recently purchased. No pics of the earrings yet, but I will revisit this post later to show you all how I was inspired. That is, afterall, the general concept of this blog! lol But for now, here are the 2 (watermarked) pieces!

The question of the day was what to have for dinner (as it is so often in my house!) and after much deliberation, I decided to head to the store and look for inspiration. After wandering around looking up and down the aisles, I found a package of potato gnocchi. I don't think I've ever had gnocchi before, so I thought I would try it with a little Vodka sauce and served up next to a nice Caesar salad and some stuffed chicken balls. Oh! Soooo GOOD! While the meal itself isn't all that inspired since it was mostly pre-packaged, it did inspire me to try and make gnocchi from scratch! Well, maybe not anytime in the very near future, but soon! I've seen it made on one of the cooking segments from one of the many shows I watch and it doesn't seem like it would really be that difficult to make. Just maybe a little tricky to get the right texture. So we will definitely have to try that out and post all about it! Overall, not a bad day today!

Here's to New Beginnings!

I wanted to create a little hub where I can share my various interests and the results of different experiments and projects within them. I am constantly adding to my list of hobbies so there will probably be a little something for everyone here. I welcome constructive criticism, suggestions, advice, and any positive feedback. All you "Negative Nellies" need not reply because this is not a place to spread hate, prejudice, or to just be plain rude and obnoxious! With that said, on to my first creative post!

I was inspired by a post about a "One Pen, One Paper" challenge on another blog. (Sorry, I can't remember which one I was reading at the time or there would be a link here!) Now, there were rules to this challenge like there are to any challenge, but I was more interested in the concept of the art. I haven't really let things flow in my projects and thought this would be a great way to experience that and see what happens. So I grabbed a ballpoint pen and a piece of copy paper and sat down to get started. After a few minutes of just staring at the page, I doodled a little squiggly line. And then I broadened it, adding a few more squiggly lines. After 4 days of scribbling, doodling, filling in spots and taking a step back to see what was developing, I finally called it finished! There are aspects of this piece that I'm not entirely happy with, but when you work with ink, it takes on a life of its own and you can't necessarily control the output! We'll call this Free Flow #1 because I plan on doing more of these in the future!