Friday Feature

Another random pick from Etsy. This week I just searched on RAIN and then I narrowed it to art to find this fun piece of art. It seemed fitting to search rain with the deluge we've had lately.   This piece is from the shop RKDsign88. Here's the link to her lovely shop: http://rkdisgn88.etsy.com

The shop is full of whimsical designs available in prints, stationery, tags, you name it. You can't help but smile when you look at these adorable little faces! According to her profile the artist is "a  mom with a daughter & a wonderful husband." She used to live in Stevens Point, Wisconsin & Los Angeles for 8 years and now resides in Jakarta Indonesia. So check her shop out and if you love the print that I have shown as much as I do, go to this link: http://www.etsy.com/listing/64869088/rainy-day-blonde-whimsical-girl-with

So It Has a Name!

Last weekend when I put up my Sunday Sketch I put up a  doodle I did when my cable was out. I just did it with a couple of pens. No big deal. Just doodling.

After I posted my link to my Sunday Sketch, I had a couple of people tell me that it was a zentangle.....who knew? I had no idea what a zentangle was. Turns out it some sort of mediative drawing or doodling. According to zentangle.com  "Zentangle is an easy to learn method of creating beautiful images from repetitive patterns. It is a fascinating new art form that is fun and relaxing. It increases focus and creativity. Zentangle provides artistic satisfaction and an increased sense of personal well being"
 

 They also call it a "elegant metaphor for deliberate artistry in life" and also "mediative". You can buy kits and books...they've taken doodling to a whole new commercial thing. I was amazed people would pay money to doodle!

Then I did a search on Etsy. There are a lot of  zentangles on there. But for me, it's just a doodle. I do that when I'm bored. I always have. When I go to meetings my notes are filled with doodles.  So inspired by the beautiful doodles or zentangles in color, I decided to do another this time with the DAWG Team Ocean Quest in mind, and enhance it with watercolor and here it is. I


It is available in my Etsy Shop at this link: http://www.etsy.com/listing/69525379/mixed-media-aceo-original-sea-of-life

Sunday Sketches

My Sunday Sketch is actually an ink doodle on an ACEO card. I call it, "Cable's Out".  My cable TV was out for a couple of days. Not much to do. So I started doodling on a piece of paper and then thought, "Wait, I should just do an ACEO doodle" and I did. And here it is.


Visit BlueChairDiary Blog for some awesome other Sunday Sketches: http://bluechairdiary.blogspot.com/    Please keep Sophia's father & Sophia in your prayers!

The Sounds of Quiet

My cable has been out for a couple of days. The guy is supposed to come today to fix it. Yesterday I was just sitting  in the family room on the laptop, reading blogs, facebook, checking out my etsy shops, whatever. And then it hit me how quiet it was.

So I grabbed a cup of tea and listened to how my house sounded quiet. I decided it's pretty noisey for quiet. The furnance goes on and off and I was amazed how long it's on. There was a little drip in my kitchen faucet that I had not noticed until it was quiet. I could hear the clock tick and a small noise from the overhead kitchen ceiling fan.

Birds could be heard through the window. I could even hear the cats walking. There was the faint sound of a plane and I wondered where it was going. I have never heard a plane from inside my house before. It was an interested exercise/observation.
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The hand painted porcelain mug pictured above  is available in my Etsy shop. Here's the link:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/9959446/handpainted-porcelain-mug-cottage-style

Friday Feature

This Friday I thought I'd try something different. I decided to just plug in the word garden into the Etsy search and find something that appealed to me on the first page of the search.  This appealed to me. It's a photograph by artofsisters of New York http://artofsisters.etsy.com/

According to the shop profile,  the shop owner is mother, wife, creator, and dreamer. She  has two daughters who share her love for the Arts. They have taken photos since they were young.

Their work is lovely. I love photography. It speaks to me. So check out their shop and if you like the photograph pictured to the left, check it out at: http://www.etsy.com/listing/69251173/sunflower

Oh and while poking around their shop, I find that Etsy is a complete family affair.....her husband has a shop there with photography as well. It's called EveryThingHarley http://www.etsy.com/people/EveryThingHarley 

Things That Make Me Giggle

Okay so yesterday I had another episode that made me giggle. My daughter lives in Columbia, Md. It's a "planned community" and things look very uniform and it'sjust hard to find things there unless you are familiar with it.  So when I go I generally use a gps to get around.

I needed to go to find a Party City for some party supplies. So I typed in Party City and GO. Things were going fine until the end. With less than a mile to go, I pass a BIG shopping center but that wasn't it. So I kept going, into a neighborhood. Strange, I thought, no more shopping centers and then I hear. "Arriving at Party City on the Right." There was no mall or shopping center. Where was I?

LONG REACH HIGH SCHOOL.....I just giggled.

And it was born...........

So as you know I'm a china painter. I love porcelain art and spend hours everyday painting it. For many years I've painted spoon rests like the one pictured on the left.

I had painted one of them and it was already fired, finished and ready to be photographed. It was sitting beside my work table.  At the time I was in the middle of doing some decorative painting and was applying varnish. Now if you paint, you know if you put varnish on your pallette paper it will run...sometimes even to the edge of the paper and off. So I grabbed the spoon rest and put the varnish in the little well. It  was perfect for what I needed to hold my varnish.  And because it is porcelain clean up was a snap.

As I was cleaning it out, I thought, well I have to clean my brushes. Generally I put the brushes in brush soap and scrub in my hand but for some reason I just used the little spoon rest. The paint on the porcelain had enough "tooth" to clean but be gentle to my bristles!

and the Paint Buddy was born! 

I love my Paint Buddy. I use it all the time. One day I was thinking, I should share this with others. So  I made some paint buddies in put them in my Etsy shop.  You can purchase them at this link:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/66765859/handpainted-porcelain-paint-buddy

or if you prefer a spoon rest. Here's the link for the one pictured. http://www.etsy.com/listing/39694775/handpainted-porcelain-spoon-rest-ofg