It’s Friday! It’s Friday! That means it’s time for weekend deals, my lovelies. From now until Monday, all prints in my shop are Buy One, Get One free.
Simply buy your first print as usual & then enter the name of the 2nd print you’d like in the comments section as you check out. You’ll get two prints for the price of one! Yay!
Click here to peruse the prints section.
And with that…I’m off to Seattle to visit my sister. All print orders will ship out on Monday. 
Have a fantabulous weekend!
All week long my lovely team members from the Etsy Twitter Team have been showcasing their favorite eco-friendly items and it’s been a great motivation for me to think about what I’m currently doing & what else I could be doing to be more environmentally friendly with my work. Check out the green shopping guide Jen posted for more awesome shops.
The biggest thing I’m currently doing to go green is my packaging – all of my mailers are made from recycled materials & whenever I can, I also reuse boxes. I just shipped off a painting to a customer using an Amazon box. It makes no sense to me to toss a perfectly good box into the recycling bin just because it had books sitting in it for 5 days!
When I was shopping for envelopes for my postcard packs, I also went with the ones that had the highest percentage of post-consumer waste and found these beautiful brown paper bag envelopes made from 100% recycled material. I love their soft smooth feel & earthy tone. They tend to be a little more expensive than the bleached white standard envelopes manufactured in China, but I think they’re worth it.
When it comes to the paper I print on & the ink I use for prints of my artwork, I need to focus on the best quality products for archival purposes. I want my prints to last a lifetime without fading or yellowing & unfortunately there aren’t a whole lot of green options yet. There is a local Vancouver company that prints using soy inks that I’m interested in trying out, at least for my postcards, business cards & other printed materials that don’t need to be archival quality.
But what about those plastic bags that every print is sealed in? Up until literally *this week* I’ve been using the standard crystal clear archival art bags that seal up to prevent dust & fingerprints (particularly important at craft shows!). For storing prints for months (or years) at a time, they’re still the way to go, but for selling my work? My customers pull the prints out of their bags & have them framed while the bag is tossed in the garbage. Definitely an area that needs improvement in my process.
After some searching for alternatives, I’m thrilled to announce that all new prints are going to be bagged in biodegradable bags! They just arrived a few days ago & look almost identical, but the new bags are actually made from plants. They’re certified biodegradable & compost-able. Apparently the bags will biodegrades in 15 weeks at a commercial composting facility. A plastic bag that can go in the compost pile? Amazing!
Last but not least, my Scrabble tile pendants also fall into the green category. I hit the thrift shops regularly looking for old Scrabble games & regularly find ones that are missing a bunch of tiles. No one wants to buy them to play the game if they’re not complete, so I’m able to upcycle the tiles and give them a new life. I use the boxes for storage & the little racks for displaying my pendants at craft shows. I just need to figure out something cool to do with my stack of Scrabble boards & I’ll be set!
What are you doing to go green? I’d love to hear your tips & suggestions!
The Opossum Family
acrylic on beechwood
6″ x 6″ (3/4″ thick)
Momma Bee is buzzing into Vancouver early tomorrow morning, so we’ve been quite busy ’round the hive trying to get things ready. Washing sheets, clearing the living room of bikes & bike parts so that it resembles an actual living room instead of a bike repair shop…you know…the usual! I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would’ve liked, but I did steal some time to finish up 3 small critter paintings that are making me very happy. One is for a custom order, so as soon as I know which one my lovely customer decides on, I’ll be adding the other to the shop.
Another thing making me happy these days is my shiny box full of Scrabble tile pendants. I’m slowly, but surely getting them all listed in the shop & they are seriously just too cute for words. I’m particularly excited about how well the tiny 3″ x 3″ paintings I did for the Art House Gallery project turned out when shrunk down a teeny bit more!
Why hello there country squirrel! How freaking cute are you??
Off to finish up a bit more work, take the dogs for a quickie walk around the block & then bed. Phew! Can’t wait until my mom gets here so I can actually relax!
Have a great week peas!
Caging the Forest Bird
6″ x 6″, acrylic on beechwood
$150
Now that my gallery show at Raw Canvas has wrapped up, I’m thrilled to release prints of the work I created for the “concepts of home” theme. The big one isn’t quite ready yet (needs to be re-scanned at the print shop), but prints from the 3 smaller paintings are now available in the shop. Huzzah!
The Woodland Path
6″ x 6″, acrylic on beechwood
$150
I’m thinking I’d really like to offer them as a set of 3 with a discounted price. Maybe smaller too? An 8″ x 8″ print with matting & frame ends up taking up quite a bit of wall space. Maybe sell the 8″ x 8″ individually & then a set of 3 that are 6″ x 6″?
I’d love to offer them already framed too, but I’m really not able to get any better deals than the average bear without ordering massive quantities. Still…would be nice to give folks the option so they arrive ready to hang. I have prints I ordered MONTHS ago that I haven’t framed yet. Bad bee!
A Quiet Forest
6″ x 6″, acrylic on beechwood
$150
I haven’t added the originals to my Etsy shop yet, but if you’d like to give a new home to one of the original pieces, you can purchase them from me personally. You can pay via credit card using Paypal (click the Add to Cart button) or send me an email for other options, like sending a check (acageybee@gmail.com).
If you’re in the Vancouver or Seattle area, I’d be happy to deliver the work in person. Especially the big one. It’s so beautiful & so so heavy. The idea of mailing her out & trusting the post office not to damage her incites a tiny panic attack in me. I may just have to keep her.
Between the Waves and the Trees I Found Home
16″ x 20″, acrylic on beechwood
$450
Lena and her Little Lamb
9 x12″, acrylic on canvas
click here to buy the original
prints available in the shop
After adding Sophie to the shop yesterday, Lena had to come out to join her. I’d love to offer the two girls as a print set, maybe as smaller sized 5x7s. Looking around my walls I realize that as much as I love buying artwork, tiny paintings and prints are sometimes a better fit. There’s always a little nook that can handle a small frame or print hung by a clip, but 8x10s plus mat plus frame equals a lot of wall space.
I have a couple of other originals I’ll be adding to the shop soon, but I think I need to find the perfect frames for them first. One is on thick coldpress watercolor paper and the other is on thin canvas board, not the thick stretched canvas I usually use. They’re exactly the sort of thing I would buy & then let sit for months because I still haven’t found a frame for them. Whoops! I’m sure I’m not the only one who does that, so I’m thinking if I can find the perfect vintage frames, they’ll be much happier shipped ready to hang. Plus I love any excuse to hit the thrift shops. *grin*
I’m heading out the door with the puppies in a moment and then back in the studio all weekend. The boy comes back from his visit with the grandparents on Sunday so we’re planning a family outing to the Richmond Summer Night Market, a massive outdoor market with rows upon rows of crazy Asian food, bubble tea, interesting import goods and cheap knock-offs. I love the assortment of cute Japanese notebooks and pens with bad Engrish. My current favorite pencil case sports what appears to be a cream puff guy saying:
I sear by the moon and the
start in the sky and i side i
see the questions in your
eyes
Oh & above his head it says “Meat filling”. Love!
Happy weekend!
