After plenty of proofing, I’ve got some new prints available in the shop! Part of my January plan to get organized includes getting my Etsy shop up to date with all of my prints and lockets and original paintings that I have available. So far I’ve only finished adding the prints, but that is a long, very dull process that I love to avoid. It can be lots of trial & error to color correct the prints to match the original paintings, all of which requires patience & good lighting. Both of which I seem to be running low on these days!

Thanks to coffee, I powered through & it was totally worth it. After doing an inventory of all of my work, I realized I’d missed a few paintings from last year! “The Little French Girl” (inspired by the movie “Amelie”) & “Dorothy” never made it into the shop as prints even though I’ve been selling them in person at markets for over a year. This has now been corrected and their smiling faces look quite at home in amongst my newest friends. Speaking of…may I introduce “The Seamstress”:

“The Seamstress” started as a sketch on the loveliest textured cold press paper. As I kept working with her, I began painting in some color, drawing a looping thread-like border and finally delicate touches of gold in the Singer sewing machine details. The original work sold just a few days after I’d completed her and I have to admit I was a little sad to let her go so quickly.

I’ve always admired people who have the patience and skill to sew their own clothes or stitch beautiful details into cozy quilts. I’d love to become a better seamstress myself, but my tendency to want to follow my own path instead of the directions can be a bit of a problem. A sturdy seam ripper is my best friend!

Hanging “The Seamstress” in your craft room might be just the thing to inspire wonderful new creations!

Also new in the shop are these little darlings, “Chloe and Vince”:

Chloe and her pet turtle, Vince, have been inseparable ever since she discovered him paddling around a rather large crystal punchbowl left on her doorstep. You can often see the happy pair out on their daily walk, making sure to stop for puddle splashing and the occasional carrot. In the evenings, Vince enjoys being read to, preferring the genres of historical biography and science fiction.

Click here to see more art prints for sale.

I have plenty more paintings and lockets and silver critter pendants to add to the shop, so my next task is setting out to photograph everything. We have such short hours of daylight and such cloudy overcast skies that this is proving to be a bit of a pickle. As much as I prefer natural lighting, I may just have to make do without. Or maybe book a holiday to a sunny beach somewhere instead! That counts as a tax write-off, right?

One of the odd things about my particular brand of ADD is my ability to hyper-focus. I’m rarely able to do this when I actually *need* to, but sometimes when I’m painting I can fall into these zen-like modes where I focus on nothing else but the canvas right in front of me for hours and hours on end, forgetting to eat and often forgetting to breathe too. I catch myself holding my breath all the time when I’m really focused on something. Not good!

Not surprisingly, when I get interested in something new I can obsess over it for days or weeks at a time, endlessly researching until I eventually get distracted by a new topic (SQUIRREL!). My current obsession: the TV show Breaking Bad.

I’m a little late to the party since I don’t have cable, but as soon as the show was added to Netflix (Canadian version), I watched the pilot and was instantly hooked. I think I went through all 4 seasons in the span of 2 or 3 weeks. *love*

I love so many things about this show. The characters are so well written – complicated, a mix of good and bad, just like real people are. There are no clear good guys. There are a whole bunch of bad (and badder) guys, but no obvious path to take, no “right” answer. Most of all, I love the way the writers allow the story to unfold without that overbearing narrative style so prevalent in entertainment today. It’s up to the audience to figure out what the main characters are thinking and feeling. I hate it when viewers are beaten over the head with explanations of here’s what’s going to happen, here’s what’s happening now, here’s what just happened. Give the audience some credit, Hollywood!

awesome Jesse Pinkman paper doll by illustrator Kyle Hilton (more Breaking Bad paper dolls on his site)

Adding to the obsession – there’s also a companion podcast to go along with each episode of Breaking Bad. I haven’t gotten through all of them yet, but there are some fascinating tidbits about how the show is made, the writers room and all of the behind the scenes stuff that go into producing a TV show. The fact that each episode is shot in only 8 days is astounding, particularly with some of the crazy explosions and shoot outs. One episode often feels like a movie, which would have been allowed months and months of filming.

Art lovers may have enjoyed the episode where Jesse and Jane go to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum (technically it was in a flashback, but still a really sweet moment). While watching, I assumed the show got permission to shoot at the actual museum and briefly wondered how many hoops that was to jump through. In the podcast, the producers reveal just how much effort went into that 2 minute scene.

First, they contacted the Georgia O’Keeffe people to request the rights to show one of her paintings on camera. Shooting at the museum with one of her original paintings was never even considered. Instead, they were granted the rights to one painting (“My Last Door”), and the art department of Breaking Bad set out to reproduce it. Once they were finished, the painting was sent to the Georgia O’Keeffe people for approval. The painting was approved, the set built and the scene shot with very wide aperture so any paintings in the background were blurry & indistinguishable. Once the crew was finished, the painting had to be sent back to the O’Keeffe people to be destroyed.

Wow, right? It’s amazing how much effort by so very many people goes into creating a show! I’ve never wanted to be an actress, but I think being involved in production, set design or special effects would be really fun jobs. In another life, maybe!

And just for Jesse, one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s “vagina paintings” (though it should be noted that Georgia flatly denied any intentional resemblance to lady parts):

“White and Blue Flower Shapes”

Though she’s certainly most famous for her flower paintings, I’m personally more drawn to her desert bones and skulls period. There’s an interesting video on YouTube of Georgia talking about her trips to the desert:

One of the long overdue tasks gathering dust on my TO DO list is an update of this website. It functions fine as my blog, but for first time visitors, I imagine can be a bit burdensome to figure out. This was pointed out to me by a friend who was nice enough to be telling someone else about my work and wanted to show photos of the kind of stuff I do. He phoned me later to complain saying, “All I could find was pictures of your dogs! Where are your PAINTINGS???”

Whoops! There are a few original paintings for sale in my Etsy shop, but the vast majority of them have not been photographed properly. So they end up selling at local shops and markets, never making it to the website in any other format than my quickie phone snapshots as works in progress. Remedying this is my January project, though I have to admit – I’d much rather be painting!

I did web design and internet marketing for several years, so you wouldn’t think this would be a major undertaking, right? Well, you’d be wrong, my friend! My rustiness coupled with how fast technology changes (oh WordPress updates and your insistence on stripping any attempt at line breaks!) has made for some slowwww going. I’m realizing now that I should have just bit the bullet and started from scratch with a completely new design instead of the patch job I’m currently undertaking (which is ultimately proving to take longer than a complete redesign would have anyway!).

To make up for all that complaining (did I mention that since I’m self-employed, you get to endure my water cooler chat? Lucky duck!), I’m including a very cool vintage typography tutorial I stumbled on that teaches step by step how to create some of the beautifully intricate designs of vintage typography ads, like so:

credit: webgraphics.net

The author uses Adobe Illustrator, but I had no trouble following along in Photoshop. Whenever I look at that vintage style of lettering, I’m blown away by the detail, but I’ve never really looked at it to break it down. I think of it as always being hand drawn, but of course there are plenty of examples of lovely work like the one above that are completely computer based. And when you start to reallllly look, you notice that the fancy lines and swirls are often just combination of very simple shapes. Time-consuming, yes. But totally do-able.

Enjoy!

Well hello there, 2012! The last few days have been very mellow ’round the beehive as I reflected on 2011 and started making plans for the upcoming year. I have a little tradition of listing all of my favorite moments from the year before and without a doubt, the highlight of 2011 was bringing Princess Sparkle home. It was a tough year for just about everyone I know (myself included) and her wagging tail and constant desire to cuddle made the dark spots a little easier to bear.

After I saw her listing on Pet Finder, I knew we had to meet her in person. She looks so much like my old dog, Sparkle could be one of her puppies! The rescue group I adopted her from, Rescued Paws, was wonderful to work with. Shelly, the foster mom who gave Sparkle a loving home while waiting to be adopted, was so patient with me as we emailed back & forth, answering my many, many questions & concerns. It didn’t take more than a day or two before she’d settled right in, always choosing to squeeze in beside the pug rather than lay in her own bed.

As I started writing out my goals for 2012, an overriding theme was pretty clear – slow down! I don’t know if this is a getting older thing, but my goals seem to be shifting toward getting organized, simplifying my life and creating a home I love. I want to have more time to paint, to write blog posts and to truly *enjoy* time with friends rather than be frantically working and trying to keep up with the insane schedule I kept last year. I worked my tail off in 2011! I love my job, so it’s not like this is some kind of hardship, but I definitely need to create more balance in my life and my home.

To start with, I’m finally allowing myself to take up a real hobby – one that doesn’t involve creating something for sale! It’s funny…when you make things for a living, it seems like you should always be doing something “productive”. Between craft shows, my Etsy shop and the retail stores that carry my work, I have to stick to a pretty strict schedule of making lockets and brooches and things. It’s also important for me to keep coming out with new designs, which means new paintings. Of course, not all of my paintings work well as reproductions either. Maybe this isn’t the case for artists who, say, don’t have credit card debt that they failed to pay off the year before, but I feel like I’m always supposed to be working, being productive, making money. This is definitely a recipe for burnout, my friends.

And so, after MANY hours of research and reading reviews and drooling over online fabric swatches, I ordered a book that’s going to teach me how to sew clothing for the first time in my life! *squeeeeee*

The Colette Sewing Handbook has received fabulous reviews and I couldn’t be more excited to get started! Here’s why:

I hate shopping.
I hate trying clothes on and being disappointed that the hips are too snug and the waist is too baggy.
I hate that it’s so difficult to find cute, vintage-style clothing locally. (sidenote: I love Anthro. I hate the prices.)
I hate gambling on ordering clothes online that are often poorly made and ill-fitting once you see them in person. (sidenote #2: I think ModCloth does shoppers a great service by allowing such thorough reviews by other customers, including their sizes and measurements. That being said, I’ve never spent more than $50 on something I couldn’t try on first.)

Solution? Sew my own clothes, obviously! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Greetings from the not-so-frozen North! I’m celebrating Christmas with my in-laws in Alberta & we’ve lucked out with some pretty warm weather, fantastic homecooked food & fabulous company. What more can you ask for at Christmas time?

The only thing making the season a little less merry is the nasty cold that’s been attacking my sinuses. I’m feeling incredibly fortunate that I managed to make it all the way through the winter market season without getting sick, so if it has to be while I’m on holiday? I really can’t complain. If I’d been feeling better, I would’ve ventured out to the art gallery & maybe stayed up past 10pm, but other than that, my holiday would have looked remarkably similar.

Wishing you and your loved ones the happiest of holidays!