Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap

I've been thinking about stitching things lately. Then along came the stitched
Postcard swap with Do What You Love. #GBSPS
So I dug into my stash of fabric and found this lovely piece of linen. I only
had about 4 colors of thread so thats what I used. The last time I did this
was many years ago.. I don't really remember how to make the different
stitches.. So I pulled out whats comfortable to me.. Paint.
I have loads of beads and buttons so I stitched them on, cut paper flowers
and added them.
I also got to use the sewing machine a friend gave me for the first time. I want
to do more. Now I need to find the time. This is getting mailed up to Maine
today.

Jell-o, Jelly and Moulds

I can't believe its almost a month since I posted. I just can't keep up with
everything.. I try to do too many things and then sometimes nothing gets done.
Like the blog.
I'm in month 2 of Make Art that Sells bootcamp. The mini is Jell-o, Jelly
moulds. My first reaction on monday morning was Oh, Gross. It took a day
to sink in before I even could start the assignment. Once I got over the fact
that I wouldn't touch the stuff with a 10 ft pole it got more interesting, (and
disgusting) In the 50's and 60's people made Jello with other foods suspended
in it. Like fruit, meat, spaghetti, I don't know what else but GAG. But the good
side is that the shapes are sort of awesome and the colors are happy.
Don't they look like they could be cool hats? I did..

We'll find out what the assignment is on Monday morning. I'm sure a wrench
will be thrown in.

Nelson Mandela

Sometimes it's just hard being an artist, I've been having a
crises of confidence lately...
...and then we are reminded of a
man like Nelson Mandela who was a man of such dignity,
and courage.
This particular quote spoke to me.
"When people are determined they can overcome anything"

Map of my Village

This week in Make Art That Sells class we had to design a map
of our city or village. (It's editorial week) I have wanted to do this
for such a long time but it really seemed daunting to me. I tried before
and just didn't get it together. So the good thing is that I've been
thinking about what I wanted it to look like forever!
I live in the village of Irvington NY which is a little ways up the
Hudson River. It's a quaint little town and so pretty. Our village was
just named to be a NYS historic district, soon we will be a national historic
town. I concentrated on the downtown village area, the beautiful old buildings
and some of the shops concentrated on Main Street.
Irvington was named after Washington Irving who lived here in the mid 1800's.
You can see the Rip Van Winkle sculpture.. Louis Comfort Tiffany also
lived here and in Town Hall is a reading room designed by him and the library
has Tiffany lamps. The Cosmo building is really called the Trent building
but it's where Cosmopolitan magazine was started. The building was designed
by Stanford White. There are cool factory building down by the river and
Eileen Fisher has her main business down there.
The other artists in the class made some amazing maps and it was
so much fun to see where everyone lives, all around the world and
to see how they all interpreted their homes. Love it!!
Here are 2 of my initial sketches.

sketch 1

sketch 2

Back to Class

I'm back at Lilla Rogers Make Art that Sells class, round 2.
I did 5 weeks of part 1 earlier this year and now we have 5
more weeks. This week is the scrapbooking market. I honestly
didn't know anything about this besides seeing all of those
packages of doodads and papers in the craft aisle of Michaels.
It turns out that painting all of these little icons around a theme
and placing them on the page is right up my alley. I loved it.
The assignment was to paint/draw camera's and typewriters.
And then place them around a theme. The scrapbook companies
then take the icons and create all sorts of fun things to cut
and paste. So here is vintage travel and memories.
I love this class and totally recommend it. The group of artists
are amazing and we've formed a wonderful bond!

Asparagus. May Painting a Day 9

I'm going to grill these tonight on my new grill. These actually
don't smell great raw.. so I'm glad it's just a 30 minute painting.
It's such a short time that I forget to take progress pictures but
I did take one at the very beginning.

Spring. April Paint Challenge Day 20

Today has a lot of firsts. I'm away from home, in Philly for my mother in laws birthday. So after lunch I took some time by myself and painted this. Unfortunately it's too cold to sit outside so I'm in Starbucks at a table. I've never pulled out paints in a public place before so it was intimidating, but I got over it since I was busy and everyone was ignoring me anyway. This painting is not what I hoped for but I'm posting so I accomplish my goal of a painting a day.
I also have never used blogger from my iPhone before so I hope the post looks ok. This is just a photo of the painting so the colors are all wrong, I will scan it and replace when I return...