Last Day of Sweet Charity on Thursday!

Just a reminder that I will be doing another demonstration and sale at Sweet Charity Gift Shop on Thursday, April 1st from 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. The shop is adorable and well worth a visit any time. I am donating half of the proceeds to the Seton Fund, which cares for indigent hospital patients in the Seton Network of hospitals.

I had a great time today and saw some old friends. Would love to see you tomorrow!

Easter Week Preview

Easter Week has arrived! It's going to be busy, with a demo and sale (remember 50% goes to charity!) at Sweet Charity Gift Shop on Wednesday and Thursday of this week from 10  to 2 p.m. and a demo and sale at Artworks Gallery on Saturday from 12 to 4 p.m.  For more details, take a look at the listings to the left!

Following is a preview of some new eggs that will be available for sale this week:

I hope that you can make it to one of the shows to say hello!

Friday Egg

Friday egg is one that has already been sold and delivered in time for Easter!  After seeing the iris egg I did a few weeks ago, a friend contacted me and asked for a stargazer lily egg.  I have never done a lily before, so it was fun to experiment a bit with it.  He really liked the egg and I hope the recipient also likes it a lot.

I like how this one, similar to the iris egg, is a combination of geometry and natural forms.

I added a few yellow butterflies for interest.

It's  another perfectly lovely day outside today, with irises and lilies popping up all over. I hope you can go outside and enjoy it.

Paper Crafts

I love paper. Love love love it. I have sheets of chiyogami and washi paper hanging on my studio walls and stacks of it in my dad's old flat file. Never can find the project that is special enough to use it on, so it continues to wait patiently...

In the meantime, I have now found a site where I can print out chiyogami sheets to use on my every day projects. Check it out:

Canon Creative Park is just that - like a huge amusement park for paper fiends like me. There's the printable Chiyogami sheets, fun origami projects, even these amazing 3D decoupage projects

There's so much there that I haven't explored even a tenth of it. Go find a good rainy day project!

Friday Egg Pot

Wha?

Yup. I was asked to donate a terra cotta pot painted in the style of my artwork to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden for their annual Garden Party fundraiser. Quite an honor for me and I was happy to oblige. Let me just say that compared to an egg, a terra cotta pot is HUUUUUUUGE. It took a lot longer than I planned for just because there was so much more ground to cover. I started by painting the pot white with matte acrylic paint. For the eternity band around the top, I eyeballed itand made tic marks with a pencil, but they were all off and not even in the slightest so I had to resort to cutting a piece of string that was the exact diameter of the pot, then marking halfway then half of that, then half of that, until my string had marks every 2 inches or so. I used that as a guide and it worked much better than my eyeball!

Of course, instead of wax and dye, I used paint pens and sharpies. The black outlines were done with a very fine line black paint pen and I filled in with mainly different colors of paint pens, though there are some areas where I used sharpies in different colors.  I used stylized animal images for the body of the pot: a blue elephant,

yellow deer,

red ram,

and orange peacock.

Finally, I painted the inside of the pot with gold paint just to make it more finished looking:

I coated it with Krylon Triple Thick Clear Glaze which really helped to bring it all together. Amazing what a little shine will do.

If you like it, you are most welcome to bid on it at the Garden Party auction. Check out the Umlauf website for tickets to the event!

Friday Egg

NO COLORS FOR YOU!

Today is a black and white egg. It is based on an interesting website called Zentangle that a friend turned me on to.  It is basically a shortcut to the zen of creation and is a very clever idea.  Starting with a basic doodle on a small piece of paper that they call a "tile" that looks like this:

you simply fill in each space with a different repetitive pattern.  It is only done with black pen on white paper so you don't have to worry about color or shading - everything is black and white!  Here is what the finished tile might look like:

One interesting project they have is a larger doodle drawn over a series of nine tiles. If you have a group, each person takes one tile and draws patterns and then after all are done, you combine them to become one collaborative work or art.  Here's what it looks like before you start:

and here is one finished:

I really like this idea because it makes creation accessible to literally anyone.  I have done a few "tiles" but then decided to take the same idea and do it on an egg.

Here we go!

One with scale object:

In this one, you can see that I made my signature a part of the design.  I'm so sneaky.

Doodling can be productive!  Try it on your own or go check out Zentangle!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Investing in Artists, not the just the art

A friend of mine posted this Barron's article on her facebook page. It is an interesting take on patronage in the arts. Tell me what you think...

Friday Egg and Calendar Items!

Hello all...

It's a busy busy day today with lots of different items on my to-do list, not least of which is the Friday Egg! First, I will mention a few business items. To the left on this page, you will find two listings to put on your calendar. The first is for my annual charity sale/demo at Sweet Charity Gifts in the 26 Doors Shopping Center on 38 1/2 Street in Austin. This sale is the week before Easter, on Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days. Half of all proceeds go to the Seton Fund, which provides charity care at Seton Hospital. The second even is on the Saturday before Easter at Artworks Gallery on 6th Street on Gallery Row in Austin from 12 noon to 4 p.m. I hope you can come out to one or both of these demonstrations to say hello and check out how I create this art (and I wouldn't mind it if someone bought something too!). I am also offering a workshop on March 27th from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. For $40 (plus $20 for a take-home kit if you want), I am offering a Pysanka Basics class. I will walk you through marking an egg with basic divisions and then waxing and dyeing through at least three dye baths. You should go home with at least one finished egg, and possibly more depending on how fast you are.

And now, on to the Friday Egg - Banksy Blue Elephants!  This is a goose egg with an elephant train (okay, two elephants) going around in a circle. I am on the fence about it, but will withhold judgement until I get some varnish on it. Sometimes that helps.  I think my main problem with it is that the blue of the elephants is too dark compared to the background.  I just kept thinking about the artist Banksy and his blue elephant when I was doing this, so I just had to have that blue.  Were I to do it again, and I probably will, I would make the background yellow or even white so that they stand out more.  My favorite part is the striped tusks.

If it is nice out on Sunday, we will be going to the kite festival! Hope your weekend is a good one!