Goodbye 2008, hello all that is possible!

Tomorrow is the last day of 2008 and I feel I have come so far as an artist this year. Even just since starting this blog, I have developed and evolved. I am excited about what I've done, and my heart flutters at the thought of doing so much more. I have set myself a challenge for 2009: sell my stuff. My sister said to me the other day that she believes in my art so much that she wishes she could be my publicist or agent or whatever the word is. She thinks it would sell like hotcakes, and if it were realistic for her to do at this point in her life, she'd go into a boutique tomorrow to get people to stock and sell my things. Encouragement like that, plus more from you who've seen my blog now, plus Ambra's insistence that I look into etsy.com just to get started make me believe in myself more than I ever have. I mean, have I really got anything to lose?

Below, my latest creation. The fabric totally makes it, don't you think?



And as a final hurrah, now that Amb's recieved her birthday card in the mail, I can post it for everyone else to see! I used ribbon, bits of fabric, stickers, some collage bits (I believe the word to use now is ephemera--learned that from my arts magazine), a fortune-cookie fortune, photocopies of old-timey women, paper flowers, brads, and the underneath layer is paint and pastels.


See you in 2009!

Where's Your Christmas Card?

Merry Christmas to you! Thanks for visiting my blog! I'm so happy to have you here and share with you some of the things I've been working on over the last few months. This blog is about my commitment to creating art and to myself as an artist, for better or for worse. With it, I have simply vowed to make more art, and share it. My goal is to post at least every two weeks, so please come back as often as you'd like. Feel free to look at some of the other postings, and comment anytime. I really value feedback!

To find your piece of the Christmas collage, click on one of the two images below for a bigger view. (The two originally started as one big piece, but it was too big to work with so I cut it in half after painting it!) I knew I'd be cutting it up into small pieces, so I purposely made it very busy. It is made up of many things: random Christmas-themed things I've collected over many years, ribbon, fabric, a letter torn into pieces, stickers, netting, decorative papers, tissue paper, buttons, stitches by the sewing machine, a bottle label, and acrylic paint, all on a huge piece of construction paper. I cut it up into more than 50 pieces and sewed individual pieces to the black card stock. If you'd like to see most of the 50 pieces, scroll down to the bottom of my blog. Can you find yours there too?




Paul and I hope you have a lovely Christmas. Be well and have a splendid 2009!

Edited to add photo of final cards:

Simple or Complex?

A good friend of mine whose birthday is this week loves getting the cards I make for her. She is someone who has encouraged my art from the minute she knew me. So this week I had aspirations of making her something quite complex, using various forms of media. To get started, I found some paper I liked in my stash and was inspired to make circles. I started to play around with different sizes and then how they could work together on a piece of card, and all of a sudden, I was surprised to find that I was 100% satisfied with just the circles on the card. As I told her, all it needed was a bit of bead-store bling, and voila! the card was complete, and just perfect in its simplicity. The second card is made with some of the same papers, for a young 'un I know who's turning one this week!


Along with that theme, two more aprons to show off, which I made in the presence of my mom and sister over Thanksgiving weekend. One of them, much more of a complex design, with a gathered waist (thanks to Mom for teaching me!) and red trimmings, and then the second, just three different fabrics and straight lines. The first one seems more artful to me in the artistic process, while the second one strikes me as something I could easily make in mass amounts and sell. It appeals, probably due to its simplicity, to a large audience. It, too, is artful in a different way, perhaps more in end result rather than in creative process.