Introducing BriskMama!

I have the pleasure of introducing you to a multifaceted lady who goes by the name of briskmamma. You can find her on etsy. Briskmamma is from Croatia and has a degree in Computer Science. She has transformed this degree into something creative with her fun and whimsical drawings.

She is also quite talented in hand embroidery. Technology has all but wiped out this ancient art form so I truly appreciate it when someone takes the time to become proficient at it.  I especially love this beautiful red flower tote.

 If you have an interest in sewing or cooking, then I highly recommend following briskmama's blog which contains sewing tips and techniques as well as some delicious recipes.

Seriously, her photos alone are enough to make my mouth water! She should consider a job photographing food for cookbooks.

It' s always wonderful to find someone with such a passion for life who uses this passion to create beautiful things.

Hope that everyone has a wonderful week. Thanks for looking!

Paradise and the Peri

I finally finished my entry for the Polymer Clay Smooshers Mythology Challenge!

I've been reading a lot of my usual fairy tale books and things and stumbled across Thomas Moore's poem "Paradise and the Peri" (part of his Lalla-Rookh) The peri (a persian creature thought to be a fallen angel or fairy) gives God 3 gifts in an attempt to enter heaven. The first gift is "he last libation Liberty draws/From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause", the second gift is "Precious sigh/of pure, self-sacrificing love" and the third gift that gets her into heaven is a "Tear that, warm and meek dew'd that repentant sinner's cheek" It was in reading this poem that this brooch came about.

As the story was written in 1860, a time when the art nouveau sensibilities were emerging, I created this brooch with a similar look and feel.

The wings are a colored pencil drawing that has been transferred onto polymer, they are then painted with mica powders for luminescence and given three coats of varnish. During this time period many pieces of jewelry would have faces carved out of moonstone, carnelian, etc. I wanted to give this piece a similar sort of feeling so the face was created from a transparent polymer. It allows the light inside it to give it a bit of a glow. Overall I'm really happy with the way this turned out. It's the most complicated piece that I've done and I'm hoping to start doing more pieces along the same lines.

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good , Very Bad Day

I hope that everyone has had a wonderful holiday season this year!

Mine has been pretty good for the most part. My parents have been spending the holidays with my little sister this year which has left me home alone. I had a nice party with some of my dearest friends and my aunt invited me to come down to her house and stay the night Christmas night.Unfortunately I started to get a scratchy throat on my drive down to her house and it's been pretty much downhill from there.

On Monday I sounded like a mix between an 80 yr old smoker and Darth Vader. After taking some mucinex I began feeling even WORSE as that stuff makes you cough up stuff that has been inside of you for decades. It definitely helps knock the chest congestion out, but you begin to wonder if you were really that badly off with that chest congestion. (Breathing is highly overrated after all) Today I slipped down my wooden stairs in my socks and pulled some muscle in my chest that now makes coughing even more uncomfortable. If you are familiar with the wonderful children's book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst then you know where I'm going with this. When crappy things start piling up one after the other, I can't help but think of that book and declare that I'm moving to Australia.

On the positive side, I have been getting a decent amount of rest because I refuse to overdo it until I am 100% better. I am almost finished with my masquerade painting and have begun working on my entry piece for the Polymer Smooshers Guild January Challenge. Pictures will be following soon!

Until then I wish everyone a very safe and happy new year!

Spreading Winter Joy

This Christmas I won't have my family with me. My parents have gone to visit my little sister this year. Since I'm home alone I've definitely had to make an effort to bring Christmas cheer into my life. I've decorated my house and gotten a tree. I had a small Christmas party with some of my closest friends.

Overall it's worked pretty well. I'm still sad that my parents and sister aren't around to celebrate with me, but I'm not depressed and have even found that old sense of Christmas joy and euphoria.

Here's some pictures of things that make me smile. Hopefully they will do the same for you. If you are home alone for Christmas like me, just remember that Christmas spirit is something within each of us. We just need to find a way to tap into it to find that sense of euphoria.

Happy Holidays!!

Christmas lights always make me smile!

I love the way light dances on glass.

The Nutcracker is one of my favorite ballets and reminds me of my childhood

Mary waits for her baby boy...

A clementine tree that I made for my party. The silliest things make me smile!

Catching Up on Artwork

With the holidays here I've been quite busy between my "real job" and my artwork. So much so that I haven't been very good about keeping up with my blog. I've been producing so much work and haven't been able to really share any of it with you. So here are a few new items that I have recently made for my shop. I am especially pleased with some of my new hair accessories. I recently ordered more supplies and am hoping to do quite a few of them. I have some really great bridal ideas for the upcoming spring season.

                                                        I really love the headbands a lot.

A medium sized barrette that sold at my show. I really love the colors in this one and will probably try to reproduce it once I get my supplies.

Some smaller barrettes that I've been working on.

I have also been reading a lot of fairy tales from around the world. Some of them were from India and as I imagined the lush iridescent silks, brilliant colors and beautiful embroidery I created these pendants.

I had a personal goal to list 100 items on my etsy shop and recently reached it! I'm so proud of myself! It's been extremely hard getting that many pieces up while working full-time. As a reward for my perseverance (something I've struggled with in the past) I have begun working on some pieces that I've wanted to do for awhile. One of them is a series of masquerade paintings. I LOVE masks and have always wanted to do some illustrations/paintings of them. I have just begun my first one. It feels like I haven't done a painting in forever so I'm feeling a bit rusty. I'm just so happy to be painting again though that I don't really care about the end result. So far I am decently happy with how it's going. I'll definitely share the end result once it's done.

This is the inital sketch that I did in my sketchbook.

Still lots of work to go...

A Change in Perspective

I recently participated in a holiday arts and craft show. Art shows are always an interesting experience. I always seem to learn something new with each one that I do. Sometimes the new learning experience is something pertaining to setting up my booth, or storing the items in a better way. This time the learning experience pertained to my customers and more importantly a change within me.

How people treat you and your work is very interesting at these shows. Some carelessly grab things and sort of throw them back on the table, others rather indifferently touch things and the rest seem to touch the work in an almost reverent fashion. There are people who won't even acknowledge your presence, even though you've welcomed them and said "hello". Then there are the customers who really want to know about you and your process.

This was the first time however that I had ever had someone ask me if I would take less for an item. My initial inner reaction was one of anger. It frustrated me that this person was treating my artwork as if it were something at a garage sale or flea market. I was insulted. I've always felt that each piece I create is a small part of my soul. I put so much time, effort and love into each piece that I create. I felt that this person was telling me that my work wasn't worth the price that I was asking. Thank God for parents because my mom helped me to change my perspective on this. She told me to think of it more from the perspective of this person really loves the piece but is on a strict budget and can't pay the price being asked. However, because they really love it they are hoping that I could make some sort of exception for them. This completely changed my attitude and I'm grateful that my mom was there to instigate that change.
Since then I have helped other artists change their perspective when faced with similar situations. I have discovered that the inital anger response is quite common amongst artists. ( must be an ego thing. hee hee hee)

Overall, I really love going to the shows because you meet such wonderfully creative people there. The most satisfaction I get however,is in getting to witness the change that your work can create in a person's face when they first see it.

My New and Improved Booth Look

This is the most inventory I've ever had for a show! I had a few people seem to be more interested in whether I was selling my display butterflies than in the work itself!

Liked the Shelf/ Bookcase. It really added some nice height to the display.

Hate Breeds Hate, Love Breeds Love

I've noticed that no matter how messy or disorganized our homes are, we as humans seem drawn towards organization. Especially when it comes to people. We organize them into groups of sex, color, race, religion, age, etc. Often we make generalizations, labels, categories and subcategories for each of these groups. The danger, of course, is that this can ( and often does ) lead to segregation and prejudices. In my personal opinion there are just people. Human beings. Sometimes these people do good things, sometimes they do bad things.

I have been noticing quite a few organizations trying to help out Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries. They seek to help these people recover from recent natural and war based disasters. When newspapers have sought to promote these acts of kindness they receive an onslaught of readers' comments voicing their opinions. I was shocked to see how many hateful comments people had! Comments essentially saying that these people are murderers and that they should suffer and die. I was so incredibly saddened by this. These are people who are suffering. SOME of them have done bad things, but there are plenty who have not. Every race, culture, sex, age, religion, etc contains individuals capable of great evil as well as great good. In our need to lump people into categories we want to punish an entire culture based on the actions of a few. How can we wish for death and destruction for an entire culture based of the actions of these few?

Atrocious acts have been performed throughout all of history. White people, black people, yellow people, etc. Heck purple, pink and blue people too. No one is exempt from this. This is merely my opinion, but from my small and insignificant existence I have realized this one truth. Hatred will bring hatred and love will bring love.

I vote for propagating love.