Life in a Tree with Patrick Dougherty

I have just stumbled across someone that I KNOW you are going to love. An amazing sculptor by the name of Patrick Dougherty who has taken his love of nature and carpentry skills to a whole new level. He creates extraordinary sculptures and houses out of sticks and has created over 200 pieces all over the world. They are just AMAZING! I am completely in awe of them and have already spent many hours envisioning myself as a woodland nymph or fairy living in one of these amazing dwellings. It's even more fun to imagine what kind of furniture they would have in them! His work fits perfectly with all of the fairy paintings I have been doing lately.

I hope that you will take the time to do the same. Enjoy some time with your imagination. :)

If you'd like to watch him work on one of these pieces, check out this nifty video!




For more information about Patrick Dougherty, check out his website.

Thanks for looking! Have an inspiring day!

Daily Inspiration

Some inspirational words for you. Read them, contemplate them and then make them a reality!

RIP Etsy Chat

Tomorrow at 5pm EDT, Etsy will be permanently closing their chat rooms. This has caused me and many others, a great deal of sadness. I have gotten to know so many wonderful people through the etsy chat rooms! We have become close friends and have been there for each other to give support and advice whenever needed. It is definitely a sad day for many of us, both sellers and buyers. It was a way for buyers to get to know their favorite artists and crafters on a more personal level and it was a way for sellers to find like-minded people to share their artistic passions with. I'm sure that etsy has it's reasons for making this change, but I wonder if their reasons are worth the cost that they've incurred. Many sellers will be leaving and taking their shops to zibbet.com. It's hard to call yourself an artistic or handmade community if you are getting rid of the community aspect of it. Etsy will now be nothing more than a shop. Random shops all selling things side by side without any communication occurring between them. New shop owners won't have the luxury of getting to know fellow sellers. Nor will they be able to turn to fellow sellers for advice when facing obstacles. I don't envy them one bit!



In memory of the "good 'ol days", here are some pieces from shops owned by people who I have grown to know and love through etsy chat.

                                                                        Spiral Stew

                                                                          Never Too Old

                                                                        Annabel's Aprons

                                                                        My Cariads

                                                                   Petit Bijou Art Shop

                                                                    A Bunch of Scrap

There are many many more that I have had the great pleasure of getting to know over the course of my three years with etsy and I am grateful for each and every one of them!

Thank you for the memories etsy. Goodnight!

Painting a Butterfly

For the past week, I've been hard at work painting a portrait of a butterfly fairy. She loves to lay down and let the butterflies fly about her and land in her long, beautiful hair. They have such wonderful stories to tell!

I have always loved butterflies. They seem to live two lives. One as a caterpillar and one as a beautiful, free and majestic butterfly. I always associate them with rebirth, much like a phoenix.

Each of the five butterfly families (papilionidae, pieridae, nymphalidae, lycaenidae and riodindae) have been represented in this piece. There is still quite a bit of work to do on this painting before it will be complete, but I wanted to share what I have done so far. I also wanted to share my latest video installment on youtube, "Painting a Butterfly". I still have some work to do on my video skills, but I'm not too terribly disappointed with this one. :)



Enjoy and have a wonderful day!!!

Broken Hearts and Growing Pains

I recently had to say goodbye to a friend of mine who betrayed my trust. We had been friends for almost 2 yrs.  I’ve been examining my reaction to this separation and trying to discern which part of this experience is causing me the most pain. Obviously the loss of a friend and the overall disappointment is bitter, but I believe that the biggest contributor to the pain is the fact that I’ve had to reconcile the dream reality with the actual reality. In our minds we create a version of the person we are friends with. They are kind, honest, trustworthy, etc. They have faults, but we take the bad with the good. We would gladly come to their defense if they were ever accused of something that went against the person we KNOW them to be. 

Occasionally, there comes a time when we realize that the reality and the dream have little in common. I think that it’s this realization and the reconciling of the two worlds that causes the most pain. Sort of like growing pains as you grow an extra inch. Our heart expands or contracts, as does our vision of the world and it’s inhabitants. Also, much like growing pains, there will come a point where things are a bit awkward as we grow accustomed to this change within ourselves. We will find ourselves in an odd gangly stage,but hopefully as we continue to grow, we'll emerge even stronger and more beautiful than before. The best we can do is to try to not allow our hearts to be hardened by these growing pains and to continue to work towards trusting others and loving with our complete hearts. Even if we continue to be hurt by those we love….

As Alfred Lord Tennyson said “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

 

Stay lovely and have a wonderful day!

Trouble with YouTube

Ok so my last post told everyone to stay around for Part II of Making Embossed Polymer Earrings. The only problem is that Part II took over 24 hours for youtube to process! I was beginning to worry that my video was lost in some internet/digital void!


Anyway, I thought that I would let you know that Part II is FINALLY up. Enjoy my general silliness. :)

Here is part I for anyone who missed that



And here is part II.



I am looking forward to sharing some of my current paintings with you, so I"ll see you soon! :)

New YouTubeVideo and Earrings for Lisa

I recently had a fantabulous lady, by the name of Lisa, purchase my Rainbow Celtic Iona Cross Pendant. She also really loved my Something Blue Earrings but wanted them in colors that would match her new cross. I love doing custom orders and was super excited to get this one so I took the opportunity to do something different while I created her earrings. I took some video of myself while I worked!  It was an interesting experience to say the least. My camera doesn't have a good auto focus in video mode so a lot of it is sort of out of focus. (something that I didn't realize until AFTER I had spent all day working on it!) It was also really weird talking to myself. Hahaha! I'm not sure how reality tv people do it!

If you have some time to watch my video, be sure check out part II. It's my favorite one because it contains some funny bits and bloopers at the very end. They crack me up!

Since it was a bit difficult to see my pieces in the video, here are some photos of two pairs of my finished earrings, along with the cross that I was matching them to.