New etsy shop!

I opened my second etsy shop last night! It was a long time in the works. I made my banner all by myself. No small feat. Photoshop and I have communication style differences. It's not the banner I envisioned but I like it a lot and at least it got me up and flying. Speaking of flying, here is my little airplane avatar for the housewife! How adorable is this?



I had a sale already within the first hour of listing so I am very pleased and hoping it isn't a one time fluke! Hey, life is a risk. I'm not always big on jumping off the cliff, but I believe in this and it is something I enjoy naturally so I am following my heart.

I have many themes in mind and will be adding to the shop all week. Hope you'll all have a fly by! Here's the link: flyinghousewife

i love you like etsy

etsy has a new trademark agreement policy & my design was approved! Next to sign and return the contract, but, naturally, I wanted to include one of my pinbacks. And, then, naturally, I needed to send it in style ~ my style ~ and then, naturally, once I started browsing for something to catch my eye...and, well, it just kept going from there. This is Manhattan for the love of kismet. I mean, honestly. It was a sign.




Note: Click on the photo above to enlarge and read text with ease.

The toughest part was finding the picture of the earth in the right size. I wanted it to be a balloon. And I wanted an earth taken from space. People, I have only 14 days to return this contract!!! I have standards which does make my life challenging. No, I do not want an earth printed off of the internet. It has to be found in a discarded magazine, book, calendar or ??? Do I have a vault full of these? No Ma'am. No Sir. I do not. I gave myself a deadline. If I couldn't find one by last night, I would have to illustrate (GULP) my own. eek! Desperate times call for desperate measures, folks. I had an earth balloon in my head and come hell or high water, there was going to be one on this collage. No matter that all I sought was a simple attractive square in the first place. Let's be serious here.



There was only one way to solve this. I started working on my new horse linocut. (My first! This is another story. You can see a couple of photos on my flickr or my post on CAD. ) As I was searching for magazine pages for my little pony :), there she was!!!! My little blue planet. She was a little too large, but the thought of resorting to plan B ... Next ... how was I ever going to cut a perfect circle around her? Hey ... this looks like the size of my pinbacks. Hey... wait a minute... and the earth balloon magnet, she is born! Now, the true dilemma... how do I part with this baby? I am sorry, but this is one sweet collage. I am going to send it. And pray that whoever receives it at the other end of the rainbow has a brighter day because of it. Life is a mystery. I'm adding another to the mix.



What would your reaction be if, in the course of your workday ~ this includes you, house people. Remember, I am one of you and yes, we work! ~ you opened an ordinary envelope (OK, we all know, that is not possible here and I will be making a super joonie envie, but... I am overcome with the power of the written word) and this fell out onto your surface? I would love to know. The truth. Thank you for making it this far into my tale.


PS. Be sure and let me know if you'd like to hear how it all turns out, too. Or if your answer to this is: God forbid. ox to you all & happy, happy birthday little blue planet

Front Page of etsy!

I am having a great start to my Friday! Woo Hoo! My first front page as far as I know. How fun is this? Here's to eco friendly handmade. My painting, floating city, is one of two in my etsy shop that I painted onto discarded falling apart vintage book covers. Visit my shop to learn more and see this painting and its sister, JUMP.

Recycling Bin Dive ~ It's SpRing!

Today it is sunny and in the 60s, which is a first this year. Plus, as luck would have it, recycling week in my neighborhood! I found these treasures walking around just a few blocks of our home. And this is without rummaging through...I only took something if it called out to me. Plus, I am moving across the country in a few months so I was sparing in my picks. I am very excited to reuse these items, most in my creations for etsy. I will store craft projects in the Harrod's Tin as I love double decker buses and am not giving that one up. I am going to make my very first tin project, inspired by this incredible bath salts tin.


Do you regularly put items like these into your recycling bins? At the very least, the magazines and tins can be donated to libraries and thrift stores for resale. Yes, people will buy these! There are also places where you can swap your used magazines & books for others. So many people cannot afford these items and would be thrilled to have these to read or use for projects (or both ~ like me!) I passed by a perfectly adorable little blue couch, chairs & many vintage items. It's sad. You can call many recycling based organizations and they will come and pick up your cast offs. In many ways, it is actually easier to reuse, recycle or regift your dispensibles than it is to set them out on the curb.


I would love to hear what you do with your paper and tin goods. With your permission I can compile & incorporate them into a new blog post. I have plans for these paper items and you will see them reincarnated here on my blog and for sale in my etsy shop very soon! Remember: environment is everything.



Let's all do our part to save our little blue planet. One person does make a difference ~ either way. Which path will it be? Refuse or Reuse? Thanks for visiting. And please share your comments, questions and/or ideas with permission for reuse :) below!

Have a wonderful day today and every day.

The Progression of Skylar ~ ACEO by Scout

Here is the completed ACEO. Scout's commentary and the stages of this beautiful artwork follow. The last photo below is the next-to-last stage. This is a gift from Scout to our etsy friend, Six, of sixsisters.etsy.com. You will want to visit her shop. To see more of Scout's artwork, visit our etsy shop, joonbeam.

No. 1 is the inked stage. I don't have a picture of the sketch because I didn't think to take pictures until this morning.


No. 2 is when I added the highlights. The ones on the wings were later darkened because they didn't show up on the dark green color I chose.

Now I colored and shaded the skin. I'm very happy with this stage because I love shading skin...

Now, after much color contemplation, I added in the wings and hair. You can see how much darker those highlights on the wings got.

Everything sort of started bursting with color when I finished the shirt and colored the braid. At first mom thought this was the finished stage.


After I added the background with a mixture of black and brown markers and pencils, I realized Skylar, the Character, stuck out too much, so I really darkened up the shading on the hair, wings, and clothes. This ended up helping the image because it heightened the effect of a glow coming from the middle of the picture.


And I finally added the "energy ball" with paint! After this, I waited for it to dry and added the finishing touch of a little bit of blue shading inside the white. I'm really quite pleased with the way it came out, and I hope you like it, Six!

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein

I have been thinking very seriously about business card options and I keep coming back to the simple and special idea of just making them one by one. I really don't see why, as an artist committed to earth friendly art I would design cards and have them printed. There are many aspects about what is for sale on etsy that I was not expecting to see and that's just facts, but my fact is that I want my art to mean something and I want my customers to feel that connection as much as possible. If I am reaching out to a stranger, I feel I have a better chance at making a friend for the environment by handing out a homemade recycled card. One person can make a difference. Small is something. Big isn't everything. I can state this as a fact.

There's a little more information on the card backs, but I am not quite that nerdy as to get a photo of that! :) Oh ~ By the way, these are made from a print of a watercolor I did years ago. I've had these scraps and finally! I have some something with them. One was used as part of an ACEO. These are the last pieces. I plan to use all sorts of thing for future calling cards.

Here's to handmade and the personal touch. We need a little more of both in this world. And, I have to tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed making these. I was making some return addresses when I got this idea. I had a blast making those, too. Hope my readers are all having a lovely evening. Happy Spring!

Yesterday was Mister Mister's Birthday! Hooray for Chippy. He's 8 years old. Scout took this a few weeks ago and I cropped it and used it as my etsy avatar for his birthday. Everyone seems to be enjoying him so much that he has a reprieve and will stay for a few more days.

I just designed and made my very first Mister Rogers Pinbacks with a little phrase I coined myself. You can see the first three on my flickr page by clicking HERE. I am very excited about them. I have had the idea in my mind for months ~ even before I started my etsy shop.

I have been neglecting this blog for a while and the treasury, but here I am and, so too, my new etsy treasury called April Showers. You can find it there until 3:39AM on Thursday. I also have a photo of it on my flickr page, which is why you might be seeing it on your right in the slideshow!

I awoke to the honor of learning I am featured in another artisan's blog today! Jana, who I recently met through my BBEST etsy group, has a beautiful blog, Serendipity Collections. I know you will enjoy visiting her blog and her etsy shop, PaperFields, where she sells gorgeous handcrafted cards that are truly works of art.

I have so much catching up to do but I must leave some good news and excitement for another day so I will see you then. Happy April everyone. Here's to Spring!