Sweet Sunday

Since my Loved One's birthday and mine are six days apart, today we're at his sister's house, celebrating both.  I love my sister-in-law very much -- she's so kind and loving, I don't know how anyone would not be happy to be around her.  We had a lovely lunch; Ed made corn chowder and chicken salad and there were other great salads, including one made with shrimp that had curry in it -- I have to get the recipe for that one.

Still working with Sarah Gardner's set -- I'm finding them a little tricky, but again, when you get the right image to work with, they're fabulous.   I tend not to go with the dreamy, washed out look -- I do love the pictures others do, but it's not "me."  I like much bolder colors.

Linkup to Favourite Photo Monday
and Mandarin Orange Monday

Like this one (dahlias again?  Gaaakh!).  I just love the waxy quality of the texture in the background -- and even though it's pretty much the same color, it looks good to me -- what do you think?

The second one I did is one of those puffy dahlias that I love.  The pink is just gorgeous, and I like the background on this one, too.  I'm finding I'm using different blending modes with these than I usually do, which is good -- keep experimenting!

Sarah also has some very nice free textures this week, though not the wax ones.  You need to register for her site to be able to download them, but if you're an enthusiastic texture user, you'll want to keep up with what she's doing.

So . . . hope everyone is having a nice Sunday, and I'll see you tomorrow!  

It's always an exciting day . . .

. . . when I get a new texture pack!  This will be a quick post because I'm kind of under the weather (DD has been sick all week).  But I just got Sarah Gardner's Waxworks collection and I've been fooling around with it. 

The images are all of things she did with wax, and it's unusual -- different from most of the sets I have.  They come in a variety of colors that you can see here.  I don't think they'll work every kind of image, but when it's the right match, it's pretty spectacular.

So here's one I did last night:

 Linkup with Your Sunday Best

What do you think?  I didn't have much luck with the first couple of images I tried, but I think this one came out very nicely.

Soooo . . . I think I'll go back to bed for a while.  My stomach is kind of turning flips.

Have a great day!

Hopping around the world --

The other day I mentioned Kat Sloma's "Liberate Your Art" postcard swap -- I want to bring them all together here and participate in the blog hop that's happening right now.

Kat asks everyone to produce five postcards and send them to her.  Then she exchanges them around (over 1000 cards!) and sends them out one batch at a time.  It's great fun, going to the mailbox and finding a beautiful piece of art from somewhere in the world.  Then Kat tops it off with a card of her own!  I got some beautiful ones.

The first card was most delightful to me:

This is from Deanna Swauger, who blogs at Snippets from Springdale.   I love sunflowers and was so happy to receive this beautiful card.  The detail is wonderful.

The second card was from Teena at GodTags.   In each card she sent there was a different word, and mine was "created," which is certainly meaningful to me.

 

The third one is from Maria Ontiveras, who blogs at Gallo Organico.  I love the kind of steampunk-children's book feeling of it.

  

 The third one came from Elissa at Gallery Dee.  What amazes me about this beautiful image is that it's the first watercolor Elissa ever did!  I'm amazed.

 The next one came from Darnita at At the Art of It.  This picture certainly doesn't do it justice, because it's dark and swirly and starry and beautiful.

Just two more.  Here's the card that Kat herself sent:
 

Isn't it lovely?  And this is the one I sent -- 

  It was great fun to do this, and I encourage everyone to get involved next year.  It's like a little gift in your mailbox when they come.

Kat has a video of all the cards on her post, if you'd like to see them all.  It's pretty amazing.

Success!

I'm completely bushed, so this will be quick -- I was out half the day today, and so far my cards are at a gallery/framing store, a fitness club, a yogurt shop, and an art supply store.  The art store has a revolving rack for Open Studios artists, and the ones I put there before are gone!  

I went to a few more places and I sensed they weren't amenable to having my post cards, so I just gave them one and my business card, and left it at that.  I figure that if they want to talk to me, they have my number.

  A Big Sur rose for me (and you)

It wasn't as hard as I thought, but it still makes me so nervous.  But I just said to myself, let's go, and I went.  And I have ideas for a few more places, and tomorrow I'll go down to the Art League, where they're featuring all the Open Studios artists, and leave some cards there.

Someone asked what Open Studios is -- I assumed that there was something like it all over, but of course it's unfamiliar to some.  For three weeks in October, artists in the Santa Cruz area who have gone through a juried process open their studios or homes (in my case), and they publish a calendar that has all the maps and locations of the artists.  

It's from 11-5 on Saturday and Sunday, and I'm in weeks 1 and 3, so I'll have a little break.  You turn your living room into a gallery, and talk to people about your work, and you hope they will buy something.

So, I've been working very hard to get ready.  I have about 20 pictures printed on canvas, a couple framed; I have matted prints; I have maybe six different blank greeting cards; and I'm still intending to make the tiles I showed in an earlier post (hey, I have 3-1/2 weeks -- that's plenty of time, right?).  Other than that, we have a crew coming to replace our carpet with laminate within the next week or two, which has been making me very nervous about whether it will be done on time, the woman who gardens for me will spruce everything up, and I should be ready, right?

The best part is that my sister is coming from Minnesota for the second week to help out -- I'm figuring that after I've done one week, it should be a piece of cake, so I'm looking forward to having a lot of fun with her. 

I'll get there -- one step at a time!

The anxiety sets in . . .

I'm starting to feel a little bit frantic about Open Studios -- in reality, I think I'm in pretty good shape, but I feel that I have so much to do and I'm going from one thing to the next and not getting anything finished.

I'm going to include a couple of "water lily" pictures from Ventana in Big Sur, because they remind me to breathe.

I need to sit down and come up with a yet-to-do list, and attach dates to each item. If I feel more organized, I'll be more confident that I'll be ready.  And I'll have something to check off.

My new business cards came in mis-cut -- the picture on the side with the text goes all the way to the bottom of the card instead of having a white border around it -- those have to be redone.   And one of the canvases I got has flaws -- a couple of little white spots on the front and one on the border.  Fortunately, the replacement for that came today, but it's still frustrating.

Linkup to Your Sunday Best

I also have to write an artist's statement and start behaving like a professional -- I'm going out tomorrow on my first foray of self-promotion; I will go to various places to see if they will put a bunch of my cards on their counter.  This will not be easy for me, as I tend to be better at self-deprecation than self-promotion, but I'll give it my best shot.  Wish me luck!

Has anyone else had to do this kind of self-promotion?  Any advice?  I think I'll look at my water lilies for a while and breeeathe -- 

And now I'm really ooooold . . .

Well, at least I can begin to get the senior discount at the movies.  I had a very nice birthday today, I got some nice perfume and a t-shirt (both very welcome), and Ed and I had a lovely lunch at a place called Le Cigare Volant (the flying cigar), named after an incident in France in the 1800's when the people in a local area saw a flying saucer that looked like a cigar :)

They have a "small plates" menu that is just fabulous.  We had:

green bean salad with a quail

egg on top and the tiniest tomatoes

you've ever seen

incredible corn pudding served

in a tiny cast-iron pan

a duck confit "cigar" with leek "ash"

it looked like a cigar.

pork shoulder sliders with Chinese 

buns and coconut dipping sauce

and

smoked fingerling potatoes in a

little flower pot with aioli on the bottom

(the chef gifted us with this because

Ed is in the restaurant business)

This restaurant is very special and I was so glad to enjoy my birthday lunch there!  

 Another Big Sur picture from our Friday trip

So now I'm off to paint -- I swore that I would spend some time painting today, but of course as soon as we came home, I needed to take a nap :)  

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, if you have any left!

Liberate your art!

This year I was very happy to participate in Kat Sloma's Liberate Your Art postcard exchange.  You create five postcards, send them to Kat, and on the anointed day, she organizes the swap and sends five postcards (one at a time) and an extra one from her, to everyone.

So it's late and I'm really tired, so I'm only going to post two.  But they're nice ones.

This first one is from Darnita at www.DarnitaLHoward.com. I hope my picture can convey the depth of the image, and how lovely and swirling it is. I love the colors, too.

This second one is from Elissa at gallerydee.wordpress.com. I just love this style of painting, and I truly love poppies.

 So it's short and sweet today -- I'm just too pooped to dig them out of my computer.

Hope your weekend is going well!