Setting Up Shop!

Hello Everyone!

Have you heard about Artfire? I have only just learned about it over the past week or so. It's a new website that is dedicated to artists and their wares.

It's free to set up a shop with 10 items or less. No listing fees, no percentage of the sales fee. This is a site that understands what it is to be a starving artist!

I currently have two studios at artfire... one for my tea: Liberteas

And one for my mixed media art and my 'zines (if I ever finish another one!): EccentricPastiche

And yes, I do still have my etsy store open. However, as items drop get close to expiration on etsy, rather than renewing them there, I plan to put them up at Artfire.

So... please stop by and check out artfire.

~Anne

PS: also... try this tumblr blog... it will show you some items listed on artfire at random... it's cool!

Ho Ho Ho! I'm Santa!

Well, I'm a secret Santa in 2 swaps (well, actually, 3 swaps, but one is a tea swap, the other 2 are art goody swaps). And for the two art goody swaps, in addition to the various art goodies that I purchased and/or gleened from my stash, I was to make a bit of art for my art friend.

Before I embarked upon what I ultimately made for these two, I had originally planned to create something much different, but, I got the felting bug, and I decided that I HAD to needle felt something for these two gifts.

So, I decided I'd needle felt a couple of ornaments for them... here's the first ornament I made, using a sunset-ish varigated dyed wool, with jet black spirals.

Here's another view...

The second ornament, I changed my color palette, and went with blue, and began adding odd bits of color to the ornament as I felted for some visual interest.

Here's another view of the same ornament...

These were a lot of fun. I'm really happy with the way they turned out... I just hope my secret santa recipients like them too.

~Anne

Starry Night

It's no big secret that my favorite painting of all time is by the Master Vincent Van Gogh -- Starry Night. This painting moves me like no other painting, the brush strokes speak to me of the pain and the anguish that affected the life of Van Gogh, and yet the bits of light throughout the painting demonstrate a sense of hope to me, hope that maybe there is light even when life is at it's darkest. It's the most powerful work I've ever encountered.


So, when I joined a "masterpiece" charm swap, where we were to showcase a masterpiece by an art master, it only made sense to me to use Starry Night as the featured artwork for my charms.



Now, the scan is not great, because of the dimension of the Swarovski crystal. But I think that the scan provides enough detail so that you can see what I've done. Rather than using the crystal to highlight the moon, which is the brightest light in the sky of starry night, I used it to accentuate the star that sits just right of the cypress tree, with the intent to draw one's eye to my favorite part of the painting, the tree itself.

My studio is finally taking shape! Believe it or not! And... I can't even take credit for it, it's the work of my husband, who finally got tired of waiting for me to start working on it that he went out there and did it. It's not all done, I still have quite a bit of organization to do, but, at least it looks like a studio now, and I can actually sit out there and do some work!


Which was a nice change from finding some space in the house to work on something and getting it all scattered about, which is what I usually do! So, thank you, my dear husband, Mat, for your hard work, it's greatly appreciated.

~Anne