i art a day.

I regret that I don’t know more about botany. I come across so many amazing plants and have little to no idea what they are. These are absolutely stunning blooms from a sort of bush like plant, found on 22nd street.

In other news, I’ve been invited to be a part-time intern at a great gallery in Old City here in Philadelphia. I start next week!

I’m currently in love with the new King & Queen of Hearts stamps. I mean – what’s not to love? I’m not one to go into the post office and pick up one of the boring first class stamp books, no no – it’s always the fun stamps, and why not since they don’t cost extra. I just finished using up my Star Wars stamps (no, I’m not kidding – I’m that big of a dork) so hello love stamps. Which brings me to another point. Why don’t we write love letters anymore? Or for that matter, any letters? I try to write as often as possible, at least a postcard – but there’s really no way one can compete with the internet. It’s just a shame that the people who see most of my cute stamps are the people I pay bills to. That’s it, today I write letters.

Edmond walking all over my current project. It’s so big! What is it!?

Owl Teapot
Watercolor

Hoot Hoot.
With the warm weather finally here to stay and changes abound, perhaps it’s watercolor season. Sure, I’ve still got plenty of oil paintings to wrap up, but a little bit of light and easy painting is in order as well. This week I’m even using acrylics for a big project (more on that later) – acrylics! Maybe I’ll find the time between painting for work, looking for more work, and travelling to sit in the park and paint some. Hooray spring/summer!

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Have a lovely week!

In an effort to digitize some of my past travels and get some photos together for scrapbooking I’ve come across some great souvenirs from trips. In the summer of 1995 my parents and I went to China, and on the way picked up a ton of really cool things, including these paper cut beauties:

Cool, right? More from travel to come!

Over the past week I’ve gotten a couple of new toys to enhance my digital artistic repertoire including a newly refurbished Nikon Coolpix S52 (to replace my S5 that I unfortunately lost in New York last month)

and a Canon CanoScan LiDE 200 to bring my apartment into the 21st century! I’m one of those people that has hundreds upon hundreds of printed images that I need to get scanned one of these days, and it’ll no doubt be helpful to the blogging =)

And of course I couldn’t resist showing you the first shots with the new camera:

Have a great weekend!

Here’s hoping you had a great Mother’s Day and enjoyed a lovely weekend. Here’s a quick print that I finally got framed up and hung in my little entryway. It’s the first 4 color print I did, and while it’s not perfectly aligned I still like it.

Since it felt like such a huge undertaking (come on – FOUR COLORS!) I wanted to make a very simple image, simple word, simple shapes, basic colors. The idea of tangrams struck me and just kinda turned into this little hello.

Polaroid film is pretty expensive these days, around $20 a pack. Most of the film I use is anymore. Medium format hits the wallet at around $8 a pack, not including another $15 for processing and printing. No wonder why digital is so popular. I feel like in many ways we’re losing as much as we’re gaining. Sure, we can now create any image we desire, but what about the simple pleasure of holding your favorite instant photo in your hands moments after it’s been taken? I don’t want to scan and reproduce these, I just want to enjoy them. Are we sucking the pleasure out of photography?

Walking around outside on a beautiful and bright afternoon in Philadelphia. I love these buildings, they’re so much more than the stones, brick and glass that physically define them. I love these trees. I’ve never noticed how they seem to shoot up through every crack in the concrete before. Their fuzzy pink blossoms take me to my very own intoxicating poppy field.

As I mentioned earlier I took part in a little craft show at the end of April, and I’m here to report back! It was a great time, and the smallness of the show made it a bit more comfortable than if it had been a massive ordeal. The boyfriend and I arrived around 11:40 am to set up for the noon opening, carrying the folding table, book bag full of books, suitcase, and milk crate props on the subway. Next time we’ll be taking the car. Thankfully I didn’t really have that much to set up and had already laid everything out the night before so little would be left to the imagination in the morning. We quickly set up camp and got comfortable.

I sold out of my small notebooks (2.5 x 3.5 in) within the first several hours, and will definately have to make more of them for next time. There was also a lot of interest in the medium sized books (5 x 7 in), which I make more than anything. A lot of people were looking for small books with travel themes to take with them on trips or to give as little gifts when travelling.  All of the books covered in the vintage flocked wallpaper sold, people just couldn’t help rubbing the fuzzy covers!

To attract people I also set up a raffle where I raffled off one of my medium sized sketchbooks. Overall it was a fine idea – I just need to remember not to use permanent markers next time in case someone decides to use one of the books as a writing surface. I was worried that I hadn’t made enough books for the show (which in this particular case turned out to be unnecessary because it was a pretty small deal anyway) and also threw together a little video that shows some of my bookmaking process and some of the final products:

(clicking photo will take you to the video)

Overall it was a good experience. It was great to meet a lot of the other vendors and see some of the other work. Besides the personal list of things I should make for the next show, some other things to consider for any craft show are:

1. Take a buddy. Having the boyfriend there was absolutely indispensable.
2. Take some snacks. I had a box of cheese crackers but will have to do better next time, especially since it’s a seven hour show.
3. Take something to keep your hands busy! I took a sketchbook and drew for a little while during slow periods, but that got old after about 2 hours. I also took some paper to fold for new books, but ended up folding all of it in an hour. Maybe more paper or some other little project to keep my hands busy, but my attention still on the table.

The next show will be at the end of May, so hopefully I’ll be a little wiser and more prepared. =)