Picture your jewelry in a frame....

I don't know who to credit this idea to since I've seen it lots of places, including HGTV but as someone who wears the same earrings every day because the others are lost in a tangle in my drawer I thought this would be fun to try.

It is ridiculously easy and involves a frame I wasn't using, some old picture wire cut to size and I used shipping tape to fasten the wire to the frame since it was strong, covered the prickly ends and allowec the frame to hang flat. I let the wires hang sort of haphazardly but you could make them straight, put them in a pattern, whatever....

And I can't even tell you how excited I was to find some of my favorite earrings once again and hang them where I can find them. Who knows? A necklace hanger may be in my future as well....

What to do with old or unfinished watercolors...

If you are like me you have all sorts of old and unfinished drawings, sketches and watercolor studies hanging around that you need to either use in some way or toss in the recycling pile...

 I came across these three watercolor sketches the other day from a trip to Maine. They were done quickly and didn't do much for me but I remembered what my friend, Beryl, taught me about using up my old paintings...

 Beryl is one of my former students who is now in her 80s but she was doing this 30 years ago...She cut up the parts of the paintings that she liked and made cards for birthdays or thank you notes or even for sending sympathy notes. She also made bookmarks and gift cards and her friends and family have loved them for years.

 It only takes a few minutes. I happen to have a small paper cutter but of course you can cut them any way you'd like. I gathered my hole puncher and some ribbon left over from other projects.

 I punched holes and added the ribbon....

 and in less than 15 minutes I had a nice little supply of gift cards, bookmarks and an all occasion card to put away in my little box of cards and tags.

You can do this with cards you receive too but I like the heaviness of the watercolor paper and people love to get them. If you have too many you can always donate them to a fund raiser somewhere...

Often I end up liking the little bits of the paintings far better than I ever did the larger versions. What do you do with your old paintings and sketches?

Playing with papercutting....

Years ago I took a weekend long papercutting workshop. We used teeny tiny scissors and began with pieces of newsprint before moving on the magazine pages. I loved it.

 We folded a paper in half and then cut the design. When we opened the paper we had a symmetrical design.

 Then we moved on to cutting freehand without folding the paper. This was a bit trickier.

 These are all quite small and are mounted on nice white bristol board.

Just for fun I listed a few in my shop.

What do you think? Should I do some more?

Waiting for spring...

If you live in an area that gets an early spring....I have to admit I'm a little jealous. Here in New England we sometimes don't even get spring, especially if you live in an area close to the sea like I do...

It is true that living by the sea keeps us cooler in the summer and warmer into the fall and winter but that cold ocean water delays our spring here as well.

After a week of milder temperatures and mornings full of tentative birdsong...we woke to snow and sleet and drizzle over the last few days so I thought I'd post this cheerful robin as a reminder that spring will arrive...

Back to Etsy

Back in November I was dealing with all sorts of health issues that needed my immediate attention so I closed down a lot of what I was doing, including my Etsy shops. Somehow I had ended up with 4 shops, including a vintage shop. 

 This week I reopened my original shop and will be listing small watercolors, prints and ink drawings as well as some other odds and ends there. As much as I loved the vintage part it was too much about storage and mail order for me. It was taking over my very small house. So I gave it away....

 Anyway, I am back working in the studio and will be posting pictures of my progress from time to time.

And please feel free to stop by my shop any time. You will find it here.

Ideas and Illustrations

One of my projects for this winter is working on finishing a kid's book I've been working on for a few years. It's for young readers and will have spot illustrations in it, probably black and white but I have been working on character ideas in color. There is a young girl with her trusty dog and binoculars....

 A young boy who loves baseball....

 and bikes....

 This is probably the earliest drawing I did of the two when I was figuring out the basics. I think I like the longer, taller, skinnier characters the best. What do you think?

 This is another character, one of the younger sisters....

 and this is an attempt at a group illustration...can you tell what they are doing?

Any ideas or suggestions are always welcome....

Zen and the Art of Being Edited....

Years ago when I first began writing for publication a woman told me she wrote all the time but that she would never send it to some idiot editor to read, judge and change. It was perfect just the way it was. She still has a drawer full of writing and is bitter and angry that she is unpublished. One might point out she has never sent anything out to be looked at never mind accepted but why bother? She believes she is right and they are wrong.

Back when I was still wet behind the years, as my grandmother loved to say, I thought writing and art were all about creativity and self expression. If I were to be a writer or an artist I could be free to be me. I could share my special version of my special world and tada! I would be published and hang my work in galleries for the whole world to see. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not really the way the world works. We learn early on that in the real world there are gatekeepers. There are rules. We have to knock politely and beg or storm right through them to get past those who would keep the talent out. When we are young and eager the gatekeepers, ie. editors, gallery owners and critics, seem cruel. We think: They don't understand us. They wouldn't know talent if they fell over it. And mostly, we are wrong. 

I have had some success both with my writing and my art. I am not famous and never will be. That's okay. I do get paid for my work and every week hundreds, even thousands of people read what I write and see the drawings I do. And yes, I have to pass everything by an editor. I have worked with many editors over the years and I have learned something useful and often inspiring from all of them. I have especially learned from the ones I thought were wrong. Guess what? They were right. After my initial shock at my own wrongness I agreed to changes that did indeed make the piece better. Now I'm just glad they keep me from embarrassing myself. It is hard to read your own work objectively. It is even harder to edit it.

I will probably never be Zen about my writing or my art but thank heavens the people who read, edit, publish and show my work are pretty Zen about their jobs and in dealing with people like me.