I'm Featured!

My friend, Kristi Mott, is the person behind Soap Scent-sations. She makes lovely soaps and other bath and body products. This week, I am being featured on Kristi's blog as the Missouri Monday Featured Artist. I hope you'll stop by and read the post.

While you're at it, visit Kristi's Etsy shop. She's having a great sale on cold pressed soaps and whipped body butters. It's not too early to shop for Mother's Day, for Graduations, or end of the year teacher's gifts. I love Kristi's soaps and I know you will too!

Just Popping in to Say "Hi!"

I feel like I've been gone for a very long time, so I'm glad to see that it has only been a couple of weeks since my last post. But since my last post, I lost one of my followers. Apparently, I'm not so entertaining that I can get away with only writing a couple of times a month and keep people coming back! I've fallen far behind on my New Year's goal of posting three times per week. Isn't it weird how your New Year's resolutions can be shot to heck in the matter of a few weeks?

Anyway, things here are going fine. I'm tired, a little depressed (where is that sunshine anyway?), and I'm feeling overwhelmed. However, I know spring and warm weather are just around the corner and I know that I'm going to get to start doing some art again real soon.

Yesterday I attended a workshop at Artlandish Gallery on Product Photography. It was taught by photographer, Nichelle Lawrence. I was actually just helping out, but one of the things I got to do was help build light boxes. If you've ever visited my Etsy shop, you know how much I could benefit from having a light box for my photos (which suck, frankly). Last night and tonight, I spent some time building my own light box and it turned out pretty cool. I just shot a couple of photos using it and here is one of the things I shot:

I painted this dinosaur several months ago. I want to paint a couple of sets of dinos and sell them in my shop but so far I've only gotten one finished. I like the way the photo turned out and I look forward to taking pictures of my other items and playing around with this light box a little more. When my husband saw my light box and looked inside to see this smiling dinosaur he said "He looks pretty happy in there!"

The Untitled Post

As I'm sitting here trying to think of a clever title for this post, I realize I'm just wasting time and energy that I could be using to actually write. Nothing came to mind, therefore it remains untitled.

Things are weird at our house these days. My mother-in-law passed away 2 weeks ago. It was not unexpected, but still very sad. In the past two weeks, my husband was two hours away from our family, caring for his mom. After she died, the kids and I went to my MIL's house and began helping go through 45 years worth of precious belongings and other things that meant something to her.

It was great to spend time with family members we haven't seen in awhile. It was also nice to hear the loving words people shared about such a wonderful woman at the memorial service.

We still have quite a bit of work to do to get her house (my husband's childhood home) ready to sell. I think it's somewhat healing to have to work at something when a loved one dies. The acts of sorting, disposing of, moving and cleaning, while thinking of the person who is gone, is part of letting go. The problem is, it is also a way to avoid mourning the loss. I don't think the real mourning will come until after all the "business" is taken care of. I just hope I will be sensitive to my husband's grief when the time comes.

Anyway, I haven't taken much time to think about my art projects or blog or Etsy shop. I'm hoping to be able to dedicate time to making some things in the near future.

Thanks for reading.

Custom Hand Carved Stamp for Soap Scentsations

After seeing some hand carved stamps I made, my friend Kristi Mott, asked me if I would make one for her. Krisit is the owner of Soap Scent-sations, a lovely online shop with hand made soaps, lip balms and other bath and body products. She was interested in stamping cards to include with her soaps.

This photo shows the design I came up with, based on the design Kristi already uses for her packaging.  I had a great time carving this stamp and would love the opportunity to create more custom stamps. I've found that stamp carving and designing is currently one of my favorite things to do. Seeing the final results is very satisfying.

Take a moment to check out Kristi's shop (she also has an Artfire shop). Her soaps are wonderful. They're pretty, they smell great and they lather up quite nicely. (Lather is important to me, so I thought I'd mention that). Every time I use one, it feels like a special treat. But don't take my word for it, hop on over and order a few bars for yourself! :)

A Year in the Life of an Art Journal

In January, I decided to expand my horizons, step out of my comfort zone and join an art journal community. I've never done anything with art journal pages and I thought I'd try this. Sometimes I have a hard time committing to  something (besides my family - thought I should clarify) for very long periods of time, but I'm going to try my best with this.

I'm still learning my way around the blog - sometimes I'm not sure how to leave comments. I also keep thinking there are rules about what I should be doing, but those are only imposed on me by my inner critic (dang her anal little self!) 

Here are my two latest journal pages. The topic is Hope:

 I like how the background turned out and really love the flowers. I think I'm going to have to put some more of these type of flowers on some other art. Probably some plaques and more journal covers. It gives me an excuse to use all the paper I've been hoarding.

If you are interested in checking out this group, you can just click on the badge in the upper right side of this blog. It's pretty awesome to be part of this community.