A peak at my show at the American Red Cross "Life Crossing Gallery"

Garden Art: A new medium for me

Every year in July, the Portland Art Collective celebrates another year of being together at our annual Picnic held at William Palmer House, the historic Victorian mansion, on Mississippi Ave.  The house is wonderful and each year, since our friends Maggie and Susan have owned it, it has evolved into a more wonderful piece of art.  At this party, we typically hold an art swap of some kind.  This year we voted to make one piece of Garden Art and trade it one for one with another piece made by someone else.  This piece was mine.

I have to say that I knew what I was going to do going in and that the piece evolved. I had planned to use driftwood and make a hanging like others I have made before.  My Dad made them when I was young and I have always had them in my yard.  I had the driftwood, but once I started I was just not going there in my head.   At one point, I almost quit as I worry that my piece won't measure up.  I did forge ahead and was glad that I did.  I was very please with how it evolved!  Mine is in the top right hand corner.  Here are some other masterpieces!  They were all wonderful and creatively unique!

Holiday Cards

I decided to make Holiday cards within the series.

Buster's Adventures

Three new Cat card series

If I were to reincarnate, I would choose to come back as my cat.  Cats have almost always been a part of my life and always make me happy.  They also make me smile.  I have been creating cats since a young age.  Last year, I did a series of cats to be used on cards and printed 3 of them.  These three have become 3 of my bestselling cards. So I thought, why not make more?  I decided to create a couple different looks.  One is "Buster's Adventures."  Buster is my favorite cat.  He's a lover, but always very serious and loves being outside.  He is very adventurous!

Using the same image I also made Christmas, Halloween and Valentine's Day versions.

The next series I am working with is "Fluffy Cat."  This is supposed to represent my new cat Daffy who is beautiful, fluffy and long haired. 

 

The third series is cats doing different activities. 

I plan to mat or frame the originals and sell them at the Open Doors Show. 

It's amazing what one can accomplish in a week's time!

It never ceases to amaze me what I can produce when I stick my nose to the grindstone.  My friend, Susan was down visiting from Seattle all last week.  I actually worked 3 days but was still able to accomplish a lot.  The plan was of course far more lofty but in the end I felt proud of what I had done.

I've found that I do a lot more and maybe even better work when I have someone in the room with me.  It might be that I feed symbiotically from people or maybe it is just the company.  Whatever it is, I like to take advantage of the atmosphere.

The goal was to make more cat and bird cards for the Friends Library Store.  Those that I had sold out and I knew I was losing sales.  I decided that instead of constantly going back and making the same type of card over and over that I would make many originals and copy them and then paste it the copy onto card stock.  Well I made 30 originals and ended up adding 88 cards yesterday to the store.  Now the wait to see if the copies will sell as well as the originals.  I am hoping...

I've decided to sell the originals in our Open Doors Sale in December.