Voting Poll on Etsy for Wedding Cake Toppers!

My big eyed bird cake topper duo has been selected for a voting poll on etsy. Come pick out your favorite wedding cake topper from all the fabulous entries!

And if you have decided that you like my entry enough to vote for it may the big eyed bluebird of happiness fly over your house, hehe.

A Little Nest of Birdies

Last week we had some pretty fierce winds and the day after I was outside...freezing mind you...picking up all the debris the wind decided to bring to my house and lo and behold there was the beginnings of a little bird nest. I didn't look as though the construction was too far along, I hope, but I brought it into the house wet and cold.


I felt bad for the poor little bird who had spent so much time on it only to lose it to the wind.


I felt it was only fitting to let other little birdies put it to good use, at least for awhile.

I also wanted to add here that I'm quickly coming up on my 100th post and wanted to find a way to celebrate the momentous occassion. I'm thinking that I will do a give away. I need to figure out all the details of said give away but I wanted everyone to have a little heads up.

You know I've piqued your interest, hehe.

Some New Ralphies on a Cold Winter Day

I have been working slowly but steadily lately on several things. Sometimes with only a couple of minutes to spare. Needless to say it took me forever to finally complete anything at this snails pace I was setting.

I decided to have a photo shoot yesterday. I picked a day that the wind was blowing at a brisk 40 mph. My back yard was a jumble of blowing leaves which is amazing as I only really have palm trees back there. These leaves were blowing in from all over the neighborhood.

I used some of them in my photo shoot. To not use them would have been akin to looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The Ralphies. These perpetually perturbed felines, (haha) just make me smile. This look is so Ralphie. I've decided that I want to make these into either a magnet backed Ralphie and a pin backed Ralphie. Now I just need to decide which one gets what.
Here's Ralphie looking utterly perturbed just because we are all looking at him.

And the sky was a gorgeous shade of blue in which Alex the bunny was totally reveling in.

Monsieur Grenade, being French for Mister Pomegranate. He has a removable hand crocheted scarf wrapped around his neck for warmth on this cloudless windy day.

The Big Eyed Birds Have a Photo Shoot

They've been itching to get out there and get in front of a camera as they aren't the least bit camera shy and quite the hams.


I thought I would start this off with a "before" pic. This is before all that makeup is applied. I took this shortly after they were removed from the tanning bed (oven) and you can see here that a small amount of concealer (gesso) has been applied before I remembered to grab my camera. We were already in the heat of the moment here.


Here are all of the models together before the bickering started. They all thought that they were prima donnas at this point and I had to seperate them before any "cat" fights were started. We all know how ugly THAT can get.

My little blue man Maurice.

This is Howard.

And Chester.

And Louie.

Ralphie is keeping a close "eye" on things.

The End.

Finally, Some Artwork!

I had finished this one some time ago but something wasn't quite right with it so I stared at it for awhile and finally decided what I wanted to fix on it. I am much happier now. She's done with acrylics on a 4x4 canvas.


"Say Cheese"
This little guy looks like he was a Star Trek fan as his shirt reminds me a little of their old uniforms. He was painted using acrylics and my ever so favorite Prismacolor pencils on a 6x6 canvas.


Ralphie was such a huge hit that I felt compelled to re-visit this particular picture several times, six times in fact, hehe. This is just one of them. They are all done the same way but each little Ralphie ended up having his own individual personality. It was rather amazing.

Another Etsy Treasury?

Wait!
Didn't I say I wasn't going to do another one of these that they were too darn difficult and took me all day?
Well, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and managed to get another one of these and I had a much better time putting this one together.
Along the way I not only managed to find some amazing artwork but I also found some shops I simply must revisit. I also found that by looking at how other people took photos and what kinds of props they used or didn't use that it opened up possibilities with how I might be taking photos soon.
Very eye opening.

I also managed to figure out how to best catch a screen shot too.

Are you all proud of me?

Ralphie on Canvas

I know its been a good long while since my last post and I do apologize. I think this summers weather has really gotten to me. I feel at best lethargic and lazy and I can't ever seem to get anything done. Sooo on that note I decided that I was going to get something done this weekend come hell or high water.
I present you with Ralphie...on canvas and in real life...



My Ralphie is one of those cats that even the best and bravest dog is afraid of. You see Ralphie is...Ornery... on his good days. He's always mad, about something. I never know, and while he looks all cute in the photo don't be fooled. I was eating some hard bolied eggs and he desperately wanted some so he was on his best behavior...and he loves me.
I tried to convey that look on the painting but the canvas Ralphie would have none of that, he wanted to be cute...and lovable...and well, nice.
I finally obliged.
See, he gets his way no matter what. Even on canvas.

I've also got no less than 8 other canvases started and in various stages of completeness. In my defense I do tend to get easily distracted. Very easily.

I had a rather productive weekend

Amazingly enough if you take 5 days off from work and have no major plans the things you can actually accomplish are nothing short of amazing.

I finally took off a couple layers of dust from the top of things I hadn't seen in awhile, (no Mom, not the fridge or stove haha) managed to sort out and organize my studio

There is a work in progress there on my table and I had to use my light up really high as it was getting dark out and this is the only major light in the room.


My tv for movie watching, I find it a must have.
There's my Indiana Jones poster I airbrushed back in the late 80's. I haven't the wall space for it right now.


Yes, there's my movie collection at the bottom and my brand new Clip it Up at the top. LOVE that thing. There's little Eggs' head at the very bottom.

It scares me badly to post these pics and these are the cleaned up versions, ack!
Looking at them from the saftey of my computer screen makes me realize just how small my work table really is. I found the perfect one for me, it's at Ikea, we have no Ikea here and they won't ship my table to me and with gas the way it is right now makes no sense for me to go there and pick it up. Would be cheaper to have a team of artisans flown in from Italy to carve one out of an oak tree, but I digress.

I did find a table that would suit my needs at Cost Plus World Market but wouldn't you know it they were out of stock. They say it "might" come in on Thursday. I guess I'm stuck with my "student" version for now.

Here are a couple of the canvases I managed to paint in between all my organizing.






And I made a couple of pocket mirrors from the images too.



I'm really loving my little button/mirror maker

Some new items

Some of the items I'm offering in my etsy shop. It's just a small handful of items just to get my feet wet and see how I feel about the whole operation. I do feel kinda funny pandering myself here in this blog post but I am kinda excited to finally be up and running even if it is on a small scale. Forgive me if you find this all rather off putting.