Here's a heart for you

I am still enjoying keeping things cozy on this cold winter month—lots of cuddling with my husband (and our cat), and reading, and artwork in my studio. I’ve started the process of learning how to paint with watercolors, and while playing with them to start to figure them out, I created a series of watercolor hearts on cold-pressed paper, which decided to grow up and become Valentine’s Day cards.

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Here you see the first four I made, though there are now about a dozen, and I plan on making some others this week just because they are fun and pretty and help me learn how watercolors work. These will be going with me to the Valentines Pop-Up Market on Saturday, February 9th at Creek Mercantile in Rancocas Woods, Mount Laurel. Each original artwork is mounted on a kraft paper card, which comes with a matching envelope—perfect for the one(s) you love!

This week, I hope to start painting flowers, in order to take part in a flowers for February campaign on Instagram, so wish me luck . . . as I said, I’m super new at working with watercolors! Meanwhile, there is cold weather and maybe even a bit of snow in the forecast, so we shall continue our focus on keeping things hyggelig around here. What has been your favorite way of injecting a bit of higgle happiness into your life?

Ready to start something new

This was me in my studio the other day:

After cleaning my studio for the event I had here back on December 2nd, I was slow getting back to work in there. But! I did make one new piece of art. Kind of. If by “new” you count “took an existing background and stamped a motto onto it as inspiration for 2019”. And since I count it, then I will go with the idea that I made a new piece of art. Here it is:

My 2019 motto

I’m getting ready for the new year.

I posted this piece on Instagram last week and promptly sold two prints of it, plus received a request for permission to use my motto (seriously? GO FOR IT, if it speaks to you) and a request for a commissioned piece with the same motto and different colors. So now I know what my next thing is going to be. And today, the substrate for the piece arrived from Blick Art Supplies—it’s a 9”x12” basswood (aka linden) cradle board.

Is there anything as tantalizing as new art supplies?

Not only am I excited about the new cradle board, but I’m excited by some new papers I’ve collected and am ready to use as collage layers in the new piece. And I bought two 5”x7” cradle boards, thinking I might make some smaller motto pieces, so if you have one you want to commission, hit me up—otherwise, I’ll just roll with my own notions.