we're all mad here!

blog hop for Mixed Media Essentials

I don't talk about it much, but for the last 2 years the running theme in my life seems to be loss & letting go. I have a REALLY hard time letting go of both people and ideas, but it's become a fish I keep getting smacked in the face with over & over. This year for New Years I decided I really needed to put my energy into accepting loss in my life, and when I did that a couple really funny things happened. I let go of people who weren't interested in holding on to me try as I might to make the relationships work, and wound up meeting some CRAZY amazing women that I cannot imagine my life without {I'll talk more about that later this week}.

The second involve letting go of work I was really enjoying. Ironically, something I learned at an early age to accept was the loss of a job; you see every single time I've lost or let go of a job a MUCH better one has magically appeared right before my eyes before I've even had a chance to feel bad about it. It happened to me again this early this spring when STITCH CRAFT CREATE stopped publishing their print magazine, and I lost my new column halfway thru the season. I kid you not, within a couple hours of getting the news I got emails offering me not one, but two new opportunities. BOOM! a door slammed shut, and POOF! two windows flew wide open.

One of those opportunities was a chance to Design Team for Paper Bag Studios using Roben-Marie's new stamp line Mixed Media Essentials. Now, I don't really use rubber stamps anymore because I've been drawing so much, but when she sent me a photo of the new line I had to completely re-think my stance. They were very similar to my drawing and sewing styles, and I immediately starting having ideas on how I could incorporate them into my artwork. It is so easy to tell a story with these stamps that I quickly kept coming up with new combinations that seamlessly slid into place within my artwork regardless of what type of medium I was playing with. They are just way too much fun! They debut today over on Paper Bag Studios website, and those of us that got a chance to play with them ahead of time are all blogging about them today. Scroll down for a list of links to everyone's blogs and check out what we've all been up to.

To celebrate, I've decided to GIVE-AWAY the very first piece I made with them:

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment here on this blog post, and I will select a winner SATURDAY - MAY 4TH AT NOON EST.

It's about 7 inches square, ready for framing, and created / stamped on paper canvas.

GOOD LUCK!

• Roben-Marie Smith
• Cynthia Shaffer
• Danielle Donaldson
• Kristin Peterson
• Carissa Paige
• Lorraine Bell
• Sandi Keene
• April Cole

I'm going to give those of you who are interested in buying these stamps a chance to get them, and then over the next couple months I'll be posting both free online tutorials here on my blog, and a couple inexpensive one-shot workshops so you can recreate some really fun projects using them.

NOW GO MAKE ART!

robots go industrial chic

Late last month, I was asked by my girls over at Susan Lenart Kazmer: industrial CHIC if I'd be interested in playing around with some of their new product line from Michael's. Umm ... heck yeah! I have known Susan for over ten years now, and she is a constant source of learning and inspiration for me. I've taken more classes from her than any other artist, and I never turn away from the chance to get to do something new with her and her amazing team of artists.

When I opened up my package and found this row of little lightbulbs I instantly knew I wanted to incorporate them into a painting rather than making jewelry. 

I recently drew a funky dancing robot for an illustrator friend of mine, and Larry was immediately jealous. "Where are MY dancing robots?" he complained. "Now, now, Love, I can't keep everything cool I create just for us," I tried to placate him with. He, of course, was having NOTHING to do with being put off. So, with a promise to paint robots soon soon soon, I filed the idea away for my next painting.

I'm still fairly new to acrylic painting, but I've fallen deeply in love with the process right from the start. If I had to describe my style, I guess I would say it's like modified grafitti. I lay down a background first, slather on lots of layers with a palatte knife, and then add all the painted details with line work in white & black over the top:

When I went to grab a canvas yesterday at Michael's, I was super excited to see that mine had already received a BIG shipment of Susan's new pieces. There were so many good ones to choose from, but when I saw the 3 pack of metal tags I knew that was all I needed to finish off my painting. One of the things I really love about the tags is the colors. Not only is one of them a beautiful blue, but the longer copper tag actually has enamel paint down in the numbers that exactly matched the colors of my painting! Combined with the light bulb charm, it all seemed like robot heaven! I used small copper carpet tacks and nailed them right into the canvas frame, but Susan's Ice Resin would also be a fabulous way to attach them to your painted canvas.

voila - robots dancing in the moonlight

The blog hop continues through this weekend, and I hope you'll take a peek at what everyone else is doing with the Industrial CHIC goodies:

OTHER BLOG HOP PARTICIPANTS FOR JULY:

July 6     -    Ken Oliver                       

July 7     -    Vicki O'Dell                     

July 8     -    Cindy Cima Edwards  

July 9     -    Elena Lai Etcheverry    

July 11    -    Wanda Eash                  

July 12    -    Terri O                              

July 13    -    Susan Weckesser          

July 14    -    Tracy  Weinzapfel         

NOW GO MAKE ART!

my ipad must haves

I had the pleasure of a catch-up call with my friend, Cathy Gaubert,  yesterday, and she gave me the best idea for a blog post. She got an ipad for Christmas, and was asking me what I use to edit my photos. I've been a photoshop girl for, man, almost 15 years now, and in my opinion nothing else even comes close. Well, she's never used photoshop ever, and the learning curve is REALLY steep. My solution for her was to get the Photoshop Express app for her ipad, and edit there. This conversation stirred up the pot for this post wonderfully. Larry and the kids bought me an ipad for my birthday last year, and I've spent a lot of time [and moolah] trying to find the best apps for artists/writers/crafters. So, here's my MUST HAVE apps - all the ones I keep on my front page for easy access:

FOR THE ARTIST:

• photoshop express - this is a dumbed down/FREE version of their popular program, but don't let the fact that it's free deter you. You can do all the basic editing stuff, and quite a few nifty things with this app including change the exposure style & add borders.
• reel director - $1.99 -  I love this app for editing movies on the fly. This is a great little program for turning your filmed How To's into fabulously edited videos. I like this program as much as imovie, and again, you can't beat the cost.
• art set - 99 cents - Jules loves this app because it has all your favorite mediums to choose from including oil paints & pastels / wax crayons / colored pencils / markers. It has a slew of blending tools and different paper textures to choose from.
• sketchbook pro - $9.99 { I think - you cannot see the price once you buy it } This is one of the few apps I've been willing to pay over $4.99 for. There is a FREE express version of this one as well, so check it out before you shell out your moolah.
• palettes - FREE - I love this app for finding color combination and pulling colors from photos. There is a BASIC & PRO version of this program, but I've found the free version works just fine for me so far.

FOR THE WRITER:

• pages - $9.99 - This is the only other app I've paid this much for, but being able to edit my articles on the road was one of the main buying points for me. I love being able to edit or write on the fly!
• story tracker - LITE - This is a tool for tracking your story/article submissions from idea to print. I don't use this as much as I should, but I'm trying to use it more this year to keep track of what I'm writing/submitting.
• phraseology - $3.99 - I just bought this app over vacation, and haven't used it yet. "Part text editor, part word processor, phraseology is a simply enviro focused app to make it enjoyable & productive to write on the ipad." I'll let you know more when I use it :)
• anote - $3.99 or LITE - A color coded post-it note style app. I use this to keep reminders of ideas that are still only seeds, things I need to do for the family, looming deadlines, and TO DO lists. I love that it's color coded and tabbed, which both make it really quick to find notes.

FOR THE CRAFTER:

• flickstackr - $1.99 - There is a free app directly from flickr, but I really love the layout and navigation in this app. If you use and love flickr like I do to keep track of your online exchanges, you gotta get this one!
  
• kindle - FREE - One of our passions as crafters is buying books to learn new techniques. All the new crafting books are coming out in Kindle editions, and you easily see them a page at a time in your studio with this fabulous app. You don't even have to weigh the pages down!
• pandora radio - FREE - I know what you're thinking, "What in the world does Pandora have to do with crafting?" We all need some music to stir our imagination pot, and keep us company, don't we?!
• mollie makes - $6.99/issue - This is the one magazine I can't do without - it's almost as if it were written just for me. If you haven't checked out Mollie Makes yet, what are you waiting for? There is also a digital subscription for around twenty dollars.
• cloth paper scissors - $7.99/issue - CPS is currently my favorite magazine to write for, but they have other selections for the sewer & knitter as well. 
• jknit HD - PRO & LITE - I'm convinced this app was written with the absent minded knitter in mind. I can write my own patterns, and save them with the PRO version. You can also search for specific patterns, and download them right into the program. It also has a BIG visual counter with row instructions to keep you on track.
• knitionary - $1.99 - This is a great app for the experimental knitter. It is a visual dictionary of stitches, so you not only get the formula to knit it, but know what it should look like too.

And there you have it :) There are lots of other apps I use all the time, but right now these are the ones I find most useful and that I use over and over again. If there is an app you just can't live without I would love to know what it is! Has anyone found a great app for writing sewing patterns? I haven't looked because I don't usually use them, but it would be nice to be able to keep track of the ones I come up with w/o having to read through a bunch of doc files!

NOW GO MAKE ART!