What I Have Been Up To.......

Hello!!!

I am sure in my last post I was telling you that I was getting ready for an art show.....

I used old frames, spray painted them black, for jewelry displays.

Had a quilt to make, as a donation to the Bahamas National Trust, for a raffle.

The art show ran for three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and was a great success!

It was the first time I really had a big selection of jewelry.  My sales were great and I got a lot of compliments.

Of course any show is a lot more fun when you are surrounded by friends.  These friends were my show neighbours and we had a great time.

I still haven't had a chance to upload the photos of my booth.  I *borrowed* these few photos from one of facebook friends :)

Be sure to check out my blog for the month of February.  I am going to be posting and selling some cute heart items, and giving a portion of the proceeds to a local charity.

See you tomorrow!

i {heart} hearts

I am not sure what has gotten into me lately, but I have been totally smitten with hearts for several months now. I think I have been trying to repress this also, but I no longer can. They are sneaking out into my work like I have no control.
My style really seems to be changing, but I am enjoying the transformation, and just creating from my heart.

As you have heard me say, I am getting ready for a show next weekend. I am trying not to show too much of my new work. For one, I want people who come to the show to be able to see new things, and then I get in a pickle if someone wants to buy it and then I am short of stock for my show.

B U T......I just have to show you a few things that I am so proud of!

First this set of jewelry....heart of blues.....

Then this journal that I made after reading a bible verse on Pinterest (yes, i am addicted to pinning also!)

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it" Proverbs 4:23

WOW! That is the perfect verse for an artist!

Here is the journal I was inspired to make after reading that verse.

I love the texture in this......

If it were my journal I wouldnt be able to stop touching all the textures and frays.

I hope this journal gets a really special home.....

and that the owner of this journal remembers...
"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it" Proverbs 4:23

Back to Quilting

Today I have been back at the sewing machine. Finishing up a quilt I am making for the Bahamas National Trust. It will be raffled at Art for the Parks, which is a local art show that I participate in.

I realized today that this show is 2 weeks from Friday......eeeekkkk......TWO WEEKS!!!
I only have a few more blocks left to make for this quilt, and I really love the palette....lime, yellow, hot pink, a little orange and dash of red.

And this pattern sews up very quickly.

I have so much to do, but I love the creative adrenaline rush I get leading up to a show. It is something I wish I could bottle and use when I have no motivation to work.  
I am looking forward to sharing with you all my new creations.
After this show I will also be back to teaching quilting again!!  If you are local and would like to take up quilting, or be a part of a quilting class, please let me know ASAP.
Well, back to stitching for me right now.......unlike my precious cat, Mr Wiggles, who gets to snooze in the sunshine.....

Creative Project #26 ~ a busy, busy day!

All week you have been hearing me talk about "Da Market" that took place today.

It was an overwhelming success all around.

I sold my handmade goods, we sold tshirts and bags for our humane society, and Amy and I practically sold out of vegan food!

We were left with one vegan cheesecake and one slice of vegan mac and *cheese*.

Here are Amy and I in our tent.

Da Market is going to take place again the last Saturday of March and I think I will be signing up again for it!

Then after lunch our dog agility group trained for 3 hours with a trainer/judge, Daniel McDonald, from Florida.

Trixi is my current agility dog and she amazes me every lesson. She was a rescue that I planned to re-home.  She turned up outside the vets office and whenever a human would approach her she would let out a blood curdling scream.  Now she runs an agility course with confidence and it makes my heart smile :)

After agility I came home, ate dinner and left again to attend Junkanoo, which is a street festival/parade that is native to the Bahamas.

The costumes and the music amaze me every year.

I am exhausted, but is has been a fantastic day.  I should sleep well tonight!

Good night!

Creative Project #25 ~ da market!

As I told you yesterday, today was a day of tying up lose ends.  Gathering show supplies, packaging items, and doing all those last minute things.  I feel like I am prepared and that scares me so far in advance.....I NEVER feel this way the night before any type of show.

My friend, Amy, and I will have some vegan yummies for sale tomorrow in our tent along with our humane society shirts and bags, and I will have a small selection of my handmade things.

After I got the kiln running this morning, I started making labels for my vegan food.

"H" for Hummus!

Tags for *cheese*cakes...vegan of course :)

Yummies labeled and tied.  

Amy will have *N*ice Cream ~ homemade vegan ice cream which is delicious.

I also managed to get some more bags sewn.  These bags are really trying my patience.  The slippery material has a mind of its own under the presser foot!

I really like the shape and size of the dog food bags!  I'd wear the short, wide one on the left as a purse.....but that is artsy, fartsy me :)
Now if that kiln would hurry up and cool down I would really be ready!

Hope all of you close by will be at Da Market in the morning....9am til 1pm.

Have a great weekend!

Creative Project #24 ~ paint, paint, paint!

I almost missed my post today!!!  WOW!  Couldn't let that happen since I am on such a roll!

Thursdays are usually such a busy day for me anyway, and today was even crazier with Saturday's market coming up.

Thursdays are my day to grocery shop, have lunch with friends, run errands in town, do banking, dog agility class........

On top of all of that I baked vegan cheesecakes to sell on Saturday, made tons of hummus, and painted ceramic beads.

These babies need to go in the kiln first thing in the morning, right after my run!

Here are some of them drying....

Tomorrow I will need to get all my show goodies together and in one place, like floats, bags, display stands......just so Saturday morning there are no early morning meltdowns.

Good Night!

Creative Project #23 ~ sewing bags while waiting

Happy Hump day all!

A really quick post today to show you a glimpse of my creative journey today.  I mentioned yesterday that Saturday I have a function to attend to raise money for Friends of Abaco Animals.  Those clay pieces I showed you yesterday I put in the kiln for their first firing.

The firing took about five hours and now I sit and wait for it to cool down.  Last time I checked the temperature was at 960!  I probably wont be able to open the kiln until tomorrow.

So in the meantime I went outside and washed out cat and dog food bags......

Hung them to dry......

Now you are really thinking I have lost my mind!!!

But......I am making bags to sell at the Humane Society stall on Saturday!

Great shopping bags that are waterproof!

Trixi and Merlin wanted to pose with the bag! hahaha!

If you are in Abaco, please come by Da Market on Saturday, from 9am - 1pm, in the parking lot of the Bahamas National Trust office.

Awesome Art Show Weekend

The weekend sadly came to an end.   It was filled with great sales, lots of laughs, chats with other artists and spending time with friends.  I could not ask for much more.

This was the opening night.  My jewelry table is behind me.

Now I need to figure out how to stay motivated and inspired!  I was on quite a roll producing new ideas and I would like to keep that up.

I joined a new flickr group called "Create - a project a day - february 2011".  Maybe this will help me stay motivated.

Of course I will be blogging about this adventure so stay tuned!

I never got to show you the chair that I did for this auction, in addition to the bar stool.

A very exciting bidding war went on over this chair, and it got the highest bid out of all the chairs.

Pretty neat to watch people react to your work like that!

There were a couple chairs that did not find homes that night and I got elected to paint them so they can be sold for the Bahamas National Trust.  I have all sorts of neat ideas and cannot wait to get started.

At my dining room table I have 8 different chairs which are painted eight different colors.....it is my other fetish besides for the plates!  I am still planning that blog post about my plate collection, so I will include the chairs in that post.

Have a great week and I will see you tomorrow with a new creation for february 1st!

something for me :)

The other night when I took my journal covers over to my mom to ask her advice on pricing, my husband looked at one with a bird on it (i think it was in the last post) and said that the bird needed a sign that said, "eat more veggies".

That night when i went to bed a design popped into my head, and i sat up and sketched it out right then!

Here is the front:

This one is mine for sure!

The back:

The entire cover opened up:

I really love this one!

I am wrapping things up for the show now.  The last pottery load is in the kiln, which just shut off, so now I get to wait for it to cool.  Hopefully late tonight i can peek inside.

This afternoon I will finish the last few pillows and try and get everything in one place so the transport can start.  

If the sun ever comes out here I need to take pictures of my new jewelry pieces which I keep promising to show you.  Hopefully that will happen this afternoon.

back to work............... :)

kiln is FINALLY done!!

The absolute worst part of pottery is the waiting time....waiting for the greenware to dry so you can fire it....waiting for the kiln....waiting for the paint to dry so you can glaze, waiting for another firing!

This morning I was finally able to pull out the platters I put in yesterday morning!

"Morning Song"  This one matches the table, a pillow and some artwork that I have made.

They were worth the wait.  I love all the colors!

"Owl and Friend"

So then I loaded the kiln back up with some greenware that need to be turned into bisque, and needed something to occupy my time  so I made some journal covers for the show this weekend.

These are a few of my favorites.

There are a  few more small projects to finish for the show, price everything, pack up my show supplies and then enjoy the weekend selling and talking to artists and customers.

Hope you are all having a great week!

getting somewhere......

Work continued today on the table and a few other things that I probably shouldn't have started.

Look at how dirty my fingers are.....i dove into the bag of clay!

Now the big kiln is on and I love the smell of that firing!

I guess you all want to see the sofa table.......

It matches one of the pillows I have made and also a few pieces of artwork I have done, but i think I am going to use this to display my jewelry on.  Which reminds me....I still need to show you some new jewelry pieces!  In an upcoming post for sure!

I am still painting away on the chair.....I think I made it way too complicated, but oh well, I have to push thru and finish it now.
I took a few minutes today to make some vegan brownies.....

They are so moist and chocolatey ~ you cannot tell they are vegan.
You can find the recipe here.  They whip up very quickly.  The hardest part is waiting for them to bake!
Enjoy!

work....work.....work.....

I am on high speed right now with my work.  My imagination is on over drive.  This always happens when I have a show on the horizon.  I wish I could stay this motivated all year!

I got it in my head to re-paint a table that I had.....like I need something else to do!  

This table was painted for a special order, I  packed it up and shipped it to a show where the customers were supposed to pick it up and pay me for it....well they changed their mind!  Lesson learned....get your money up front!

The table looked similar to this one, but not exactly:

After I attacked it with the sander and some primer this morning it looks like this:

I have a birdie design in my head......we'll see what happens after lunch!

At the same time I am also painting another chair for the auction, "Take a Seat for Conservation".  This one is going to be pretty funky....with a mermaid....but not all painted.....can you guess what I have in mind?

Then of course, since my creative juices are flowing, I had to be a little distracted and sew some cute little bags that were in the Cloth Paper Scissors Gift 2010 issue.

The pattern is by Jennifer from Jangles.

I used the little houses from my fabric fritters for this one.  Been wanting to make some of these since before Christmas and finally did it!

Okay....going to grab lunch and get back to painting!

Have a great weekend!

Cooking and Creating

I have been pretty stressed and busy preparing for my upcoming art show next weekend, which means I have needed some comfort food, and boy did I ever find it!

Vegan Eggnog Cheesecake!!!!!  This was so amazing!!!

I found the recipe at the Fat Free Vegan website.  Go and check out this recipe and others on the site.  There are lots of amazing recipes!

This beauty sliced up better than any non-vegan cheesecake I have ever made in the past and you could not tell the difference.  I am now inspired to try out different vegan cheesecake flavors also!

One of my latest creations for the upcoming show was a bar stool that I painted for an auction that will be held at the show called, "Take a Seat for Conservation"

There will be almost 30 chairs and bar stools, painted by artists, up for auction.

I am looking forward to seeing all the chairs and stools all together.....what a pretty sight that will be!

The art show is a show called, "Art for the Parks".  It is put on by the Bahamas National Trust and is January 28th, 29th and 30th at the Abaco Beach Resort in Marsh Harbour.

If you are in the area I hope to see you at the show.  There will be so much more there than art......crafts for children to do, a mural painting area, chalk art contest, an awesome food court, the art booths and much more!

a few new things......

I told you a few posts ago that I am feverishly working towards an art show which is in less than two weeks now!!  The show is called "Art for the Parks", and takes place January 28th, 29th and 30th.

Over the next week I want to show you a sampling of the finished products that I will be selling at that show.

I am still mad about owls and now that has grown into other birdy designs as well.

Couple this with my love of pillows and this is what happens......

And the ideas are overflowing from my head!  There are some mermaids pillows in the mix as well......I could never forget about my mermaids!

At this show there will be a silent auction called "Take a Seat for Conservation".  Each artist entered in the show is asked to paint a chair or a bar stool and these will be auctioned off during the weekend of the show.

Along with sewing and making jewelry I have been trying to finish my bar stool, which I hope to show you very, very soon.

So keep checking with me for more sneak peeks of jewelry, bar stools, chairs, and what ever other creative items are born :)

Sweet Potato Pie Smoothie

The breakfast of champions!!!  Most people I know love sweet potatoes (yams), in fact I don't think I have met anyone that does not like these little gems.  I am not a breakfast person at all.  A few years ago if I did a long run, then I might have been hungry when I got back, but that doesn't happen anymore.

So one day my friend Amy, from Lubbers Landing, told me about this smoothie that she makes sometimes and I tried it and now have been drinking these almost every morning ever since!

Amy has tried it with pumpkin as well and that is also yummy!  I started out making about 2 cups of this but now I drink 4 cups and that keeps me full until lunch time.

You will need a juicer and a blender for this recipe.

1 large sweet potato (yam)

2 apples ( i use red delicious)

1/2" - 1" piece of fresh ginger (depends on how much you like ginger)

3 carrots

1-2 frozen bananas

1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

a large handful of fresh spinach (optional)

Juice the sweet potato, apples, ginger and carrots.  This should make about 1 1/2 cups of juice.  Add this juice to the blender with the frozen bananas, spinach and the pumpkin pie spice.  Blend until smooth.  ENJOY!!!

I suggest starting out drinking just 2 cups of this and work up to more.  The recipe above should make about that.  I add more sweet potato and more carrots to increase the size of mine.

I have been crazy busy getting ready for an art show in 2 weeks and finishing up the last of my orders.

I just finished this ring for a customer with a beautiful piece of amber sea glass.

In a few days I will start to post some pictures of items I am making for the art show.  Nothing is completely finished yet, but I am working hard!

Have a great weekend :)