Late Breaking News....

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Two paintings recently sold [well.... ok......last summer] at the Art and Soul Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine: Velvet Night Angel, top and center, and They said she was too young to be in love, bottom.

The latter painting is particularly special to me because I used a photo of my mother, taken around 1944 when she was 18. I used acrylic paint for the background, patterned paper for the green and yellow areas, a hand stamped and baked charm [LOVE] made from the unfortunately named "shrink plastic". As the sheet plastic is baked in a toaster oven it is reduced in size by about 30% and gets thicker and stronger. I'll have a whole tutorial on shrink plastic in a future post. It's really fun to use and has unlimited design possibilities. The charm at the top is also made from the same material and stamped with an original hand carved stamp [another great project]. The words were done on the computer with a font designed in an old fashioned typewriter style. All the collage elements were adhered with acrylic matte medium to a stretched canvas. I use Liquitex or Golden mediums.

Both paintings are what I would call mixed media collage on canvas. The Velvet Night painting uses acrylic paints, dioxizine purple and pthalo blue, in various ratios to create the night sky. Fabric was used for the dress, the ground, and the rectangular piece on the left, which was painted with fabric paint and stamped with a hand carved stamp.

The flower is a copyright free black and white drawing [Dover Publications] that I painted with acrylics. Upper right is a postage type stamp in sticker form and the lower right shows a hand stamped polymer clay piece brushed with Jacquard metallic powders and baked in a toaster oven. The raised areas of gold are made with dimmentional paint such as Scribbles. Last were added a tiny lock and a key. The top triangle piece is made from foam core and covered with watercolor paper. It is painted in acrylic, with another rectangular shaped polymer clay piece. Individual rubber stamp letters are used to create the wording.

Fall Crafts at Croton Falls

This is my friend Genevieve Boehme, who participated in a Craft Show with me at the Croton Falls Community Church on October 3rd in Croton Falls, NY. Her booth made quite a hit with everyone. The name of her business is polkadoodles, polkadoodleshandmade.com. Take a look at her website to see all the wonderful fabric items she skillfully makes for women, babies and the home.


My husband Dave and I set up our booth, which turns out looking like a Greenhouse full of Fall Vegetables!

My friend and mascott, Froggy sits permanently atop a child's red knit hat and attracts a loyal following wherever he goes. He's a great conversation starter.

Late harvest root vegetables receive a shower of snowflakes.

My booth displays knit, crocheted and felted items side by side with original designs in jewelry, beads and buttons. This lightfilled greenhouse-like window in the church was a welcome surprise.

Beads in colorful polyclay.

Whimsical Buttons in polyclay, when you have a cherished handknit that needs closure, or a handbag or tote that wants some pizzaz.

Polyclay Pins, great for a jacket, coat, handbag, bulky sweater...

a strong fabric that requires a big statement.

A very lightweight pendant with handstamped original designs, colored inks, charms.... all held together with copper wire, and hung from a soft glass cord. Handmade copper clasp.


A local craft show is the perfect venue for making a start selling your crafts directly to the public. It's not as threatening to the novice as a larger show, doesn't require distant travel
or an expensive stayover, and is a great way to learn the basics of selling. With each show you will become more organized, better known to the local community, more confident, and you will have a better idea of what to make and how best to present your creations. You can find local shows by searching on the internet, by checking local newspapers and the Pennysaver, looking for signs along the roads in your area, checking with churches and synagogues, schools and PTA's. Check out the sales tax rates in the county in which you will be selling. You can add the tax to the cost of your items at the time of sale or include the sales tax in the ticketed price. Go online to learn how to apply for a sales tax certificate in your state, and if you sell in a state other than your own, learn that state's sales tax laws. You will need to send the sales tax money you collect to the appropriate state office on a specific schedule that will be explained to you.

You will likely need to purchase a 6x3 foot folding table and a couple of folding chairs. I keep my table under my couch. Some venues provide you with these items. A cloth placed over the table is useful, especially for hiding empty boxes and bins underneath. I'll talk about other items to bring on my next post.

Felting Woolen Knits and Crochet

I've done a lot of felting over the last few years and I find it very satisfying. Knitted or crocheted wool items can be felted, that is, washed in very hot water and machine agitated until the fibers "knit" together to form a thick, sturdy fabric that is wonderful to touch and and is great for keeping us warm. The original item shrinks in the process by about 30%, and it's quite exciting to see how your original knit or crocheted item turns out. It can also be shocking to see that great big bag that you created shrink to a tiny immitation of its former self.

Shown above are a felted purse with an original handmade charm, a set of four felted coasters of different colors, and a felted crocheted scarf of many different yarns and colors done in a wave pattern.

I will be discussing more about felting in a future post.

Here Today, Gone Today!

A few days ago, I posted this painting on my blog and wrote a wonderful tutorial in great detail on how it was created. Well, my mistake was going back into the post to make a few small changes. And what do you know, POOF, in one absentminded click, the entire post was gone. Not being someone who favors writing all that much, I found this quite discouraging. I've never kept a journal as so many artists do, or a sketchbook like all my teachers told me to do. I always just preferred getting right to my next project. Kind of like people who don't do a gauge swatch before knitting a nice sweater that turns out to be a beach cover-up for a rhino. I wasn't born with blogger genes.



Anyway, my cute little "everything's coming up kittens" painting/collage shown above was created using: for the background, acrylic paints mixed with matte medium as a glaze over a layer of torn paper text; fabric for the flower, ground, kitten, and moon; cut paper for the stem and leaves; the line work was achieved by using a dimensional paint (such as Scribbles) from a squeeze bottle. I brushed a bit of acrylic paint over the leaves and stem. For the lettering I used one of those liquid white pens that you have to shake. But I had to go over the lettering again because it came out too light. That was scary, because it had to be perfectly aligned with the first rendition. It worked out well, but now I'm experimenting with various white gel pens that I purchased from Jet Pens on the Internet. The ink must be waterproof so that when you seal the painting with an acrylic varnish, it will not dissolve, and it must adhere to acrylic paint. I'll let you know what I find.



Please ask questions about any aspect of my blog, including more detailed explanations of techniques and materials, in the comments section or email me. Just click on my profile picture for a link to email.

Knitted Flowered Hats

EVIDENCE OF SUMMER KNITTING OBSESSION

Summer evenings were spent under the cool gentle breezes of the air conditioner, knitting and watching some of the best that Netflix has to offer. My film majoring daughter and I, having been British in our former lives, enjoyed a fraction of the approximately 525,600 hours of DVD available from the 1970's BBC hit, Upstairs Downstairs. If you are an avid knitter, I recommend a subscription to Netflix, or conversely, if you are an avid Netflix subscriber, I recommend you take up knitting seriously. Seriously. It is a match made in Heaven. We watched other stuff, too, all of which I loved but most of which I can't remember (at least not the titles).

Where have I been?

I learned today that the gallery sold three paintings. Shown above, they are "Too Young to Be in Love", "The Fiddler and Me" and "Courage", for which I don't have an image. I felt encouraged by this news, because today the economic headlines had me thinking, I'd better get a real job.

That thought, noble though it was, lasted until I caught myself looking once again on Amazon.com for more inspirational books on mixed media painting and collage (knitting and crochet, too). Like I haven't already bought out the entire craft sections of Barnes & Noble and Borders.

So getting back to the question I posed in the headline. I have been doing a lot of knitting this summer because my loft studio has been so hot I couldn't work there. During recent previews of the cooler fall weather, I have started my painting routine again (note cat with arm warmers... detail of a painting). Other ideas are well in the works.

The last photo above shows three facecloths knit in organic cotton, and a knit flower embellishment, created for a special friend. I have knit and designed many items and would like to sell them on Etsy. I'm already selling prints and note cards of paintings at that site. See links on right side of blog page.

Hope everyone had a creative summer. I've had blogger's block, but I'm back!

Acrylic Painting Tutorial / Shower Your World with Love

This original acrylic painting was created with multiple layers of transparent color mixed with matte medium. I used Liquitex brand acrylics and medium. I usually start with my backgrounds creating layers of different colors. I am partial to pthalo blue, pthalo green and dioxizene purple. These are very intense colors. You only need to use a small amount of pigment when you mix them with medium. I dip my brush into water first, but I don't mix my paints with water. I only use medium. It makes the colors so much richer and the pigment doesn't break up as it can when too much water is used.

To get blended colors as in the transition of the sky from dark at the top to light below, I work quickly and don't use retarding medium, while blending with a fan shaped brush. I start at the top with a greater amount of the dark paint gradually adding more medium as I proceed down the canvas. When this layer is dry, I go over the area again using medium with a little titanium white. I work fast and lightly adding this lightened mixture to areas of the background moving again down the canvas from about 1/4 of the way from the top to the bottom of the sky area. You can experiment until you get the result you want using varying amounts of medium, white and blue pigment, blending with the fan brush quickly before it dries, and going back into different areas you want to darken or lighten.

I like to add dioxazene purple to the top of the painting to create a very dark sky, so that it looks like I'm looking far out into the universe. Stars really pop against the dark sky and that can look very dramatic.

With a design this detailed I start with a drawing on paper and either transfer it to the canvas, or redraw onto the canvas. A good drawing tool to use is a watercolor pencil in a contrasting color, because if you want to erase, just use a damp paper towel. Another method I like to use is to draw on good paper, cut the image out carefully and adhere it to the canvas with matte medium. Completely coat the back of the paper, press into place and with a large brush, paint medium over the top of the cutout. Let dry and you have a great surface on which to paint your main subject. This can be done with other objects in the painting as well.

All the light blue areas shown are mixed from the same colors as the background with some more white added. When you add white to a mixture with matte medium, the more you add, the more opaque it becomes. This is a good approach for foreground areas.

I always use very few colors in my paintings. I keep a limited pallette, mixing colors instead to get what I need. This way, all colors in the painting are compatable.

For the detail areas in the angel, I used a muted orange, which pops because it is the complementary color of the blue. So my colors don't appear garrish, I mix them with small amounts of their compliments to tone them down.

The last step in the painting is adding all the stars and hearts to give the painting a magical quality.

This painting has been my most popular work. 8 x 10 inch prints are available at my Etsy store for $18.00 should you wish to purchase one. Click on one of the links to the right and at top of my blog.

Happy Painting!