today, yesterday...and tomorrow

i did this piece a few years ago and i still love it because: *i love the scripture, *it has a simple design, *this lettering is my favorite, *i enjoy using the heart-in-hand motif in my work, *i love using different shades of purple (especially blue purple!), *and, you guessed it, there are six wonderful little boxes to put all of that fun stuff in! one of the nice things about keeping a record of my work, and then looking back on it from time to time, is that i'm reminded of how much i enjoy doing little pieces of artwork like this. i have been overwhelmed recently...trying to decide "shall i paint today?, shall i draw today?, shall i letter today?". as usual, i've been making the process too difficult. what i should be doing today is take what i love from all of my artwork yesterday(s) and focus on that. of course, all of this is subject to change tomorrow(!).

book day at donna's

last week martha and i drove over to our favorite stamp shop, a small cleverness, and donna showed us how to make this great book. for the pages, we used gridded 3x5 index cards folded in half. we sewed each signature together using the pamphlet stitch (there are 12 signatures total) and then glued the signatures together to create our book block. the spine was finished by weaving narrow strips of calico cotton fabric through our stitches; the middle piece of fabric was kept long enough to also become the tie closure. we added a glass bead to each thread. the covers are made from black mat board, and the image on the front cover is a stamp that donna provided. this was a really fun project and took about two hours to complete. i really love the end result...thanks donna!

joie de vivre

here, finally, i've added some color to one of my drawings! for this piece, i used my favorite watercolor pencils for the flower and gouache for the lettering. i really enjoy creating this type of art...it's colorful and it makes me happy!  joie de vivre! 

puppy love

this is a fun little book that i made a while ago. it has an accordion spine and the pages are held in each accordion fold with an elastic thread. each page has a triangular fold to create a pocket...perfect for holding photos or quotes about your favorite pooch. i especially love the fun, playful colors...the stickers are cute, too! this book takes some time to make, but definitely worth the effort.

scanner 101

firstly, an enormous hug and thank you to my fabulous husband, walther, who surprised me with a new scanner for my birthday!! while i still consider myself fairly electronically challenged, i would have never dreamed that i could be so excited about a scanner! there is nothing more disappointing than to spend a lot of time on a piece of art, and then not have a true image of it.

this image shows a scan of a drawing that i did in black ink (remember my josef siebel shoes?). the "before" image was scanned on my previous scanner...the HP C3180 all-in-one. the "after" image was scanned on my wonderful new scanner...the HP Scanjet G4010. the difference is amazing...the "after" image is a true representation of my drawing and i couldn't be more thrilled! the all-in-one scanner is a great scanner for documents and other basic scanning. but, if you're looking for a scanner that will give your artwork and photographs true color accuracy and high quality images, the G4010 gets my vote!

(for better comparison, click on the image)