Happy New Year!

My parents were in town visiting this week and we did a little sightseeing. I took a few pictures of a chilly sunset on Puget Sound. I'm still not used to being so close to the water and I love watching it.

And in other news, happy New Year, everyone! It's been an interesting year for me and I can't wait to see what happens next year.

Green Christmas (Eve)

I took a few pictures yesterday afternoon to remember how green it looks outside right now. Last year we were buried under 3 feet of snow and since we're now living in a different climate, things feel very different, obviously. But I'm pretty happy with this green winter and I'm definitely not missing the snow.

Hope you all are having a lovely holiday!

Feeling festive

I wanted to share some pics of our tree this year - as I mentioned last time, we didn't really have a Christmas last year and I'm a little fixated on it this year.

My next project is to make a tree topper because I felt that the old one (a snowflake) wasn't really what I wanted in a place that doesn't get much snow. It seems like having snow-themed decorations inside and a lot of green outside would be too confusing :) I had an idea to make a new star covered in bright green preserved moss. In my head, it seems really cool and appropriate to our mossy surroundings and I hope it will look good in reality as well. If I ever get around to making it, I'll post a picture here.

Stockings

I don't usually share my sewing projects on my blog - I worry that you're expecting art and giving you sewing instead would be a cruel bait-and-switch :) But I'm feeling very festive today and I wanted to show you what I've been working on yesterday and today. I had made stockings already for my sweetie, my horse, and our oldest cat, but since the other kitties are more recent (and we had no Christmas last year due to being in the middle of moving), I am making the last three right now. Hey, it's not Christmas yet - it still counts, right?

In our old house, we had a proper mantel to display things on, but I'm stuck with this odd round fireplace now...I think by next year I'll have a couple of shelves over/around this fireplace so I can use actual stocking holders and not have to fake it with stick-on hooks :)

papernstitch shop open

And there I am! So many gorgeous shops in this market, aren't there? My shop is right here, if you care to have a look.

papernstitch online market!

I submitted my work a couple of weeks ago to be included in the next papernstitch online market and I'm very excited to tell you all that I'll have a shop in the market that opens tomorrow! I'll post a link and image of the shop once it's up and available but I wanted to share the good news now.

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season! I've got a couple little projects I'm working on for gifts but I can't really post them online because it would spoil the surprise :)

Next painting

This one is 8x8" so it fit on my scanner (whew). Very similar to the last one, obviously. I like things that are abstract but still reference some idea that I'm interested in.

I think you can see from these two paintings more of my process than when I continue smoothing everything out. And I think maybe you can see why I go through brushes so fast - all that scrubbing into the canvas wears them down to little stubs.

Oil painting

I made a couple more oil paintings last week and had to wait for them to dry to take pictures/scan them in. This one is 11x14" so it doesn't fit on my scanner and I had to try to take photos of it (!) I made a lightbox to try and eliminate the glare from the glossiness of the paint and I think it actually worked out pretty well. I mean, I still prefer using my scanner whenever possible, but that top photo is far and away the best picture I've ever gotten of one of my shinier oil paintings. The last photo is just to try to give an idea of the size and depth of the piece.

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I wanted to try something a little looser and sketchier - more specifically I didn't keep blending and reworking past this stage like I usually do. Most of my paintings look similar to this at some point but lately I've been making them pretty smooth and uniform. This scribbly brushstroke look is something I was doing in school and I wanted to give it another try in conjunction with a more abstract subject.

Trading with Belinda

I traded some prints with Belinda and I finally have them framed and on a wall...although this is just in my studio and I'm still planning where to hang them permanently. I love them so much! Belinda's work is so gorgeous and I'm absolutely delighted to have these on the wall to enjoy every day. Thanks again!

An experiment

A few days ago I decided to try placing an ad on a blog to see what would happen. I've loved being featured on blogs but blog posts seem to disappear so quickly under all the new posts. So I happened to see a mention of ad space available on Where the Lovely Things Are just as I was thinking about advertising anyway and I thought "why not?"

I know my way around Photoshop pretty well but I never tried to make anything animated before. The only hard part was picking out my images - it's ridiculously easy to make them rotate. Anyway, here's what it looks like (although I guess it won't show it animating here):

And here's a shot of it on the blog:

I'm watching the stats and I'll let you all know how it goes! Head over to Mallory's lovely blog to see the fancy animated version.