The Artist in the Window at Bird on a Wire Creations

The birds are out and singing, the flowers are starting to bloom and you can feel that spring is just around the corner. This weekend looks like it's going to be sunny and beautiful which makes for the best kind of long weekend. If you happen to be wandering around Vancouver's Main St. on Saturday March 30, be sure to pop in to Bird on a Wire and say hello to me. I will be in working away at some watercolors and cutting some linocuts so I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about my processes.

See you on Saturday?

Filled with handmade and local items, Bird on a Wire is a fantastic source for a truly unique gift item. I have to say that I'm pretty thrilled to have them carry my work. Hooray for handmade!

Working away....digitally with Procreate and Art Rage

So I haven't been putting too much new stuff into my Etsy shop lately. I have created so many prints that my studio can't really store too much more. How do I get around this storage problem? I started to create things digitally. Now I just have to worry about storing file sizes but if I want to sell something through my Etsy shop I have to have the piece printed and ready. The cost of printing a quality archival print deters me from doing that. So while I feel guilty for not posting fresh work in my shop, I know that I'm still learning and creating in the studio.

Lately I've been mostly using my iPad with a couple drawing programs I got for it. Porcreate is a very versatile  program that has me working in "oils", "pastel", "pencil" and "chalks". I have found myself sketching in this program more than in my sketchbook. The other program that I've been using is Art Rage which I find has a better set of watercolor functions than the Procreate. The painting brushes are pretty good too but my main complaint about this program is that it's cumbersome to adjust the qualities of the brushes and I prefer the sliders in the Procreate program.

Below are a couple trial sketches with each application. Try them out for yourself and tell me what you think.

Sketch using Procreate for a monotype

Watercolor trial using Art Rage

Another creative way to gift money as a birthday gift

A while back one of my daughters was invited to a birthday party where the birthday girl asked for money that she could donate to a cause of her choosing. Rather than just sticking some bills in a birthday card we created a unique paper puppet with the money. You can see a blogpost about here.
Recently the same daughter was invited to another birthday party where the birthday girls are twins who wanted to get only money as gifts so that they could buy accessories for dolls at the dollar store. Hmmmm......do I create some more puppets? Instead I folded up their money gifts as shirts and pinned them to some pretty ribbon so that they would look like doll clothes on the laundry line. $15 each thank you. The second picture is of an origami shirt I tried with a tie. Nice silver accent don't you think?

What about you? What creative ways have you given money as a gift?

Cake pops for a 9 yr. olds birthday

Today I've got a couple photos of the birthday cake pops I made for my daughter's 9th birthday. I have never done cake pops before so it was a perfect reason to learn. I had planned to use half of the cake batter for the pops and the other half for a decorated cake that would hold the pops. Unfortunately the base cake was too thin to hold the cake pops and they had to be served separately. How do you serve your cake pops? I've seen some unique displays but I ran out of time and just brought them to the birthday party poked into my drying block.

For the ears on the cat I used chocolate chips and the ears on the dogs are made from chewy caramels. Noses were made from cut mini-M&Ms and shaped Starburst pieces. I got to use my edible pen for the eyes and faces.

So what kind of cake pops have you made? Do you have any tricks to share?