You’ve probably heard me mention that I’m one of the Workshop presenters for the wishBIG ecamp right? Well the big day starts on March 21st!  There’s 10 online creative living workshops from a group of wonderful artists.  My class is called “Soul Food for Dreams”.  You can find out more here. In celebration of the upcoming camp I’ll be giving away one free workshop to a lucky camper.  If you would like to be entered in a draw to win one free pass to the wishBIG ecamp then please leave me a message in the comment section – my question to you is “where do you feel most blocked in your creative world”?  I’ll be drawing a name by 12 midnite PST on March 20th. Good luck to you! 

I’ve been trying to draw happier faces lately – for some reason most of my faces are sad or pensive – try as i might i could not draw a happy face.  I think it’s in part that I’ve felt overwhelmed and tired from lack of sleep.  It’s as if the pencil had a mind of it’s own. Funny isn’t it?

Many thanks to Suzana from Creative Gypsy Studios for the lovely rose quartz “love”  bracelet!  I love it!  Thank you thank you! I will wear it proudly – it will be a reminder to be kind and gentle to myself!

I was happily surprised yesterday to find in my inbox the Cloth Paper Scissors Newsletter and there at the bottom of the page was my “Creative Juice Sign”!  The article encouraged the reader to :

Spruce up your studio’s exterior with an artful makeover. Create a fun directional sign to guide guests to your studio. Make your studio smile and you can be sure that guests and passersby will be smiling, too.

You can view a video about the Crow sign and my studio here.

Tina Ferguson writes a lovely blogpost about what to do after a natural disaster – specifically the tragedy in Japan.  I know i have felt powerless and almost immobilized lately by what has occurred. You can pray, meditate or donate money to a variety of charities to aid Japan.

See you tomorrow.

Ewwwwwwwwww………….how did my studio become this messy?  It’s the gremlins i tell ya!  Not I

Yowser!

Put like items with like items……everything has it’s place!

You may have seen my studio video a while ago – things were looking pretty good back then eh?

I need to get my studio all spiffy because of the Art Party tonite! YAY!

Birthday Art Party!

My friend Happy Tiler organized a Birthday Art Party for a dear friend of hers.  What a great idea?  The girls will be bringing along wine (don’t worry – the party is this evening!) and munchies to consume while they create small canvases!  I’m not sure how much creating is going to happen but at least the girls will have fun being creative and visiting while feting their dear friend.  I think sometimes simply going out for dinner to celebrate a friends birthday gets rather old.  If your friend is creative why not have an art party, include beverages and munchies, tunes.

Some of the ladies might be working on a piece like this:

Several years ago i wrote an article for Creativity Portal on throwing an Art Party called Art Party Fun!  You might get some ideas on what to do for your art party.

Thanks to everyone on Facebook and here who left me comments on what they would like to see on this blog and also their responses to my “branding” questions”.  I appreciate the helpful answers!  I’ve passed them along. Sometimes it is difficult to see yourself objectively.  Lately I have been focusing on my flaws so it’s good to read some of the good things that you see.  I’m thinking of printing off some of the answers and incorporating them into a book – sort of like a baby board book (like my Right Brained Business Plan). Speaking of which….i have to sign off so i can tune in to the video summit about to start in a few minutes! 

Have an amazing weekend! xo

Yesterday i decided to shoot a video to make you feel as if you were at my Open Studio event. I hope you like it!

The above photo was taken by my friend Sandra . Thank you Sandra! Sandra is one of the former members of our Creative Group called Eleven
We still see each other and occassionaly get together for tea, share creative stories and make art. If you check out Sandra’s blog you’ll see that she’s the one who turned me onto the tiny quilted Teesha Moore pillows!

Meylah has an adorable Gift Wrapping Leaf Garland tutorial up on their blog. Check it out!

Thank you to Sacred Motherhood for posting my article on “A Journal for Moms-to-be or Moms”!

Talk to you tomorrow!

Livingroom wall with mixed media pieces and prints

Mr. G and i have decided to leave up the art for a while…..who knows who might want to pop in and take a boo and buy a thing or two (hey….i made a ryhme!)

Well lookey here……my cast lamp was finally finished – i embellished it with a maruba boa!

The kitchen counter (and fridge in the background) was populated by little characters and art!

Remember i was on a wing making expedition?  Well they found a home….

Close up of the flying cupcakes and hearts!

Thank you to my friends and family and participants of the Studio tour for dropping by the Magic Cottage for a visit over the weekend.  I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to take in a little art and inspiration!  I enjoyed meeting new people and catching up with my friends who i have not had the time to see often enough.

I sold mostly prints, magnets, bookmarks and a few greeting cards.  The woodburned piece was bought by my friend Lynda!  Thanks Lynda!  The mixed media pieces – flying cupcakes/hearts and the pieces i had been busily working on all last week did not sell.  What did sell which surprised me was the orange flying cat (near the cast lamp)…i made it a few years ago and decided to leave it up on the wall for the Open Studio.  It has a couple of minor repairs before i send it off to it’s new owner.  I know that cat and dog art usually sells quite well.  Do i want to make more cat art? NO……..does it fit into my mission of creating inspiring and uplifting art?  No…not really.  The Studio Open house was not a huge success sales wise but i did meet some nice people and had some great conversations. Some folks seemed to be inspired by the art everywhere and how Mr. G and i have turned trash into treasure.  I could even see some lights coming on about what people could do to jazz up their homes.

Of course there were the folks who looked shell-shocked….did not know what hit them when they walked into this very bright magic cottage.  I sensed that some folks had come to see “fine art” and so what i had to offer was not their cup of tea. Different strokes for different folks i always say!

Many thanks to Suzana of Creative Therapies for the kind mention on her blog the other day!  I appreciate it….i’m glad that my newsletter lifted your spirits! By the way you can sign up for my newsletter to received tips and tricks monthly (well almost) in your inbox!

this is a little broken wing….a failed experiment in wing making It sort of looks like Icarus’ wings when he flew too close to the sun eh?

I made some bookmarks from the collages i created….and also created hangtags of angels.  I didn’t think about how much i’d charge for each one (i was thinking 25 cents each)……well i had the printer print them and cut them out for me (which cost quite a bit – one dollar per cut) and now i’m hardly making anything on the hangtags….doh…..ready, fire, aim.  Next time i’ll adjust that .

The colour coded calendar i created for the three days before the Studio Open house

On a piece of paper i created a three day calendar so i wouldn’t go crazy trying to fit everything in and so i could see at a glance what needed doing.  Because i’m so visual those teeny black daytimer books just wouldn’t cut it for me.  So i colour coded the tasks, red for eating, green for running errands/picking up stuff, pink for creating art and glittering , orange for creating posters/mailing invites/setting up event page on facebook, purple for cleaning house etc. Of course i’ve been adjusting things along the way.  I would love to know what do you do – what method do you use when you are under the gun and have a myriad of things to do?  Do you make lists, have a colour coded system, enlist all of your friends to help?  What works for you. Please share in the comments!

My apologies if you came to my blog today under false pretenses!  I told you you had to come back to see the happy little blogs to see what i created from them? Well they aren’t done yet.  Also i have given up on the idea of making xmas tree ornaments….oh well……ready fire aim.  In case you are wondering Ready, Aim, Fire is a marketing term…..but often we are paralysed to do anything because we feel like we don’t have enough information, it’s not good enough, we’re not talented enough…….yadda yadda yadda.  So what you do is you shoot and then adjust along the way . So what if it doesn’t all get done

I’m beginning to think i’m abusing my smiley face priviledges

Please check out Kate Harper’s blog - she had a call out for Christmas card designs so i sent my angel card in and it was one of 14 cards chosen based on “interesting design challenges, emotional response, and marketability”.  Thank you Kate for the opportunity to share my design with you and your readers!  While you are at Kate’s site browse around……she has some wonderful posts there, interesting interviews……lots of inspiration and sage advice  for artists.

I hope to see you at my studio tour tomorrow and Sunday!

Have a wonderfully magical weekend.

Make it so

Love, Violette xo

“fly your freak flag”

Notice the 3D paper elements? Yum!

The fragrance of a rose…..

I love the textural look in the corner of this collage.

I worked on these collages yesterday. I had fun using a 3D effect on the Freak Flag collage. Recently I was inspired by Vanessa Valencia when I saw her projects in the latest edition of Somerset Workshop. The very talented Vanessa had used some bookpages drenched in glue to add a bit of dimension to her collages. It reminds me of what I used to enjoy doing years ago with papier mache – a process called “twigging” where you fold a piece of newspaper like a fan, dip it in the paste mixture allowing it to get entirely coated and then between your two fingers run the paper through squeezing the excess glue off. I’ve created picture frames, papier mache headboards, made mayan sculptures etc. I used to have such fun using this technique. Lately though i’ve been avoiding using 3D items on collages because I like to scan them and it’s difficult for me to take a good photo – good enough to use to reproduce into prints.

Twigging

Dip paper in paste mixture

 run your fingers along the paper to remove excess paste

Creating the freak flag collage was a blast – I was totally in my element…..happy as a little clam you might say. When I finished the collage I thought to myself “Well no one is going to buy it so what was the point in making it?” I had fallen into the trap of creating what I thought others would want (even though I did enjoy making the other collages and of course believe in the messages). I don’t think that everyone grasps what flying your freak flag means – it means to be loud and proud of who you are and fly your flag (uniqueness). It’s a good thing .

As the studio open house fast approaches I am “freaking out”….like I always do (it would be nice if I didn’t but I do ). There are so many things to do – get printing done, make some tree ornaments, glitter the cards, pick up packaging materials, laminate magnets, attend a women’s network event and distribute flyers for the studio tour, create and send out my newsletter. YIKES!!! I need to clone myself. Many marketing books say to delegate what you are not good at and do what you’re good at……well that’s all fine and dandy but you still need to pay the folks helping you! So far this is a one woman show – Mr. G occassionaly helps out – he’ll be helping to set up and attach hangers and such to the collages. Soon it will be looking like Santa’s workshop at Magic Cottage Central!

See you tomorrow…….ciao for now!