New Books, Inspiration, WhooHoo!!

Yesterday my wonderful husband and I were in town to run some errands, namely for me to go to the dentist and get a couple of fillings.  (ouch)  Afterwards we ran some errands, including stopping by our local bookstore.  We browsed books for a little while and I found a book on wild horses that I liked, then a book on card making and scrapbooking.  Well, he bought both of them for me!  What a guy! 

-- Wild Horses of the World is chock full of beautiful photos of many types of wild horse and pony, including several that I, with a lifetime horse obsession, hadn't heard of.  The wheels have already been spinning with inspiration of custom horses I could create using this book as a starting point.

-- The Complete Practical Book of Making Gift Cards and Scrapbooking is a small, thick (512 pages!) reference for paper crafts.  Each section in it is lead by several tutorials, showing many different types of techniques.  The tutorials are followed by many, many projects with material lists and step by step instructions.  The book is LOADED with high quality color pictures, which is awesome for me, since I am a visual learner.  I'm already overloaded with ideas after just flipping through the book a few times and stopping on random pages. 

As an added bonus, I discovered a statement in the very back that says the publishing company plants and manages forests that contain 3.5 times the amount of trees used in printing their books.  That is very cool. 

I haven't had much luck yet in selling paper crafts, but to be fair I haven't given them a fair shake in my advertising either.  I've so far only really listed a few paper items for sale.  I need to put the hammer down in getting all of them photographed and listed for sale.  That, in combination with the rush of new pieces that I'm sure this book will spawn, should see me getting some of my paper goods out in the world I'm hoping!

Time to get to work!!

A Flurry of Painting

To add to the mustang I started a couple of weeks ago, I now have four other brand new custom horses started!

They are:

A Belgian draft horse - will be a chestnut with flaxen mane and tail
Two Ponies - both base coated in black, I'm undecided - so far I think one will be an appaloosa, or maybe they both will be!
A stockhorse - I think he will be a liver chestnut frame overo

Sorry no pictures yet...  there's not much to see so far.  Once I get some more color on them I'll do another little photo shoot of the herd.

I've also been busy in my never-ending attempt to organize all of my supplies.  My husband and I went and bought some more storage totes and a couple of shelf organizers.  Is it weird that I woke up early this morning, excited about the new organizational tools waiting to be put to use?  ha!  

Been a Long Time Coming

After wanting to get back to it for a long, long time, tonight I decided to shove the To-Do list aside, dust off the paintbrushes and work on a horse.

Here are a few pictures of the in progress creation.  He will be a flashy Mustang stallion. 

He started off as a Breyer Stablemate that I sanded, prepped, and primed.  Then I painted him with several thin coats of black acrylic.  Afterwards I spent a while trying do decide on the pattern.  I had my heart set on doing a wildly spotted Appaloosa, but in the end I decided on as a splash white pinto pattern.  The term splash white comes from the horse looking like they were dipped in white paint, or as if it was "splashed" on from the bottom. 

I'm not quite happy with his pattern, I think I'll end up adding more white.  I really like how his left shoulder looks where the white spikes up.  I'll probably end up adding more white on his other side.

Still a work in progress, but it's a start! 

Cabin Fever

This has been an odd winter so far.  We've had very little snow, but countless days and nights of high wind.  Our temps have been fairly mild, save for a cold snap this last wee where we stayed between below zero and teens above.  At the moment, there is a dusting of snow outside, the wind is still howling and I've been feeling a bit of cabin fever.

I've done some work on the Studio website, changing the link structure around some.  I decided to open external links in new windows, to keep visitors on my site when they click a link that would take them elsewhere - here to the blog for example.  So now my blog, or my online stores, will open in separate windows, while my main site stays put. 

I decided some website work was long over due since I've been making a bit of a push to get the URL out there.  I've handed out and sent many promotional materials with my website.  I'd like to think that people might go check it out, bt there's still not much to see there.  I was even shocked to see that some of the pages had a "Last updated" notation of over a year ago!  My how time flies. 

So now I've changed all of those dates to reflect that I have indeed worked on the website this year (this month even!) - ha!  I still have big plans to upload a ton of pictures on there to show off my work to anyone that might happen by.  All it will take is maybe a few days of dedication to format and upload pictures.

Through it all my ArtFire store has continued to quietly sell items here and there.  I have to say I've been very pleased with it.  My little storefront there has been very hands off for quite some time and is still making sales.  It's exciting to think the results I might get once I finally get around to actually making it known.  For now it's just sitting there and sales keep trickling in. 

I guess that's it for now, not much exciting to report, but hey!  I made a blog post before another 6 months had gone by, haha.  ;-)

Christmas Time is Here

Another spaced out (as in length of time) blog entry starts...  Now!

Christmas is right around the corner and I received a gift from my Granny that I'm pretty excited about.  She sent me a box full of vintage rubber stamps that came from when her niece was a teenager.  There are some pretty cute stamps there and some that are quite quirky as well - can anyone say chicken marching band? 

Yes, I'm serious, haha... 

I'm looking forward to playing around with the stamps and seeing what kind of new creations I can come up with for them to be used on.  I see a bunch if new and fun paper goods in my future - yay!  Maybe I'll come up with a chicken marching band bookmark!  heehee...

I'm sort of in the middle of an overhaul of EVERYthing at this time, so not much crafting has been going on.  Though the bug has been steadily chomping on me as I come across supplies and items or pictures that inspire me.  My husband is in the military and has been deployed to the Middle East for the past several months.  He'll be home in a couple of months and while I eagerly await his return, Operation Organize the Entire House has begun!  (wish me luck on that - I may very well need it!)

On the sales front, my Nail Necklaces have been somewhat steadily selling, as they always do.  I'm also happy to report that I sold my second ever online dreamcatcher.  I've sold many dreamcatchers over the years in face-to-face sales, but only two so far in an online venue.  That made me happy.  Now if the cards and bookmarks would start selling...  Maybe all I needed was a chicken marching band stamp... 

(I'm sorry, I just can't get over that one, I think it's too funny!)

I guess that's all for now.  Funny how the last post I made I was horrified that I still had a winter background..  now it's winter and I have a summer background.  Sigh.  Ok, it's not really funny, I'd say it's more tragic.  I really do want to get better about blogging.  Maybe that can be a New Years Resolution for 2012. 

Hmmmm....

It's Green!

Once again I've fallen off the blogging wagon, as I am prone to do.  I wandered back on here just now and realized that my background was of a winter scene.  :-O  While our weather is not exactly summer-like yet, everything is GREEN around here, not white. 

I love the color green. 

My favorite color is blue and has been for as long as I can remember, but green has a special place in my heart.  The reason for that is the 7 years that I spent living in the deserts of Arizona and California.  I missed the color green so desperately during that time.  Now, especially this time of year, I am surrounded by green!  Even after 4 years back in the land of four seasons and greenery, I still take time to stop and admire all of the plant growth around me.  I love to watch the transition of the fields and trees from brown to green as winter fades away, spring and summer move in. 

In Studio news, I've been in the middle of an overhaul of my Studio room.  I pulled everything out and toyed around with rearranging the furniture in there, only to put it back where it was.  I did add a shelf and another smaller desk, for more storage and work space.  I'm now in the process of getting all of my supplies put back in the room and reorganized. 

I've made several new cards and bookmarks over the last few months or so.  (darn those paper goods - they don't seem to sell, but I can't stop making them!)  I bought some new stamps, including one that I'd had my eye on for quite a while.

One of my horses foaled (had a baby) a few weeks ago and so I made a bunch of my foal announcement cards to send to friends and family.  I've been making these cards for several years, for each of the three foals that my mare has had. 

For years now I've been thinking of putting together some sets of the foal cards and trying to sell them.  Of course the time when I usually think about it is when the babies are actually being born - and by then it's pretty much too late to make up and market the cards.  If I were smart, I'd run with the idea NOW - while it's fresh - and start making a stockpile to advertise next spring.  We'll see...

Oh!  On the card-making front, I'm thrilled to report on a tip that my Granny gave me.  She mentioned that she uses double-sided tape to put her cards together.  I had always used glue - and it was a headache!  So, I decided to try her method and..  I LOVE it!  No more waiting for the layers of paper to dry in place...  No more having to press each card while drying to prevent the cards from warping...  No more having them warp anyway and ruin an entire series of cards...  Double-sided tape rocks!  :-D

Ok, that's more than enough for now.  There is more that I was going to add, but if I wait, maybe I'll actually get back to blogging daily!  I know the creative bug has been chomping on my rear all this week while I've been reorganizing the Studio room.  It really lights a fire when you see all of your materials and start getting a flood of brainstorming on what to do with them! 

Everything is green and growing here - including my ideas!

Coming Out of the Dark

Last week I made a tough decision.  I decided to quit the job that I had started a few months ago.  The job was hard to get used to, but I was still optimistic...  until things started to fall apart.  What I had agreed to during the interview was a part-time job, 30 hours at most in a week.  The job was supposed to be easy, the people were supposed to be nice.  The bosses assured me that if I needed to miss work or leave early somedays that it was no problem.  I was happy, I thought I'd finally found a perfect, flexible, part-time job to fit into my busy life.  Two weeks in, half of the crew quit.  That should have been my first warning. 

The job spiraled down until I was working 8-9 hours a day, everyday, alongside people who were getting more and more frustrated and gossipy and for bosses that became more and more unreasonable.  I realize there are many, many people who work full-time or more every week, but with my college classes, my horses, and various other committments, I needed to stay at the part-time hours I'd agreed to. 

Right before New Years, one of my horses used my right foot as a launch pad, badly crushing it.  The foot ended up being not broken, but has been so bruised and swollen over the past month that I could barely walk on it much of the time.  Still I soldiered on, hobbling to work every day.  I finally missed two days to go have it x-rayed and to see why I was getting sicker every day for a week.  It turned out that I had bronchitis on the edge of pnemonia(sp) and the doctor wanted me to rest and stay off my foot for a few days.

Remember how they told me that if I had to miss work for something it would be ok?  No, I had to bring in a doctor's note, as if we were all in elementary school, and I caught crap for taking those days off.  Had anyone realized that I had been at work everyday since being injured, though I could barely walk?  Of course not.

Finally tensions came to a head and ended one day with members of the crew yelling at each other and one of the bosses lecturing us and playing referee.  I stayed out of the shouting match, but was singled out by the boss and scolded in front of everyone for something that was not my doing. 

The camel's back had broken.

I lasted a few more days and finally decided that for my health, my sanity, and my future, I needed to leave.

In addition to my previous Studio plans, I now have another bright and shining star on my horizon.  I'll post more about that in the future... 

More to come, I feel this post is too long already.  My Etsy and Artfire sites have been faithfully selling items over the last few months while the lights have been "off" in the Studio.  Short of mailing out sold items, I haven't touched anything to do with the Studio in a little while now.  I'm hoping I can more or less pick up where I left off before in building up the Studio's online presence - and get back to enjoying my days, instead of dreading them.