Oooooh, Im doing this again....

Whaaaaat?!  

A new blog post?  

For real???  

FINALLY! 

I love blogs.  I have always loved blogs.  And I like blogging.  Facebook makes life easier and is great for fast updates but I have decided to make my blog a larger part of YellowDog Art again.  So stay tuned as I get reacquainted with blogger and make some (LOTS) of changes to this blog.  I also have new pieces to share, new spaces to show you, new projects to babble about and lots of ideas to play around with.  Wish me luck!  And feel free to contact me if you are a blogger guru and feel like guruing me through this blog update! ;P

 

 

ART: chalkboards, chalkboards and more chalkboards

Anyone that has stopped by to say hello at a show recently has seen my newest YellowDog item.  Chalkboards!  I purchase blank ready to hang boards and turn them into chalkboards with original artwork.  I stumbled upon this colorful chalkboard paint a while back and knew I had to do something.  It took a few tries to find the right board that would take the paint well and look nice.  It also took a while to find the right paint to then use for my YellowDog images.  It has to be slightly water proof yet take to the chalkboard paint.  The results:

Currently, I can make them in three sizes:  8"x10", 11"x14" and 16"x20".  I am slightly limited by the color choices of the special paint I must use but if you have any requests, please let me know!  The boards above all sold yesterday at the Go Dog Go event at Healthy Living (except the kitty one) but I am always looking for new suggestions and ideas.  And I admit it, the red chalkboards are my favorite.  You gotta see them in person.  The color is just too gorgeous!!

ART: commissioned card and painting

I only have a minute  but I feel guilty not posting on here in so long.  Shame on me because I am not lacking in news!

First up is a card requested by my dear Mother for my niece Sydney.  Sydney's dog Abbey loved her tennis balls.  FANATICALLY SO.  This is oil pencil on recycled kraft card stock.

Interested in a custom greeting card?  We can customize one of my original designs or create something brand spanking new.  They come in several different sizes.  Email me!

And here you can sneak a peek at a commissioned piece that was a long time in the making.  Canvases were torn and for the first time I ever I got about 2/3 of the way through a piece and completely changed my my mind on what I thought would look best.  I am very happy with how it turned out!  The client chose the background from a earlier piece and at first I thought it would be too much and distract from the gorgeous coloring of her pets but I was wrong and she was very very right!  Here is a quick pic I took as it sat inside my truck to be delivered later that same day!

Check back tomorrow for a peek at even more new pieces and news on upcoming events.  Like the Humane Society of Chittenden County's Walk for the Animals on the Waterfront this coming weekend.  This event will kick off an auction that includes five brand new YellowDog Art pieces made just for the event.  Oops, make that four.  One kind of found a new forever home a little early.  It was too perfect a match to wait!  Hi Kim and Chad  : )    50% of the proceeds from each painting auctioned off will go directly back to the HSCC! 

NEWS: new homepage, new blog + new events

First...THANK YOU GEORGIA!  Georgia spent ALL day with me yesterday!  We started with yummy breakfast at Penny Cluse with a trip to the store for caffeine and then hours and hours of crazy successful work on all things YellowDog Art related.  We scanned images, we improved the homepage, we fixed links, we researched moo cards, and upgraded this here blog!  We also assembled a yellow couch (cute as hell, G!), rearranged furniture, made plans to shop and then had a late dinner at Tiny Thai.  I will spare you all the details of our trip to Tiny Thai.  EXCELLENT food as always but some of our co diners were beyond inappropriate.  Please, MISS DAISY!  NOT WHILE I AM EATING!  So, again, thank you Georgia.  For a wonderful and successful day.  Oh, and Georiga.  As another form of thanking you...I will NOT post the best pic you ever sent me.  Yes, the one that involved a finger puppet, your middle finger and a bad day at work.

Now lets get back to the new stuff!  What do you think?  If you are reading this, you obviously see the new blog.  It is not complete but it is getting there.  Like it?  Easy to read?  Easy to navigate?  Comments are wide open (for now anyway) so tell me what you think.  Sorry, the less than stellar digital pictures will still be making an appearance due to user issues  :) 

Now the new YellowDog Art homepage!

Ok, not totally new because I love the home page Georgia previously created for me.  We just improved it to meet my needs now that I am further into this process.  I love it!  Check it out, try out the links.  Let me know what you think.  The green color is carried throughout to tie things together (and because I cant get enough of it) and the font is fun but easy to read (and Georgia said it makes her think of my actual handwriting!).

The idea is that my blog and facebook will be the go to places for YellowDog Art news, artwork and (hopefully) all around fun.  Eventually my etsy store will sell my cards, postcards, stickers, etc.  Flickr will be the place to see all the photos that do not make it to my blog but might interest you.  If you attend any of my events, you might catch a glimpse of you or your pup!  And ofcourse the homepage (and all links really) are an easy way to find contact information for anyone interested in talking about a fun project, an art donation for a non profit or a possible commission.

And just a quick heads up!  The Humane Society of Chittenden County is holding their Annual Meeting on Thursday, April 28th.  They will be displaying artwork of different mediums from four local artists.  Yours truly has already dropped off her pieces.  They will be mounted on the walls at the HSCC, photographed, and auctioned.  The auction kicks off this Thursday.  I will post the link to the auction and the length of the auction as soon as I can.  50% of the sales will go to the HSCC!  My pieces were all made specifically for this event.  They are BRAND NEW images to canvas.  I took some of my favorite images that I normally do on my greeting cards and put a version of them on canvas.  There is a definite theme so pop over on Thursday evening to check them out, grab a drink and see the wonderful work the amazing people at HSCC do!

There are lots of things going on and I cant wait to share them with you as they progress.  Send me an email and let me know how you think things look.  Or just say hi  :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend.  Enjoy this weather while you can!

haul: BORDERS RANDOMNESS

I have been prepping  a bunch of larger canvases so that means I have been doing a TON of gessoing and sanding and gessoing and sanding and gessoing and....well, you get the idea.  Not the sort of thing that makes for exciting blog pictures.  So in an effort to me a teeny tiny bit more exciting, I thought I would show you a small haul from Borders from a week or so ago.

My large unlined YellowDog journals are done on official Moleskine Cahiers.  I often get them at Borders because I can use a coupon on them.  They arent cheap so I kinda have to pick a few up now and then when a coupon is available.  That allows me to keep them affordable for you!

So what you see here are the Moleskines, as well as a magazine I love and a package of what I think is supposed to be paint brushes for kids.  I had a coupon for the package of Moleskines.  The brushes were on sale and I will use them in a way similar to a stencil brush; buying them like this is much cheaper than buying actual stencil brushes!  The magazine is a splurge.  It is pricey.  VERY pricey.  But it only comes out maybe two times a year and I do not buy it every time it comes out.    So in this quick little fun trip I got a magazine full of techniques and inspiration, some colorful inexpensive brushes to use as tools and some Moleskines which are a staple supply that I try to always keep on hand.

Pictures of actual artwork coming soon!  NEW artwork.  I promise!

art supplies: WATERCOLOR PAINTS AND PAPER PADS

I have always been scared of watercolors.  I have no idea why.  I know, they dont bite.  I think it is because I know nothing about how they are supposed to be used and every time I try to even just play with them, I make a muddy mess.  Every time.  I guess I am feeling braver lately because I have been gravatating towards the yummy watercolor supplies.

Remember the sprial bound watercolor pad I showed previously?  I loved that pad of watercolor paper more than I thought I would!  The paper was relatively smooth for cold pressed watercolor paper so my pens work great on it.  And as watercolor paper should be, the paper was nice and thick.  Add in the sprial binding and I officially love it!  The only bummer is that there are not that many papers in each pad.  Only 12 sheets per pad.  So when I realized how great they were, I went back for more.  They are not cheap and I found they come in a several different sizes so I just grabbed one more 7" x 10" and a 9" x 12".  I have a feeling I will go through them pretty quickly but I can always go back for more. 

A wonderful friend of mine gave me a travel watercolor set years ago.  Maybe 8 years ago?  And it was so cute and so nice, I did not dare use it.  I am terrible!  I have finally given myself permission to use it.  And I think that paid off in  more ways than one.  I got an email out of the blue from my friend, Lois, only two weeks after making that decision.  We havent chatted in years!  Anyway...exciting on all kinds of levels  :) 

If you look closely at the pictures, you will see my newly found watercolor pads are the same exact brand as the travel watercolor set I was given years ago!  They are practically a set!  Cute, isnt it?!  It is about 4" x 5" when closed and has a strong white case.

It has a ton of pallette space and it came with a compact brush.  I think I am going to use a water brush but it is very nice to have the back up brush.  The water brush will be shown in a later post.  I dont want to over excite you all. But the travel set is a bit too nice for me to just play with. Dont get me wrong, I will eventually play with it. I promise! No more horading it! It will be perfect to take to work with me so I can do a little arting during my 'lunch'.

But that is where this set comes in.  Remember this medium set I mentioned some time back?  It is made by Paperchase and I got it at Borders with a coupon.  It was only a little over $2.00.  It too came with a brush but I still want to use that water brush.

But then I stumbled upon this set at Michaels last weekend.  It was the only one left.  It is just an Artists' Loft brand set so Im not sure how great the quality will be but look at the colors!!  I signed up for a new online workshop today and the artist uses a set that looks very sikilar to this one.  And ofcourse I had a coupon so it was about $6.00.  And it is huge!  It does not matter what kind of paint I am using, I do not enjoy mixing my own colors so the more colors the better for me.

Come on!  Look at these colors!  I have done a little playing already but I will save that for another post.  I thought I would introduce you to the supplies first and THEN bore you with my attempts at watercolor painting.

wip: THE MAKING OF A YELLOWDOG ART CARD

This work-in-progress post shows the steps in making a YellowDog Art card.  Well, in this specific case, a BrownDog card.  My Mom requested this for my niece; BrownDog started at her house before finding her way to my parents house and my niece loves teddy bears.  Easy peasy.

STEP 1:  The recycled kraft cards I use come in two different sizes and they come unfolded but they do have a wonderful score line.

STEP 2:  Using the score line provided on each card and a bone folder, I fold each card separately. 

STEP 3:  Next, I use a good pencil to sketch the image on the card.  I sketch it very very lightly so it is easy to cover with ink or erase when the time comes.  

STEP 4:  Now I ink the card.  I use a no bleed Sharpie to follow the pencils.  Because I buy recycled cards in a heavier cardstock weight, the ink does not bleed through and it give me a nice strong line.  When I am done inking the card, I wait a a few minutes and then carefully erase any left over pencil lines.  I find the cheap $.35 pink pencil topper erasers from the art store work best. 

STEP 5:  I use Prisma Color pencils for color.  They are very waxy and have a super smooth look.  The colors are amazing.  Some of the darker colors dont work great on these cards because they get a white waxy film after a while so I just avoid using the colors I find problematic.  The picture below was actually taken after the pencil step was done and I had just started step 6.  I thought it would work best this way so you could see how different the next step is even though it may sound unnecessary.

STEP 6:  Reinking the entire image.  Again, I use the no bleed Sharpie.  It works the best over the waxy pencil.  It really makes the image pop off the card.  The white pencil outline helps to but the second round of outlining with the Sharpie really brings back all the definition.  The waxy finish of the pencil can ruin markers but so far I find if I just scribble on a plain piece of paper every once in a while, I am good to go! 

This is just a closer look at the final product.  Sorry about the poor quality of the image.  My lighting was not ideal.  I really like how this came out!  My first bear.  After the card is done, I find its matching recycled kraft envelope and a clear cello bag for protection.  The celo bag also helps keep the waxy film appear on the rare occasion I have to use one of those darker colors.

I know, I know.  Printed cards would be sooo much easier.  But how would I get this exact look in printed cards?  Plus, I make my art to make art.  Selling my art and items with my artwork on them just helps me get my art out there to anyone interested.  It helps me recoup a small amount of the cost of supplies.  I keep my prices as low as possible and I do have a day job so I can do this for now.  Currently my recycled cards with envelope and original artwork are all only $5 each!  Want a YellowDog card?  Want a bunch of YellowDog cards?  Contact me and we will work something out  :)

everyday: BEAUTIFUL (& UNNECESSARY) APOLOGY

It has been a rough couple of weeks.  Nothing horrible - just yucky (for lack of a better word).  Everyone has those days where everything and everyone seems to be difficult.  I just happen to have a string of 14 or so of them.  I declare them over.  Seriously...over...thats enough already.  In the very middle of these yucky days, these arrived:

They were sent as an apology.  I am not really one that thinks apologies should be purchased but hell, these were GORGEOUS.  Oh, and the biggie...an apology wasnt even needed from this person.  So I decided to just take them as a thoughtful and sweet gesture which was exactly what I needed.  Thank you, my friend!  Oh, and thank you G for taking the pic for me!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I wish everyone a better week next week.  I have a friend taking her first trip to New Orleans, a friend taking her first trip to Florida, a friend expecting a baby, the snow is rapidly melting, I got my tax return so I can pay some bills (and maybe a little goodie or two).....how can it not be better?!