A Scary Book........

Sometimes you come across a good book, sometimes it's a scary good book. I remember the first Steven King book I read as a teenager.....I just about peed my pants with fright it was such a page turner! This is a paper mache box that's made to look like a book. It opens to quite a suprise.....2 sister witches! It closes with a large button and black string.
The two are sister witches and the black cat are slightly raised from the background about an inch. The background is a rich collage of decorative papers, stamps and vintage ephemera. On the left side of the inside is a copy of a vintage bean bag toss board. Aren't those cats a hoot!

Opened, this piece measures 9.5 inches by 5 inches high.Even the spine of the book is decorated.
This Halloween goodie is available on the All Hallow's Evening website.

Halloween Buddies!

Even though Snooks the Kitty took all of the chocolate kisses, and left only the Jolly Ranchers for the little Devil Darla, she didn't mind because they were buddies! This 8 by 10 inch canvas is a mixed media piece consisting of painting, collage of decorative papers and rubber stamping. It's finished on all sides and doesn't even need to be framed! You can purchase it at All Hallow's Evening.

Bicycling.....painting.....scultpting.....gardening...

Good things come in fours!

Bicycling: I'm thrilled that my hip is good enough to have peddled 14 miles total yesterday.......6 in the AM and 8miles in the PM. Still hurts at night though but nothing Advil and 3 pillows strategically placed won't help!

Painting: Caught the painting in a collaging bug the other day when I did the Devil piece for Heather so I did this one last night and today and it's available on: www.allhallowsevening.blogspot.com

Sculpting: Let me introduce you to "Jake"! He is a big scupture of paperclay about 12 inches tall from tip of hat to base. He is fixed to the wooden base. He's holding a sign declaring "October 31" and we all know what that date means! He is an exclusive for Spooky Time Jingles and will be available on August 13th.

Gardening: Gary cleaned and braided the garlic from the garden. It's braided in bulbs of 10!

It's been a very productive couple of days!

Halloween Canvas.....the Process.......

A few posts ago I talked about the process of creating art. As I mentioned before I enjoy the process more than the finished project. I guess to me, the journey is more interesting than the destination. I just finished this Halloween canvas for a swap with my very talented friend in Canada. Here are a few snaps of the process........

It started with a sketch on the back porch yesterday in the scorching humidity and heat!

Next, I picked a bunch of paper for the piece knowing that the devil had to be red!

I then sketched the face on a piece of "pumpkinseed" (no joke that was the name of the color) and painted the face with acrylics and Twinkling H2Os.I then painted the canvas board blue with acrylics and collaged book text painted over with gesso and a wash of light blue paint, glued on the devil and crow and stamped on the Oct. 31st stamp and ta-da!

I hope Heather likes it!

It's Garlic Fest 2008!

The Garlic Bed

You know I love gardening just as much as I love creating works of art, if I had to pick one or the other, I'm not sure which one I'd pick. I've noticed on other artist's blogs, they too enjoy gardening. Most artists do have a connection with nature and if you look at the old world Masters, many of them had a deep affection for nature and painting outdoors. Well, I too have a deep affection for nature and up until recently, I've enjoyed flowers and tending to the flower beds the best..........that is until I discoverd the joy of growing GARLIC!




Here are the top 5 reasons I love growing garlic:

#5 It's insect and animal resistant (unless you have an Italian squirrel roaming your garden)

#4 It is so rewarding to plant something in October when you have pulled everything out of the garden.

#3 You get quite the yield....we planted cloves from 10 heads of garlic and got 110 heads!WOW!

#2 It nice to see something growing in the garden all winter and especially in March.

#1 It's good!!!! Fresh garlic is the absolute best roasted and spread on Tuscan bread!

Yesterday Gary and I picked the garlic.........

The Garlic King!

Amazon Garlic Girl!

The Bat Kids.........

Stella wanted to be a bat! Her parents were not happy when she wore the sparkling bat hat her aunt got her to the store, church and to bed. She had a pet ghost named "Melvin" she kept in a corked bottle and a pet spider named "Spencer". The block is collaged with vintage/antiqued images on all sides of the 1 7/8 inch block. Both are available at All Hallows Evening.

Stella

Melvin the ghost.........

He was a very serious boy with a comical pet bat, together they made a great team!
Garret with his pet bat.......

his bat, Desmond.....

PS- I've dedicated my life to the use of glitter........you'll see what I mean by this is tomorrow's post!

New Studio Station + award

My husband is a very skilled craftsman with wood. He does it for a hobby. Last summer he made me an awesome paper cabinet and this summer he is making me a new studio station. I currently have an "L" shaped table but the space for storage underneath is open and limited so he designed a new one for me. It will be 7 feet long with a Corian top spanning the 2 towers. He made it out of quarter sawn oak (wonderful grain pattern) and each tower is 42 inches tall (I'm 5'8" and I like to stand part of the time when I craft), and each tower has 3 shelves and 2 top pull out drawers. I'm so excited! I just spent the last 2 hours staining it in the beautiful hot Pennsylvania sun. What a gorgeous day to be outside! Next he'll spray it with a precatalyst clear coat.

I got an award from Marie from the Marie Patterson Studio, check out her wonderful artwork....she is listed on the sidebar of blogs to eyeball.

Now my job is to nominate 4 blogs that I think are exceptional and let them know, which is hard because there are so many I like! But here are 4 artists that I enjoy:

The Holiday Queen - Melissa is the Queen of Halloween creations!
Creative Solice - My dear friend Heather's artistic talent is multifaceted!
Miller Cambell Designs - Rebecca creates the most amazing folk art dolls, so full of detail!
Healing Expressions - Lani's artwork is very inspirational through words and assemblage!

Now, the four people whom I gave the award to, if they choose, can nominate 4 artists on their blogs to show case their work and draw more people visit their blogs.

Smiles!

Mr. Barnabus Salvator the Decorator

Mr. Barnabus Salvator was quite in demand from early September to late October. He knew how to decorate and throw a Halloween Party!!!!! Here he is on top of a 4 inch paper mache box in action. He holds a sparkly silver ball in one hand while the other is around the tower of pumpkins. You could say he's dedicated his life to glitter, eyeliner and raising minature pumpkins. To purchase him go to: www.allhallowsevening.blogspot.com

I'm leaving this post with pictures from my one flower garden. The bee balm is causing quite a frenzy of activity with the bumbles!

This isn't a bumble bee, it's a humming bird moth (it looks like a cross between a humming bird and a moth), at least that's what my mom told me it was! It's smaller than a humming bird but bigger than a bumble bee and very fast!

It's Spooky Time Jingles Time!!!!

Well it's finally here! Tonight at midnight, the Spooky Time Jingles Marketplace opens. Please check it out to see amazing artists and their creations.

Here are my offerings on my Halloween page.......

Here are my offerings on my Christmas page............

What is it?

Did a little paper clay action today. It started out as a pumpkin and morphed into something else, perhaps a pumpkin goblin? What do you think he looks like? Hmmmmmmmm, I'm not sure!

Nice People..........

I once say this bumper stick that said "Mean People Suck"! How appropriate, short and to the point and maybe not so pragmatically appropriate but appropriate enough for me. I've run across a few mean people in my time, but luckily the nice people have far outweighed the mean ones. Today I had the most delightful conversation with Dani from Ambitions Design (blog) and she is also the founder of Spooky Time Jingles Marketplace (launching July 13th) with the most amazing variety of folk artists and their works. She is the most down to earth girl and talking to her I felt like I've known her for years. I've found over the past few year that most folk artists are down to earth and not pretentious at all. They are willing to share their knowledge and expertise with you. Dani has put together a major undertaking with the marketplace she has created for folk artists right here in the United States. Remember, when you buy directly from an artist you are buying not only a quality one of a kind piece from the USA, you are buying a piece of their joy as well. Please take a few minutes to visit her blog and the Spooky Time Jingles site opening July 13th.

Another absolutely doll of a gal is Heather from Creative Solace. Now let me tell you about her.....two words describe her........."collage genius". I met Heather last year around this time when she purchased a Halloween piece of artwork from me and we've kept in touch since. She is a Canadian artist who is always stretching her horizons, taking classes and learning new techniques. Please visit her site if you want to be inspired by an amazing woman!

NEXT.........Halloween........I met this lady when she left a comment on my Halloween site, All Hallow's Evening. Kris' Halloween art is delightful. When I look at her work I feel like I've met my "artistic twin"! Check out her site A Nostalgic Halloween.

Well, now that I've introduced you to some nice people in my art world I'm heading outdoors to enjoy the beautiful day!
Smiles!