It's Not Just a...

If you're in the Farmville area anytime from June 10- August 19, check out the Longwood Center of Visual Arts' show It's Not Just a...

Check out the LCVA's website for more information!

Notice the heart teapot :) :) :) So glad they're putting my work back up for a while!

AVAdventure Gallery Opening

"Wait, you mean we have 48 hours to put together an art gallery? You mean we have to collect the art, build-paint and prime walls, and hang it all too?"
It took us a good while to figure out what should go where, but the process was so much fun- and the finished product was amazing:

Opening night, we had an estimated 300 people come through the gallery to see the artwork, hear speakers, and enjoy refreshments. All in all, I think the event was a huge success!!!

Check out the AVAdventure website for more details for the week's adventures!

All images are borrowed from Jeremy Beker.. :) Thanks

Williamsburg ArtVenture Week

So this is exciting- there is going to be an AVAdventure focused around an art gallery. And guess who has been asked to help curate the show.. me!

The Opening Gala is Tuesday night from 7-11pm, and will be wonderful!

So what exactly is AVAdventure? Think about the best play you've ever been to. Have you ever wanted to be in the middle of it and play along? Well, that's what AVAdventure is! All of the audio has been pre-recorded, and is downloaded onto your ipod/mp3 player. At a certain time, everyone presses play, and the magic begins. Audience members suddenly become part of the 'play' and have an opportunity to sing, dance and interact with the characters. The experience becomes a journey that you'll never forget!!!

This particular AVAdventure is called The Heist. The lead creator of AVAdventure went to the City of Williamsburg to pitch the idea of a week long arts event to promote the arts and art district in Williamsburg. We got the Williamsburg Community Building for a week, and have art work from more than 50 artists! The catch- the community building is mostly windows, and we can't hang anything on the walls via nail or sticky. After a clever building team, and some awesome manpower, 6 walls were built for the event, and the space has been transformed!!


Here's my display in the show:

More information to come- updates about the week!!

Where you can find me...

So where can you come to see my artwork? Well, tomorrow, JUNE 13, from 3-6, I will be on Prince George Street in Williamsburg selling my wares with several other talented local artists!!!

What's new pussycat?

So things have been crazy, and updates are coming soon. Since my old computer has pooped out on me, I decided to make the journey to Best Buy and invest in a new one! I decided to stray away from Dell, and try my luck on a Toshiba. So far, I really like it in every way except the speakers a very quiet. I guess I'll have to make room on my desk! Who would ever thing to put a computer there!!!!!

Anyway, once I get Dreamweaver and Photoshop installed, I'm going to take on a new project- revamping my website! I've spent a few months working on the website for work, and I've had a blast doing it! I've learned a lot, and I must say, I think it looks pretty snazzy. One of the things I might do is try to switch over from Lunar Pages to GoDaddy, which will then lead to great turnover. I will switch my blog form Google's hosted blogger.com to Wordpress's hostedblog that will live on my URL. This will hopefully give me more hits and in turn, more business!

I'm still continuing to sell flasks- in fact I had someone order one just yesterday!

I also came across an old Singer Featherweight sewing machine which belonged to my grandmother. It's pretty fun, and it's the first sewing machine that I've ever been able to use without totally messing things up. I started by making a pillow, then moved to leather. I've been using a lighter weight leather- chrome tan- that was imprinted for upholstery use. I've made a bunch of really fun luggage tags, and I would like to make more by May 2- my first craft show of the season!

I've been curious to try my hand at wood turning, focusing on pens turned on a mini lathe. I think I'm going to focus on getting the supplies for it little by little so I don't make myself too broke on supplies. I think I could really have a lot of fun with it, and I have an idea to combine the wood and acrylic blanks to make some really fun and unique pens! If only I could win the lottery..... :)

More pictures to come (hopefully) but until then..... :)

Hops Money Clip Creation/ How to transfer image onto leather

So I had a recent request to do a really fun project. I never really thought it would turn out, but I got lucky! I was asked to do a money clip with a hops cone on the front.
Now for anyone like me, I knew hops was a brewing ingredient, but I didn't know much else.

This is what wikipedia told me: "Hops are the female flower clusters (commonly called cones or strobiles)... They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer." I should have known this, being in one of the main brewery towns for Budweiser...

So first I needed a design. I was told by my local beer expert (also known as boyfriend) that the leaves were particularly beautiful too. So after some research, I found my cone image (and borrowed some pictures of the leaves from other sites...

I bought a leather craft kit from Tandy Leather Factory, mainly because I'm too lazy to cut the leather myself into perfect shape. (those hole punchers make little hands quite sore!)

I traced the hops cone and leaves using tracing paper, and transferred it to the leather. For anyone not familiar, it's pretty easy: lightly wet your leather, place tracing paper LEAD SIDE UP on your leather, and trace! I use a mechanical pencil with no lead sticking out. The proper tool is a stylus.
I then used a swivel knife to cut around each line- including the veins of the leaves. For the primary and most bold of the veins, I cut fairly deep. The rest simply branch off of that.
As far as tooling goes, all I did was use an angled beveler around each layer of the hop cone and then under the smooth part of the leaves.

Next came the painting, staining, and assembly. Voila! Maybe next project I'll focus on painting and staining.

Any requests? :)

Drop Down Menus in Dreamweaver

So I've been working on the website for work, and Dreamweaver CS4 is kicking my butt... Most of the tutorials I've found so far have been for people who have no idea how to play with settings. My advice to them: have no fear- there is always Edit:Undo.

:) I need to remember this guy's tutorials!