New Stickers! Book plates for your personal library and more.

Do you ever lend your favorite books to family and friends and worry about getting them back? Consider adding personalized book plate labels!

I have created a whole line of library book plate stickers in several different shapes and designs. Zazzle recently added new sticker shapes including square, rectangle, oval, heart, star and triangle, and they are now 25% off through April 11, 2011.  Use code: STICKERSHAPE upon checkout. 

These would be great for special sets of books in your home or business such as cookbooks, art books, gardening books and more. Take a look!

Circle of Art 2011! Turning Art into Food.

Circle of Art is a wonderful local fundraiser hosted by the Saline Picture Frame Company in Saline, MI. This year is the 7th annual event. Local artists donate small works of art that are posted online for bidding. On May 15, a party is hosted by Saline Picture Frame Company where all the art can be seen in person and further bids accepted in a silent auction. All of the proceeds go to benefit Food Gatherers. 

The money raised over the last six years from the sale of these small pictures, sculptures, fiber works, jewelry and more has enabled Food Gatherers to provide more than 125,000 meals to local people in need.

If you are a local artist, consider donating something! Artists can donate up to two pieces and donations are accepted through April 29.

Check out all of the wonderful donated artwork! You can see my original purple cyclamen drawing that I donated today. 

 

Enjoy Your Own Art! Creating a Home Gallery

Do you have finished artwork hiding in drawers, on shelves or other unseen places because you haven't had the time to figure out how to display it?

I do! Like many part-time artists, I don't have a formal studio, but rather a nice little corner in our living room where I have piles of sketch pads, works-in-progress, and finished pieces carefully stacked on my bookshelf to keep them up out of the hands of my curious young children. This means that I tend to forget about pieces or tuck them away in a portfolio until "later". 

Well, I finally decided that later was now, and I wanted to see what I could do to get some of this art up on the walls here at home! I feel sort of silly when family and friends come over and I have to dig through my piles to find anything to show them. :)

So, I started thinking about what I needed to put some of my pieces and came up with a couple of basic points. I wanted:

• A simple, neutral color for frames - this creates a unified display and puts the focus on the art.
• Frames that included mats, glass (or plexiglass) and were ready-to-hang.

Recently, while out and about for the morning, I decided to stop by Michael's to browse around. Not one to be very vigilant with coupons or sales, I was happily surprised to wander in while they were having a 40% off frames sale. Yeah! 

I was able to find some very nice, affordable black metal frames that have a great double mat inside. I really like double matting as I think it tends to showcase the art nicely, especially the botanical illustrations that I have been doing lately. 

I chose to go with the double white mat (rather than double black) and found several different sizes to fit pieces I knew that I wanted to frame. I bought just two on my first visit and then went back later in the week to get three more when I saw how nicely they worked.

The frame backing is just like any photo frame with the little metal tabs that slide under the grooved edge.

 

The framing process took just a few minutes for each piece of art. I had a little trimming to do to make sure the art fit into the mat/frame. I did not even tape the artwork down, though you could use framer's tape to make sure it stays in place. Once that was done, I just replaced the backing and voila! Beautiful, framed, finished art, ready to put on my wall. 

(having a bit of trouble with the blog orienting this picture vertically, instead of horizontally, but you get the idea...)

Now what? Well, fortunately, we have a great open floor plan and lots of wall space. I chose to hang the whole lot on our staircase wall. It can be seen well from both the main and upper levels of the house.

It's amazing how nice it feels to have my own art hanging on the wall! 

And the finished pieces look so nice showcased in the white mats and black frames. You may notice that I have an oddball black mat in the middle. That particular drawing was a little too big for the mat in the new frame, so I repurposed an old one for the time being until I can get one that matches the rest.


Though these are not sealed-up-custom-framed to be preserved for all eternity, they look pretty darned nice, if I do say so myself. So, don't let your beautiful work languish in a drawer or in a folder somewhere on your desk! Pick up a frame or two here and there when you come across a good sale and in no time at all you can have your very own art show to enjoy at home.

Fabric designs - what do you think?

I've been having a fun time playing around with some of my illustrations and creating new pattern designs to upload to Spoonflower. 

The two newest ones are below - just click on the image and it will take you to the Spoonflower page where you can see the pattern, scale, what it would look like on various yards of fabric, etc.

What do you think? I would love to hear comments on the patterns, if you like them sized as-is or prefer smaller/larger? What projects could you see using fabric like this? I think of the obvious things like pillows, table cloths, place mats, etc., but also things like book covers and bead embroidery pieces. What creative ways do you use fabric?

Maple Tree Buds

 

Spring Rain - Daffodils in Bloom

Japanese Iris Blossom - Ink and Colored Pencil

Happy Monday! I had a chance to work on and finish this drawing of a Japanese Iris blossom. I had bought a small bunch at the store a few weeks ago and had done some sketching at the time. I finally had an opportunity to add color to the blossom sketch last night. I just love these particular iris with the bright yellow midrib and delicate, draping blossoms. So beautiful!

I completed this with my usual array of Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils on smooth bristol paper, doing some basic pen work with my Rapidograph 3X0 (.25) pen. Interestingly, the center part of the blossom that was still closed in this view really is a darker, more reddish-purple color than the lighter blue-purple outer petals.

As you can tell from my posts, I really like iris and daffodil! I also really love tulips, but haven't done much drawing of them. What are some of your favorite spring flowers?

Recipe Cards! Do you prefer lines or no lines?

Thanks to a suggestion from my cousin Jess, who is a fantastic designer and cook (check out her blog - The Saucy Kitchen), I have been creating new recipe cards in Zazzle. 

I have been having fun with variations on a couple of designs. For example, the garlic scapes card above has lines for writing on both front and back. Some cards have solid lines on the front and some have split lines on the front for ingredient lists. Also, there are cards with images on the front (like the one above) and some just have images on the back.

The beauty of Zazzle is that it allows you to customize so that if you prefer a blank writing area (i.e., no lines), you can simply delete them from the card. In the front-image cards, you can also change the background color, or choose to return it to a white background, giving you flexibility to match your color preferences.

I would love to hear if you prefer lines or no lines, or if you would like to see other illustrations on the cards that are not currently there? 

Feel free to browse around the new selections and let me know what you think!

Playing with Spoonflower - what kinds of fabric patterns do you like?

I've been having a great time playing around in Spoonflower and have added a number of my drawings to the public design gallery for my page there:

http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/ccreechstudio

Scroll down the page to see the drawings that are in the gallery. 

Click on a drawing and see what the fabric pattern looks like. You can see the rulers in yellow on the top and side of the pattern to see how large it would appear on the fabric.

Which ones do you like best? 

I am able to change the scale of the pattern on my end, so if you think something would look better smaller, or differently arranged, or larger, I would love to know. You can comment here, or right in Spoonflower at the bottom of a fabric page. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Zazzle update on Japan Relief products/royalties - fixed

I just received an email from Zazzle that provides an update on the confusion surrounding the initial Japan Relief donation issue. They have been able to fix the situation as follows - thanks Zazzle!

"Zazzle is deeply saddened by the tragic events in Japan and has been working very hard in the last week to ensure that the Zazzle community can contribute effectively in support of relief aid efforts. In the Japan Relief store, you will find hundreds of Seller-contributed designs along with an official "Support Japan" t-shirt. While $10 of the proceeds from each official t-shirt will be donated directly to the Japanese Red Cross, all additional designs donated by Sellers will also benefit charity. For each donated design with royalties set at 10%, Zazzle will contribute a matching donation in addition to the donated royalties.

Last week, we were so moved by the news that we wanted to act fast, but as a result, we found ourselves in a flurry of misunderstandings as to what our system could and couldn't do. On Wednesday, we confirmed that we are able to withhold royalties manually, so we will be making those deductions from each Seller's account by hand for all donated products sold between March 11th and April 12th. The sales will still show up in Seller accounts, but royalties will be deducted prior to payment and donated to the Japanese Red Cross.

We sincerely apologize for any confusion about community donations, and we want to reassure you that our intentions are good! Many thanks to everyone who has already contributed toward this important cause, and thanks also for forgiving our eager initial response.

Our thoughts and prayers remain with the people of Japan and their families at this difficult time.
The Zazzle Team"

Spoonflower Fabric

I recently discovered another print-on-demand service that sounded really intriguing to me. It's called Spoonflower and they print your uploaded designs on a variety of fabrics. How neat! 

I went ahead and created an account - it's free - and uploaded a number of my drawings. You can order test swatches of your designs to proof colors/size to make sure they look how you expect them to, and then you can post your designs for sale in the Spoonflower Marketplace, or place an order for fabric for yourself, etc.

I received my swatches for 6 designs yesterday and am so excited! They look fantastic. The picture above shows what I created. The fun thing is that online in Spoonflower you can adjust the size and set of the pattern. So now that I know my drawings print up beautifully, I (or anyone who orders) can choose a smaller pattern of the drawing or a larger pattern (up to a certain limit).

They offer 7 different fabrics to choose from and what you see in the photo above are swatches of the quilting weight fabric on the left, and then I chose the upholstery-weight twill for the African daisy, and the linen-cotton canvas for the daffodil (and that is a larger sample called a fat quarter.) I absolutely love the weight of the twill and linen-cotton canvas and can see lots of interesting crafting possibilities using my botanical drawings to create pillows, tea towels, bags, or even art pieces with beading done on some of the heavier weight fabrics. The creative juices are flowing!! What fun things can you see doing with custom fabrics like this?

Now that I have seen the proofs, I have made these 6 designs available in the marketplace. You can see my profile and available designs here: http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/ccreechstudio 

Happy creating!

Blog redesign - what do you want to see?

I am excited that my blog will be 3 years old later this year -- time sure flies! In light of the fact that 3 years is an eternity in web-time, I would like to freshen it up a bit. I'm starting to do some research and collect ideas about how I can best redesign and there is a lot of good information out there on layout, etc. However, I also want to update the type of content that I post. So, I thought what better place to start than with you, my  followers!

What would you find useful, fun, or interesting to include on an artist's blog like mine? What have you enjoyed in the past? What do you wish you could see more of?

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you!