COOL ETSY FIND

I received these lovely Cat Eye Operculum Seashells from Etsy (etsy.com for those of you who have never been there!) which were often used in Victorian Jewelry and they were believed to ward off the evil eye. They look like fake eyes in a way, and are flat like cabs on the bottom, so I can glue them to a surface.

They are not new, and I am not sure how old they are, but I am going to hold onto these and make some kick-ass jewelry or project/assemblage/sculpture with them someday. They were too cool to pass up, and the price was right.

You can find these on ebay, they are not expensive. I had never heard of them, and it always delightful to learn something new.

I have deleted some comments lately by the way, as I have been spammed with get-rich-quick schemes by doing surveys. Groan. I am not safe anywhere.

Oh, and now I am getting porn ads and websites from Germany. WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE?!Larry does not believe that I am not going on porn sites, lol. It seems even google is not immune to spammers!

Off to read my two new issues of Art News, OR, Running with Scissors...

patti

Business Card $%$@$^* -Up

This is my new business card for Catskill Paper. I happen to be thrilled with it, and just love the antique image that I have been using in my banners and other advertising for Catskill Paper.

I sent my cards out to Vista Print, ordered heavy 100 pt. cardstock, and they arrived today. Color great. Cardstock great. But it was printed all off center.
I can't keep these cards!!!! I opened up my Photoshop file and checked everything-it looked fine. So is the print shop at fault?! I have emailed them and hopefully they will recitfy the situation. AUGH.

Then I sent out a ton of emails to friends, co-workers, relatives, professionals etc. with my two new websites. They are not done yet, and I got some really good feedback about design, meta tags, hooking this blog up to the website etc. There is so much to learn in doing this. And to think, I have to learn Illustrator before the end of the school year too!!!

Oh well, off to eat a bit of food before I write my other blog, or do more web work, or maybe I will watch the new Netflix movie that came today. Tidelands or something to that effect. I think I had enough computer work for the day!

Patti

How to be Creative

I finished reading a great article titled "How to be Creative" by artist Hugh Macleod, thanks to a posting on one of my yahoo art/marketing groups. The download is FREE, and I suggest all you creative ones head over there and download it for reading. I printed it up as I hate to read long articles on the screen, and am handing it over to my photographer husband.

I have also found his blog and boy, he really has this Internet thing down! I struggle with it, but I have to be kind to myself and remember that
1) I have a full time job that pays the bills so I can slowly build my art business
2) I have a full time job - which is my art businesses that keeps me extremely busy all the other time that I am not doing the job that pays the bills.
3) I own a house, have two cats, a husband, two children and 1+ grandchildren who on occasion demand an audience with me
4) I have friends whom I love spending time with when there IS time.
5) I have to sleep at some point during the day.
6) I work out 3+ times a week so that I can keep my body strong so that I can keep doing all that I do till I am 83 years old. (that is when I believe I will end)

So, I plug along, learning, adjusting, changing, adding, and someday, I too will get there. It could be when I am away from home and the only thing I can do is work on the computer..and that has happened.

Off to the showers so that I can get ready for the day. The sun is shining brightly, and I want to spend a few hours painting in the studio while I have fabulous natural light.

patti

PS I just finished a few more cards to post on my CATSKILLPAPER.COM website. Today's image/card isn't on there yet, but will be uploaded soon. Don't forget to check it periodically for new cards!

We Do for Women

This is the second card I have designed for my WE DO line of greeting cards. I know I need to keep designing an entire line, but so far I have one for men and one for women.

I am awaiting the box of business cards I sent out to Vista Print for Catskill Paper, and if I like the heavy matte stock, I will get both sets of WE DO cards printed.

I still need to find a printer for my card line, as I don't think I want to continuously print and cut my own images for my cards, especailly if I get some orders. I have been having Catprint do them, but they will be too pricey if I decide to wholesale the line, which I will eventually do.

In the meantime, it is cut and paste at home, and I still have work to do on my websites. It is a long process, let me tell you. But if I do something every day, I will eventually get it done!

Off to watch a movie, Farinelli. The costumes look lovely and so is the music. You Tube has several exerpts from the movie if you want to check it out....

xxpatti

Business Cards

I took some time today to redo my Catskill Paper business cards and send them out to Vista Print to print on their heavier matte paper. After they come back and I see how the quality is, I will send off my other two.

I have decided to make two kinds of We Do cards, one to hand out to women, and one to hand out to men. I like the idea of having one of each. I think I am going to leave off the We Do text on the women, like I did to the men.

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions!

Off to bed, it has been a long creative and productive day....and in spite of the cappuchino I had earlier, I am tired. I will put on CNN or the Weather Channel and drift off to sleep hugging my heating pad. (which by the way, can indeed burn you skin if it gets too hot!)

Great Cat Print

I just listed this on etsy. It is a great antique print of cats either in school or in a courtroom. Matted, ready to go.

Don't forget to cruise by my Catskillpaper.com site every week or so to see what new things are happening. It is a work of art in progress, as is my Wedogreetingcards.com site too.......I have so much more work to do on them and never enough time!!!

I had to clean the studio today so that Lois can come over and paint tomorrow. Enough space is cleaned out to comfortably fit two easels, or one and a table top easel. The problem is, my paintings are still wet due to the lack of heat in the studio (I keep it below 50 when I am not in there). I was hoping to work on them, but it looks like I am going to have to start a few more and work on them as they dry. I am in there every few days, at then crank the heat to 70, but it isn't enough to really dry these oils. Ah, what patience I must have to work in oils. Thankfully, I have my cards and some other collage works that I can work on from time to time in between drying canvases.

Off to get a good night's rest so I can be ready for tomorrow!

Patti

Valentine Card

Well, my websites (especially the latest one) have been giving me a hard way to go as well as my computer. I could be disgusted, but instead I have decided to take some time off from it so that I have renewed energy to work on it.

Part of the wonder of life is finding out what you DON'T like ---- and this is one of those times where I have learned things about myself. Though I am seduced by the computer, I would prefer NOT to work on it so much and work more on my art. I need the materials, the kinetic energy, the physical magic and sensuality that happens with the paint or paper that I don't quite get from the computer.

So with that being said, here is your Valentine's Day Knave, sending you a slightly wicked Happy Valentine's wish.

Patti

To Touch or not to Touch....

To touch or not to touch, that is the question. Tis it nobler to muster bravery and put yet another layer onto work that has beauty of its own, or to chicken out and leave things as they are because you know, you can always paint that landscape more than once. Personally, I am loving as is. (pictured here)

My readers, please leave me a comment on this. Should I leave this piece alone (besides a few alterations in the foreground, and there is a part in the middle ground that drives me nuts.)or should I work more into it. I do have three more pieces, ok, maybe two more pieces as I also think another one is close to being done. The other two I know I am going to work into more.

Off to work on/design my WE DO website as Cimon has asked me twice now for the site's link. I may not have much on it, but I can sell what I have and explain that more will be forthcoming as the website grows.

I feel under pressure; good thing I have a four day weekend coming up.

Patti

PAINTINGS!!!!

The program is darkening and compressing my graphics for tonight just a little bit much, but I am too tired to care.

It has been a busy few weeks, learning how to use Dreamweaver, and now spending a weekend oil painting. I don't have any time off till next weekend, where I can crash for four days.

I work at a breakneck pace sometimes, but I love what I do; it is all done with great joy.

Stop over to my Eat Man Drink Water blog, where you can catch a glimpse of my favorite painting that I did this weekend, and read more about the process.

Patti

More Dreamweaver & CSS

I took the third part of my Dreamweaver class today which focused on Tables. Actually, Dreamweaver is a fairly straightforward and easy program to learn. I think my students will LOVE to learn how to work with it and design their own webpages as a multi-disciplinary project.

I bought in my new line of cards - the WE DO line of same sex wedding, anniversaray/romance cards to one of my classmates, Cimon, who is a designer in NY and lives part time up here. He is the talent behind his company FIGJAM which is a fabulous site to see. (I just noticed it is down for maintenance, but I will eventually just put a permanent like to his website.) Anyway, he LOVED my work, was SO excited about them, and bought a handful of cards to send to friends-so now I REALLY have throw something up SOON for that!

Off to pack for my painting weekend, and do everything else that must be done in preparation to paint for 2 days!

I think I will take pictures of the experience and post them here during the week.The artist, Christie Sheele, is a FAB artist, and I am so looking forward to learning from her. She works on black/dark backgrounds and mixes her paints with a wax medium (NOT encaustic) Oh, and yes, she paints beautifully with pastels.

Off to pack! patti

Computer Problems Suck

There has been a delay on working on my site due to some interesting problems. I managed to problem solve them and fix BOTH of my computers, which I found amazing. Imaging how dangerous I could be if I REALLY knew what I was doing!

So the website is still in limbo, but now the cut/paste/undo functions have been fixed in Dreamweaver.

But man, I could have put 2-3 hours of my time into a much better and more relaxing evening.

Now I am behind, I have another class on friday, and at the very least I can tell them about the problems I have encountered and the fixes.

Off to I Tunes to listen to some Innocence Mission and Luka Bloom. Something to calm me down and make me smile.

Site is sort of Up

Over the weekend I got up two pages of my new website, Catskill Paper The index page, and the printed card page are done, including my paypal buttons, but the handmade card page is giving me a hell of a time and I don't know why. I think my computer is on the fritz, and the reality is that I really need to buy one within the year. Hopefully my websites will pull in some revenue once they are set up so that I can afford the payments on one.

Now mind you, I am buying a site from Go Daddy, which will get rid of the horrid banners that their free site gives. I did not know that when I did it, and am HORRIFED at how it looks. But please stop by and tell me what you think-just ignore the banner. The Ephemera Museum is not up and will be a work in progress as I have to build the inventory for that slowly.

I have such visions, and I hope that with some marketing work, they will have a presence on the internet. I DID put a lot of time into it!

Off to try and get more work done on it before my episode of ROME.

Patti

PS Tonight's photo is of some of the papers that I am drying from soaking out of old scrapbooks. Very tedious at times, especially when a difficult paste or glue was used.

Ice Day

Instead of a snow day, we had an ice day.

It was splendid. I worked on learning how to get my images much smaller for the web, and worked on the Catskill Paper website, as well as sketching out an idea for my We Do Greeting Cards site.

Sometimes that is a problem, when the mind's eye can see something far more powerful and savvy than my working experience in graphics can produce. I do an awful lot of experimenting, and on occasion, there is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The two Dreamweaver Classes I had in the past week have been great. I bet students would really get into designing their own websites if they had the chance. I wonder if the school will buy the program....I know I am enjoying using it, in addition to all the other things that I have to do in relation to my business.

I have gotten some wonderful feedback on my greeting card line for same sex couples, wedding, romance etc.

I look to each day as an adventure and I am learning as I go. I am most happy when I am in the thick of it.

Patti

PS image is my studio during the ice storm. I did not set foot in it all day. Plenty of inside work to keep me busy!