Blue things

My new winter/christmas card is now finally in my Etsy shop! .


Honestly though, I haven't been working much lately (besides packaging and mailing of course). Reading and crocheting is what's making me happy.
Breakfast lately has been a book and yogurt with bee pollen. Have you ever had bee pollen? It tastes like summer.

I managed to finish a wrap that I've been crocheting for about five months (small part pictured below), as well as start and finish a fancy little scarf for my mom, and I've just started a few other projects. So exciting! It feels so satisfying to finish things you can actually touch and use, drawing doesn't always give me that feeling. Also pictured: leone candies (I love the packaging. orange blossom is my favorite but I found a shop here that has a bunch of other flavors I've never tried), sweet brooch made by sarahogren, and vintage perfect attendance pin (reminds me of Rushmore)

Giveaway winner

After electronically throwing the comments in a hat, the winner is: dinosaurtoes! Congratulations!
(I emailed you at the email in your profile, but incase that isn't current, please email me your address)
And thank you to everyone for all your comments! I love hearing about everyones favorite animals and I can't wait to try some of those recipes (especially those saffron buns, yum!). I am going to try and do another giveaway soon, but I may wait until after the holidays, I haven't quite decided yet!

owl dress from Ephemeratopia.

Giveaway!

Good morning! I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

Well, I thought it would be fun to start this weekend with a giveaway! This giveaway includes a whole little pile of things from my shop, as well as a few things that are not for sale there or anywhere. The winner will receive: 2 happy holidays cards, 2 hand printed labels (one bear one bird), 1 "Two Friends with Mittens" print, 1 three birds silkscreen print, and an original watercolor, "Rose hips".

All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment here (tell me what your favorite animal is, leave a recipe, or just say hi!) between now and Sunday night, and Monday morning I'll throw the names in a hat and pick a winner!

Also, three new prints have been added to my store, please take moment to take a look!

I'm feeling happy because it finally feels right to bring out the ol' Sufjan Stevens christmas cd and I'm listening to it right now. (I'm going to try not to od on it like I do every year, but it is hard.)

Shop announcements!

So I have some exciting things planned for this Friday that will hopefully entice you to check out my new store! I'm adding two new prints that will be available excusively there.

I've also decided to bring back an extremely popular print, Central Park March 6th 1890. It's going to be a super limited run of 40. The original edition is sold out, but I really wanted to bring it back, but I thought it would be okay if I made some changes. So in this edition the actual image area is going to be slightly smaller.

All three prints will be in the store early morning on Friday

ALSO, I'm going to announce a giveaway here on Friday, so keep a look out for that!


Meantime, tomorrow is a Holiday here in the US, so I am frantically making two pumpkin pies as we speak!

Mottos

A few drawings I recently posted in my drawing blog. I stared a series of sorts, based on latin family mottos. Some of them are sort of odd and beautiful, plus I've been wanting practice some more hand lettering.


*I hold a wolf by the ears

Sketch book

Shop Update and New Shop!

I have some brand new brooch designs to share with you! I made some bird drawings especially for the settings so they fit the oval shape (I think I shared those drawings a few weeks ago). Anyway I am excited about them and I also though this would be a good time to unveil my new store!
All my new brooches can be found at Oh My Cavalier! on bigcartel.com.
Please go exploring over there! Currently it has most of the same pieces that are in my Etsy shop, and that shop will continue being open, but if things go well I hope to slowly slowly add new things only to my new store. Or at least I hope to only have prints there and just my cards on etsy? I'm just figuring this out at the moment. Hopefully it won't be too hard to drive business there.
I have a new print update coming soon though to lure you there in a week or two!

Cards Shop Update

It's that time! Well I may have been late ordering my new card, but I still have some cards left from years past, and those are now in my shop. I also have a new hand printed version of the card which is still at the printers.
here

here

here

here

Frost

Just doing some little drawings for fun, trying to get back into the habit. The drawing below is going to be my christmas card this year. What with moving and everything I was pretty late getting it to the printers so it's not going to be here until the end of november. Oh Well! Originally I was early, I was planning to do beautiful three color Gocco printed cards, but when I went to buy supplies I found out the price of Gocco supplies is about ten times what it was! I knew this day was coming but I guess I'd tried to believe it wouldn't. Anyway, I got enough supplies to make a single layer hand printed card with this same picture, and that will be in the shop sometimes tomorrow or Monday, along with a few other cards!

Hair 'em Scare 'em

I was so excited when I arrived in Michigan to find this book waiting for me! A few months ago I was invited by the publisher Gestalten to contribute some pieces to a book about hair in art. I have to say, before they contacted me I wasn't familiar with Gestalten (they are based in Europe), but I am so impressed! The book is beautiful and so packed with artwork! To see more pages from the book or to buy it go here

Riding the rails

Here are a few photos from the train ride! Most of the ride is though the wide prairie middle of the country. It seems to go on forever but I think it's beautiful. I had a little fun with the "pinhole camera" function on my camera, I like how it makes everything look moody. It actually was a little moody, it snowed in Montana, my first snow of the year! Needless to say the trip was so fun and relaxing, I hope I can go back the same way.



I spent today cleaning out my room/studio/packing, and putting away and arranging all my shop things. I'm waiting for some more of my things to come in the mail then I have a shop update!

Enchanted

I wanted to get some pictures posted from my trip to the coast a few days ago. The forest right on the coast is so beautiful there is no way to capture it with my camera. The best way I can is to shoot facing the sun, and that gives it the right feeling.







I'm going to be heading for the train station in a little bit. I'm so excited to make a little nest in the train compartment where I can just sketch and read all day, and watch movies when it gets dark. But, it's going to be a three day ride so I am going to be out of communication for that time. If you send me any art/shop related emails or Etsy convos please be patient and I will be with you as soon as I get to my family's house in Michigan!

Dahlias

On the way to the coast a few days ago we stopped by a gorgeous dahlia farm. There were over 400 varieties, so many beautiful colors!

Garden visit

Still catching up on pictures from this last week!
I finally made it to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden. I can't believe I haven't been there before, it's so beautiful and peaceful, with interesting little winding paths and hidden courtyards. It was an interesting weather day, pouring one minute, sun out the next. I love that sort of weather, and it made it so my mom and I had the garden almost to ourselves. Next time I go hopefully I'll have time to have some tea in the tearoom.







I just died over this tiny forest with a little mushroom growing in it:

A few pictures from the show setup and opening

It's been such a busy week! First my birthday, then my mom visiting, the show opening, a few nice parties, and halloween! Now I'm at the Oregon cost spending some much needed time in the out-of-doors (many pictures to come). So much has happened I feel like I should have more to say but I'm just too tired!

The Mountains and Hills Will Burst Into Song

I hope if you live in the Portland OR area you will come to the opening of this awesome show that I'm in, curated by Rebecca! I'm really excited because I am going to be showing some of my newest and in my opinion best, or at least my favorite work.
This Tursday! The opening is from 6-10pm.
Together gallery is located at 2314 NE Alberta St Portland, OR.

Leaves falling

Wow this week has so much going on! I'm in a show thats opening, my birthday, my mom is coming to town, various get togethers and parties, and Halloween; then next week a quick trip to the coast before I catch a train back to Michigan where I'll be staying for a few months!
Related to that I wanted to show you some in progress shots of some new brooches. They'll be in the shop when I get settled in Michigan. Also due to travel and show opening related chaos I just wanted to let you that after Wednesday I'm going to be putting the shop on hiatus until November 19th. You can still order things but they won't be shipped until after November 13th.

Expo time

Yesterday was the last great Antique expo of the year, my favorite marathon of endurance antique shopping! Whenever I get there I get so overwhelmed with amazing things that I can never actually figure out when to actually buy. There were many things I wanted, and a few were actually in my budget, but in the end I just went for my favorite thing and bought a ton of antique trade cards and ephemera. After looking at my pictures I guess the other things I was most attracted to yesterday were the old stuffed animals. I love their worn fur and funny little faces, none of those were even close to my budget though!






I'm going to be slowly adding all the ephemera I bought to my ephemera blog, but I've already added a few of my favorites so take a look over at Ephemeratopia

Birdies

I'm working on some new designs for brooches using these bird heads. I hadn't drawn a bird in a while (not in detail anyway), and I was sort of surprised I still could! It just goes to show you that as long as you keep drawing your hands stay in practice.

Framing

I'm so, so, happy with these displays I just made for my brooches:

I had the idea the other day because I'm sending some brooches to a retail shop on consignment and I wanted them to be displayed to their best advantage. They look so much better like this than just displayed in a box or something like that.
Anyway, everything just came together right! I really wanted to have the display match the feel of the brooches and I happened to find some silk in the perfect color, and the perfect heavy dark antique frame. Actually I found two, and made one for myself to keep some of my own brooches that I don't wear every day. (my frame has some little acorn looking things on it, so perfect)



I'd actually like to sell more of my brooches on consignment, especially around Portland. Can any of you Portland readers think of some shops around town where they might be a good fit?

By the way, I added some new prints to the shop. Exciting! Take a look!