Paper Airplane and Repeating Chevron Template

Free black and white templates to download and use. I use them to make designs in Spoonflower, for masking off areas in painting, card making....and more. Right click to view and copy.

Assignements for 'writers block'

One of my friends asked me recently where I get all my artistic ideas from. This is really a difficult question to answer because there are so many places and things that inspire me. I scan the internet daily researching current projects and whenever I see something I like I make notes about it in Photoshop, or Microsoft Word. The documents get saved in an inspirations folder. I also use a sketch book to draw, or the notepad and camera on my cell phone to take notes as well.When I need an idea I review my inspirations and then use my favorite ones to create something. I also look for materials and inspirations at thrift stores, antique shops, and my day to day life. Being an artist is a constant hunt for ideas, and when you have been doing it for a while it becomes a habit.

Unfortunatly, every artist is prone to 'writer's block'. Today I have a very bad case of it. When this happens I either give myself a break or an assignment. A full day of staying away from art projects and materials can refresh your mind. Sometimes I need up to a week to refresh my creativity, but most of the time giving myself a simple art assignment works. Assignments are meant to shake things up a bit  and make me think. Past assignments have consisted of the following.
1) Learn to use different materials or tools.
2) Choose an inspiration at random and make a spin off of it, or choose 2 difrent inspirations and combine them somehow.
My sister, Sharon, has a good one for this that she showed me recently.  Modernize William Morris Wallpaper. Here is her solution.

Isn't it Fab! The drops on the paper to the left are metallic. You can't see it well in my scan.

3) Spend the day researching an artist, genra, or favorite art related website(s).
4)  Revisit an completed project and find another way to use it or renovate it.
5) Unearth an old abandoned or on going project and try to make progress on it (I have lots of these lying around :P).
6) Pick up a craft kit from the store and put your own twist on it by using the materials in a different way or adding your own material or ideas to it. (This one can be fantastic or horribly disastrous. Either way you learn something valuable from it.)

Today I visited number 4.  The project I choose to 're-do' was actually my most recent one for my Spoonflower shop;  Peeling Pyrenees Planes.

I re-used the paper planes to create these (Physics of Flight). That's my own horrible handwriting in the background:

and the repeating paint peel texture I created for these (Paint Peel Chevrons)

 The colors are from the Pantone Spring 2012 palette. Hmmmm I actually like these tiled this way too......Have to make another with all 3 colors now XD.
Back to work!

It's good to be home! Promised Chicken Art

It's good to be home, off the road, and back on a regular schedule! Syracuse NY was cold but thankfully it did not snow much while we were there (though Lily would have loved a blizzard and was sad there was not enough to make a snowman). So now I'm back to work........

As promised, I'm showing you my favorite ephemera find from my road trip. The images below come from two Park and Pollard Co. Year Book and Almanac 1916. These are the most adorable chickens I have ever seen! They would be a cute embroidery project! There are more cute images in the Almanac, but I'm holding back on them till I release the set for sale in my etsy store.
Feel free to copy them. The scans will need extensive cleaning. The pages are so thin that the image from the reverse page shows through in the scans. Larger images can be accessed from my flicker account.
As with the last set of images I gave away, this set will lose it's public status after February 1st. So download them before they disappear.

Final day to download beautiful Chrysanthmum Bookplate Scans from my Flicker Account!

It's the final day to grab these beautiful book plates from my flicker account, for free! By January 2nd they will only be available in small resolution (size) format here on my blog.

Visit my flicker account and download them before I revoke their public status. Once they are gone I will slowly begin cleaning them and prepping them for sale in my Etsy and Melyah digital shops.
No guarantees on when they will appear in my shop. I have a ton of projects stacking up as I type. My holiday visit to Syracuse NY has turned up some wonderful ephemera from the local antique mall, Syracuse Antiques Exchange on N. Salina Street. I must mention that the folks there are equally wonderful. If you have a chance to visit Syracuse stop by and visit them! I'll post more on my favorite find from there later this week...it's cute and chicken related. XD

Barbie Parts for Christmas!

Sounds strange but all I really want for Christmas is Barbie Parts......so I can wear themas jewelry. XD
I found some fabulous jewelry by Margo Lang (post by LA Weekley Blogs, image from there as well) while reading art articles online. It's an old post, so I hope the artist is still producing her work, but the images are priceless.
As a child I be-headed my barbies and floated their heads in food coloring all in the name of fashion (the food coloring was supposed to dye their hair). I also drew on them with permanent marker, mix and matched their body parts, and cut their hair. Margo's jewelry makes me reminisce of my contentious relationship with the perfectly, imperfect Barbie.

She has an Etys Shop too but it's closed for vacation. ReMembering Barbie. I hope it's not a permanant one.
'Hello Margo....are you there?'.....