Another Monday, Another Bracelet

Did this on my live stream tonight, and had a blast making it! It worked up really quickly, despite having to reopen a ring, completely un-tat a chain, and add on more beads when I ran out! My niece like the simple stuff, and I needed to figure out a way to use round beads, so this was the result. Love it!!





Have a wicked awesome day!
- Jo

Tatting a Lot

I have been pouring my energy into mastering tatting, a wonderful old craft that takes a lot of dedication, but which is also very fulfilling. Here is the bracelet I did partly on stream the other day.  It was a little floppy so I added a second round.  I'm so excited about how it turned out!  I'll be putting this up on Etsy once I get the pattern down.
Barb was at my stream on Monday and she and Pam both won a drawing, held in honor of my very first tatting pattern available for sale on Etsy!!!! :)  Yay for breaking into the tatting pattern writing marketplace!! Be looking for happy mail, Barb and Pam :)



Please follow our blog :) we need some blog-love.  FYI my art blog has moved and can be found here ! It also is in need of some blog love. :) Thank you! :)
Have a wicked awesome day!
- Jo

Testing testing 123!

I had a huge brainstorm the other day, and that was to download Etsy and Blogger onto my smartphone for ease of blogging and listing my artwork! Granted, using the mini-keyboard on my phone is not the most amazing thing in the world, but if it helps me with blogging, why not try it out?

So here is what I did over on my Starzart channel on Ustream the other day:






It is a sweet little Valentine's Day 4x4" canvie that I just adore! Hope you love it too!!! I have listed it in my Etsy shop--click here to check it out!!!

In other crafty worlds, I have created my tatting vignette at Keep Me in Stitches, a brick-and-mortar shop in my hometown of McCall, Idaho. Linda, the owner, has been exceedingly generous in helping me get set up and allowing me to sell my hand-tatted items and advertising tatting lessons!!! Here is the tablecloth I have been edging to go underneath my goodies.





I am super excited to teach this old and wonderful craft!!!

Well here's hoping this little blogging experiment works!! Fingers crossed!

Have a wicked awesome day!
- Jo

Wandering back

A sheepish hello from Idaho! After many many moons having been AWOL, I've decided to re-open our online portal to arty eye-candy.  I've been blog-hopping a lot lately, looking for design inspiration and techniques for tatting projects, and I am beginning to understand that blogs have their place in the world.  One of the things holding me back is the thought that I'm just an amateur writer; who would want to read what I have to say???  I'm an amateur artist; who would want to see what I create???  In my blog-hopping lately, I've come to realize that it takes all skill levels, and we're all constantly learning something new, aren't we?  Another thing I have realized is that once we come to adore someone's style, we just can't get enough of it. (Ranza, you listening???)  Probably she is shoveling snow.  We are having the wettest winter here in the Rockies, while the East coast is just getting hammered with snow.  Having been skiing only once this winter, and that on icy crud, you could say I'm a bit jealous.  I'm seriously hoping to develop a blogging habit, and with that being said, I'd like to challenge my fellow blogger to post.  Anything.  Before the end of the month. Preferably with a picture :) 

My tiny tangle

So this was a big challenge, or small, depending on your love/hate of punny references.
I did buy a Prismacolor purple 005 to take on this task,
At first I was trying to cut a tiny inchie then abandoned that idea and just went tiny on a normal sized page.
Here are the two I was able to do...

I may attempt to do them a little bigger.
    ~s

Submitting art to my local art gallery

This week I took another step on my art journey and went to one of the local galleries to see about how to submit my art for consideration!  A risky step for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I have no illusions as to my amateur rank among artists.  But all 23 of my Ustream followers, Ranza included, assure me that they like my work, so I am encouraged to just go for it!  So here is what I found out:



1.  It is a juried submission process--which means three or four "judges" will review my artwork, which I can direct them to by way of my blog (easy enough I thought with much relief...until I realized I haven't blogged since LAST YEAR!).  The lady said it's a pretty informal process.  They invite me to come in, ask me some questions about my work, then when I leave, they talk about me.  Nothing like pure bluntness.



2.  As is to be expected, they get a piece of the pie once my art sells.  15%, which I thought pretty reasonable, and certainly better than the 30% the other place claims!



3.  But of course there is a catch.  A fly in the proverbial soup.  It also costs $75/month to display my artwork in their gallery.  Ouch.



4.  You know what's worse than a fly in your soup? Discovering a hair right next to it.  So this was all sounding relatively doable.  Then she hammered the nail into the coffin of my dreams of getting into this gallery.  Too much with the analogies? Sorry, I can't resist!  So the kicker is that to have your artwork on display there you also have to work at the gallery two full days a month.  I don't think that's within the realm of possibility!  Tell me how that's supposed to happen when you already work full-time???  Double-ouch.



So thank goodness the other "gallery" in town, which is really an artists' cooperative store, doesn't require me to work.  Here is a link if you'd like to get a feel for what Studio616 is like:  https://www.facebook.com/Studio616McCall/photos It's a wonderful conglomeration of eclectic artwork and styles.  They carry jewelry, paintings, prints, cards, fiber art, plant art...Every time I go in there I just find myself wanting one of everything!!!  They do take a larger percentage, 30% for each sale, but they would only require 15% if I were able to work there.  I have an appointment later on today to take in some of my canvii.  Ideally, I would sell privately and that way no one would get their cut.  Etsy is an option, and there are other online art venues as well (but I think that might be a topic for another post!  Maybe I will try and put my next batch of paintings up on Etsy and see what happens :) Yay for sending beautiful artwork into the world!!!



I'll leave you with an image of one of the paintings I'm working on this week--and a challenge for my fellow blogger:  the theme is SMALL--think INCHIE! Style: Zentangle.  The only other requirement? it has to have purple--GO! ...you have 7 days from now to complete and post it here.

Happy arting everyone! 

~jo

Here goes nothing... no, it's something, kinda...

So where to begin, you'll soon recognize who the more experienced writer is of the two of us (ahem... not me).  Well, even though the last post says my name at the bottom - that was all Jo.
She's pretty awesome, her art, her personality, her listening and observing skills, her genuine-caring-great-all-around-kind-way of being, etc.  Just join in on one of her streams over on Ustream and you'll see that in about 0.09 seconds - if that.

Keep in mind Jo and I haven't even met in real life... yet..

Oh, and Hi! :)  My name is Suzanne (aka Concernedowl just about everywhere online - I am an Instagram addict, Twitter-lover, and Pinterest obsessed) - I live in north eastern Massachusetts and proud of it!

I am an artist.  There, yup, I said it.  It felt weird a few times I actually said that out loud, but I have come to terms with my affliction, erm, blessing.  Not schooled by anyone but Ustream, YouTube, blogs, books, and magazines.  I am also a CZT® (Certified Zentangle® Teacher) who needs to start teaching again.

Jo definitely said most of it best in her intro of the blog.
As if you couldn't tell, I didn't even really think about this post, at all.  I just wanted to put a little out there about me, which wasn't really much, but I'm sure I'll spill more in due time.

I'll leave you with a Zentangle tile I am almost done with.

In non-traditional Zentangle ways I purposely did make it look like a daisy because of who I am giving it to on Saturday.  And the star petal isn't really a tangle per se, I just really like stars and I believe the recipient does too (well, at least I'm sure she won't dislike them).  I either might add lettering or more petals, time will be the judge of that, I'm sure. I may be a little bit of a procrastinator, or a big bit of one, heh.

Signing off for now to probably putz around and not do things I really should be doing (hey at least I'm truthful, right?).

~S