merry christmas!

merry christmas, everyone!  i hope that you have a peaceful, relaxing holiday!!

necklaces!!

these are some necklaces i made this weekend.  they are all made with vintage buttons, beads, and found objects.  two of them have tiny princess watch cases in the mix.  the little frames are from a company who no longer makes them.  i have used vintage ephemera inside, but you can take them apart and add your own images if you'd like (same with the watch cases).  there are a few parts that aren't vintage, but i really tried to not make them look like every other piece of jewelry you see.  they are all strung on leather cord, which is knotted at the top so you can make them the length you like.  i'm gonna put them in the shop today.  there are others besides what i'm showing here.  they are $22 each.  what a deal!!

finally, time to paint!

i spent the day at the shop yesterday.  it was a good day to paint.  i was done with the monthly paperwork early, so played around with some gouache.  this is what i came up with.  gouache is hard to paint with when you are layering.  the under layers sometimes lift when you paint on top of them.  so i usually save this kind of painting for regular acrylics. i have been getting a bit carried away with the under-drawing lately.  it's something i never did before, but it seems like it has crept into my work slowly.  i think it tends to leave out the freshness of the painting.  so on this one i did no drawing whatsoever.  just put the values in the right places.  i always told my students that painting is like drawing with blobs.  get the blobs in the right order, and you have a face!!  it feels good to be free.  oh, and this only took me about 20 minutes!!

time to finish up the christmas shopping.  tomorrow is my deadline.