I am going to have a vendor booth at the 15th Annual Sage and Songbirds Festival this weekend in the Viejas Casino Outlet courtyard in Alpine, CA.
I am very excited to be outside, meet some great people and enjoy the events of the weekend.
Hope you will try to join me!!
"Little Pearl" - Pearl Crescent Butterfly
Remember those mini paintings from the last post.
This was one of my favorites - it still is!!
"Still Life Red Flowers in White Vase"
Check it out in my Etsy Store -
After the first two Sculpey jewelry pieces I made, I knew I wanted to make a bunch more. But first the glass has to go through it's painting and firing processes.
So, this morning I pulled 23 little paintings out of the kiln after their last firing. I am pretty pleased - they all came out as expected. I have been focusing on using lighter and brighter paint colors and I think it makes the finished paintings easier to see and more beautiful! The smallest piece is about 5/8" x 3/4" and the largest is about 5/8" x 1-1/2".
No two are alike, but I did do some similar themes:
Birds---
Sorry about the glare in this next photo - just had the wrong camera angle...
Houses---
These were really fun to draw and paint. I was leaning towards a more folk-arty feel which is not what I usually do, but love the look and feel of.
These are my favorites:
I will be working on getting these made into pendants in the coming week. Looking forward to playing with more clay!
I guess I should tell you about my failures as well as my successes here. I had a somewhat major failure here this past week. I am working on painting some more bird pieces and had 7 more that I fired over the weekend.
Out of 7 pieces, I got only 3 usable ones. I have never had this happen before. I have had some paint colors turn a slightly different shade before. Or get a bit darker than anticipated, but I have never had 4 pieces at one time not only change color, but become so completely unusable.
Here is the problem - the yellow turned gray. And with these birds it is quite noticeable and unacceptable.
Not only should this Lesser Goldfinch have a yellow chest, but the flower is supposed to be yellow!
You can't have a Yellow Rumped Warbler with no yellow on him...
Robins are known for their yellow beaks....
And this Kestrel should have yellow around his eyes and an orange/yellow mustache.
So, between the loss of time, paint, frit and electricity, needless to say I was a bit frustrated. But, I am in the middle stages of completing these pieces again as well as a piece with two Magpies that I am excited about and 2 other birds as well. Hopefully these will be more successful than the yellow catastrophe.