An idea to promote Etsy and a bit of progress on my painting

Lately, because I'm so busy with other things, I've limited my painting to one day a week. Which doesn't mean I don't paint on the other days. I do, but I don't work on my bigger paintings. Because I don't have a studio and work in the kitchen, I need to cover everything before I can start dribbling and spraying, so before I do that I need to know that I have at least a few hours to keep working.

Yesterday, I started too late. So by the time I was really getting into it, I had to get the kids from school. I wished I'd done more, but I'm afraid it has to wait again till next week. Kinda frustrating.

Nevermind. This is where I got last week:

After looking at it for a whole week, I felt it was a bit too dark in some places and could do with some brightening up. And then my eye fell on my spray inks. Aha. What if I used those ...?

Oops! The colour was stronger than I'd expected. But since yellow is one of my absolute favorite colours, I didn't mind.

Decided not to use the face that was there beside the tree, and paint a bird instead...

And this is where I got. Not much further, but at least now I know which way I want to go with it. Looking forward to next Thursday!

And now for something else (read on if you have an Etsyshop please ....):
As I mentioned in my last post, I've been brooding on an idea how we can help eachother promote our Etsyshops. I started thinking about it after Maria was so kind to feature my Etsyshop on her blog. A lot of us have an Etsyhop, and most of us would be happy with more sales, right? And we usually have blogs and Facebook and Twitter (well, not me ....) too, all with different followers and also "people from the outside world" .... Meaning: people who are not artists themselves. Before I started a blog last year I had no idea there was such a thing as Etsy. And I think a lot of people in our environment don't know it either. Now that I have been studying Etsy a bit more I'm really amazed by all the beautiful and unique things you can find on there.

Sooo, to make a long story short: I think in order to make more sales, it's not enough to promote our shops on Etsy, we need to get the word out in the world. And we can help eachother with this so that it's a win-win-situation for all.

How do I want to do that? Well, the idea I have in my head, is that I create a separate page on my blog with a Mr Linky. The linkylist will stay up until the 31st of March, and in that time you can add the link to your etsyshop. On the first of April (and no, this is no April fool's day ☺), I will send you the links to 4 etsyshops from other participants. You commit to doing a separate feature on each of these shops during the month of April. One a week preferably. Meanwhile, 4 other participants will be featuring your shop on their blog during the month of April. I will let you know the links to their blogs.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I'm explaining this the right way. This is one of the times that I'm having trouble with English not being my motherlanguage. If only I could explain it in Dutch ... ;-)

But anyway, I guess you get the idea. So what I would like to know is whether you would be interested in something like this. It's free promotion for your shop, you have something to talk about on your blog, and who knows how many interesting shops you'll discover by participating..... Please let me know what you think.

I'll end this very long post with another oneliner

Linking this to Paint Party Friday. This week is the Paint Party Friday Auction Blog Hop, to benefit the Sandy Hook Elementary School. So you really need to go and have a look there!

Hope you're having a lovely Friday, and will enjoy a beautiful weekend. Thanks for being here! ♥ ♥ ♥

Artists that inspire me: Stephanie Ledoux

Today's artist was in transit in Dubai on her way to China when she emailed me to give me permission to feature her on my blog.

Stephanie Ledoux is a French artist, who calls herself a traveller, journaler and designer.

When she was 13 she started keeping travel journals, whenever she travelled somewhere with her parents.

She kept on travelling, and now has more than 60 traveljournals, which she keeps as inspiration for bigger paintings when she's in her home studio in Toulouse.

One of her favorite things is incorporating materials she finds in the places she visits. She is always on the lookout for local papers, old schoolbooks, locally made paper, journals etc ....

I love how she makes her collages. She has a very unique way of uniting everything.

She doesn't seem to have a website, but she has 2 blogs: the one she uses now (if you take a look now, there's a post from a trip to Yemen (I think) .... I couldn't believe the beauty of the place! That tree! Those dunes! Aaaahhhh ...), and her old blog.
She's also on Pinterest. Go check it out, there's so much more eye candy there.

And I got featured too today! On Maria's blog Cozydoodle! Go take a look there too! Thank you so much Maria, I really appreciate it!

And that gesture of Maria got me thinking. There are so many of us with Etsyshops, and let's be honest: the more sales the better, right? Maybe we could help eachother by promoting eachothers' shops ...? I'm brooding on some ideas, but they're not ready to come out yet ... ;-)

More about that on Friday, when I'll be back for the Paint Party!

Thanks so much for visiting, for commenting, for just being here! See you on Friday! ♥ ♥ ♥

Playing

Now that my Etsy-shop is open, I have the feeling I can relax ....  Which is not true of course. Now I need to promote my shop, because how else are people going to find me among the approx. million of sellers on there?

So I've been trying to figure out how it works with teams and followers (the new word for circles...) and admirers and favorites and treasuries etc .... A whole new world opens up for me and it's very interesting. I'm discovering all kinds of wonderful shops. It's nice to be a part of it.

Meanwhile I've also been playing. Finally finished another doodle, which I'm linking to Creative Every Day, where the theme of the month is black & white.

And I finished another miniature-painting:

I add new items to my Etsyshop almost every day, so go have a look if you haven't already ☺

Thanks so much for visiting, and thanks to all of you who have commented on my previous posts.  I'll be back on Wednesday with another inspiring artist post. Hope to see you then! ♥

Etsyshop open!

Last night I finally opened up my Etsyshop! I don't have that much in there yet but I just had to open it, I didn't want to wait any longer. Here's the link, if you have time please take a look and tell me what you think (even if it's bad, I can take it, it's the only way to learn .....  ☺).

Because of all the product descriptions and listings and getting pictures ready for the listings and trying to figure out Australia Post, I didn't get to paint as much as I would've liked this week. But I managed to finish a miniature painting and I continued on one of the canvases that I started last week.

And boy, did I struggle! It was such a long time ago that I painted the "Flora-way", and I just couldn't remember how to go about it. I kept rereading the notes I copied during the workshop, and kept looking at all the in progress shots of my previous paintings, wondering how on earth I did that.

This is what I ended up with last week:

Since Flora said: "in this fase you just have to work with what's working, even if it's only a tiny part of the canvas", I concentrated on the figure, the only thing I knew I really wanted in there. And I also discovered a big bird hovering over her, so I started working on that too.

Not sure what to do about the upside-down face with the eyes ....

So I just continued on her face ... Oh yes, and decided on another face in the upper left corner.

This is all I have at the moment. All in all I'm happy that I kept with it and forced myself to paint. In the end it went really well and then I had to stop because school was out ... Bit frustrating ;-)

In between all the Etsy-stuff I managed to work on another miniature-painting.

It looks a bit like another one I made years ago, didn't have much inspiration for faces this week. Maybe got an overdose from the 29 faces challenge, I remember I've had that every single time after the challenge.

Anyway, next week I'll start concentrating on boxes again. They sell really well in the gallery, and I've not that many left.

And I'll also keep adding to my Etsyshop the next couple of days. This weekend I'll send out my newsletter with a couponcode for my subscribers. So if you haven't already and are interested in this: you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Linking this post to Paint Party Friday.  Thanks to them I forced myself to paint this week, and I'm happy I did! Go have a look at their blog and see all the other artists participating.

Thanks for paying me a visit, and thank you for all the wonderful comments I receive every week! Hope you have a beautiful Friday, and a great weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥

Artists that inspire me: Cathie Joy Young

Cathie Joy Young is a painter from Portland, Oregon. I discovered her art about a year ago and was fascinated by her work.

It has a dreamy atmosphere, with lots of images that you don't always see at first glance.

She works in acrylics on wood panels, and also with acrylics and ballpoint pen. Which seems to me a rather interesting combination.

She describes her work as figurative with an abstract sensibility. She tells stories via imagery.

I love how there are figures everywhere, just popping up on the page.

There are lots of places that you can find her on the internet. If you want to see more, go visit her website, like her Facebookpage, have a look at her Flickr Photostream or follow her blog.

Thanks Cathie, for letting me feature you!

Meanwhile, I've been very busy in Photoshop, resizing and watermarking my images for Etsy, making new pictures, writing descriptions (still!) and generally trying to figure out how to do everything. Is it just me or is everyone needing so much time to do this .. !? Getting quite enough of it now! By the end of the week it will be up and running, no matter what! So check back in on Friday ☺

Managed to make a oneliner, and I'm also working on some new miniature paintings. Keeping busy ...

Haha! Love this quote! Funny thing is that it has happened to me a few times already .... I might be getting old ☺.

Well, thanks for visiting, don't forget to go drooling over Cathie's photos, and I'll be back again on Friday for the Paint Party! ♥ ♥ ♥

Mosaic of the 29 faces challenge and Liebster Award!

I had fun making a mosaic of all the faces I did in last months' challenge. It makes you realize how much you've created. The very first face I did seems such a long time ago.

Here they are, all of them together:

And just for the fun of it, here are the faces from the previous challenges:

September 2012 (I was short on time but really wanted to participate, so I made only oneliners):

May 2012:

And the very first one: February 2012!

Sad that it's over, but glad I have more time for other things now ....

And to end the challenge in a really lovely way: Maria from Cozydoodle rewarded me with a Liebster Award!

Maria also participated in this latest challenge, so go have a look at her lovely blog! Thank you Maria for nominating me, I'm honoured.

So now I have to nominate five blogs that I love,which is a bit hard for me because there are so many blogs that I love. It was hard to choose, but these are the ones I came up with:

Marianne from Marianne's Blogje: she makes wonderful cards and journalpages, but I'm absolutely crazy about her painted faces. Multi-talented and very creative.

Michelle from Pigment of My Imagination: love her dry humour and her wonderful characters, always accompanied by some "crazy" quote.

Anne from Kuvia Matkalta: very creative and original art pieces, often a combination of painting and digital art.

Joyce from Joyful Art Stuff: beautiful colourful faces in a variety of techniques. She also started a bead journal project in January and makes beautiful jewellery.

Caryn from Catty Cards: she's a "veteran" like me in the 29 faces challenges, I think she also did all 4 of them. She makes quirky digital art, very unique and special.

I hope these ladies accept the award and pay it forward. Please have a look at their blogs, it's worth it!

Thanks for visiting and for leaving your lovely comments during this challenge, it really helped me to keep going at times when the going got tough ... ☺

 That's it for now. I won't be blogging every day anymore, but at least 3 times a week. I'll be back on Wednesday with a new "artists that inspire me"-post. Hope to see you then!

Paint Party Friday: the start of 2 new paintings

Well, it's actually not really the start. There were about 6 layers on there already. But they've been standing there since the end of last year, so for me they feel like new ☺.

You won't see much difference between the 2 paintings at the moment. I'll start with the first one.

This is what I started with. I had a hard time remembering how to go about it. The last 3 paintings I made were from sketches in my sketchbook. These are Flora-paintings, meaning I am going to let the painting decide what goes on there. I doodled a bit on there, but these doodles don't mean anything in this stage, they can turn into something completely different. I'm turning my canvas all the time, so I loose track of what I've doodled before. Which is as it should be. Although I must admit I'm getting rather attached to the bird and the fish saying hello to each other.... They might stay ☺.

Still no idea where I'm going with this one. I see animals everywhere, so I might make a painting without humans this time. Who knows ... I have a whole week to look at it and think about it.

This is the second painting I tackled yesterday:

Just kept making marks on there, painting around the lines and shapes:

And on this one I saw faces everywhere. You might notice that I'd already drawn a face with eyes, but then I turned the canvas and saw another figure emerge. So I had to draw her  too...

Not sure where this one is going, but there will definitely be faces on there :-)

I also finished another miniature painting (10x10cm - 4"x4"). Love making these!

This will be available in my Etsy-shop as soon as I open it. And yes, I know I said I was going to open it this week. Alas,yesterday and today (I always wait until the last minute, very bad habit of mine ....) I really struggled with writing my shop policies and the descriptions of the items I want to sell. And taking some good photos to go along with it turned out to be much harder than I'd expected, especially with the really dark weather we've been having here this week. So in the end, I decided to cut myself some slack and open it some time next week.

By the end of the week, when the shop is open, I'll send a newsletter to my newsletter-subscribers, with a coupon-code inside. So if you want to take advantage of that, better hurry and sign up for my newsletter here. And don't worry, I will only send one newsletter a month, I won't spam your inbox ☺

Well, thanks for visiting, and for commenting. I love hearing your thoughts about what I'm doing and creating! I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday, go have a look at their blog to see all the participants. Lots of eye-candy everywhere!

Wishing you a wonderful Friday, and a restful relaxing weekend! ♥ ♥ ♥