Time for my birthday sale!

Once again I'm running a sale for my birthday in my Artfire shop! I'll be 559, wait that's my Elfling age 28 on June 30th, so the sale is a good one! It's 28% off everything in my shop, not including custom dolls. :)

All you have to do is enter 28BIRTHDAY when checking out and it'll adjust the price. Easy as pie! (And now I want pie...)

SAVE 28.00 % On
All Items

Use Coupon Code:

28BIRTHDAY

Normally I run a giveaway along with this sale, but because of the headaches and glasses issues I talked about I'm really behind with everything, so I just wouldn't be able to get something made for the winner in a timely manner. I'll aim to do a giveaway later this year to make up for it, I think. :)

Elfsisters' Art Adventures, Week 8 - Waitin' on the post office. *twiddles thumbs*

'Tis week 8 of the Elfsisters' Art Adventures! This is actually a very short post because we're waiting on the post office. I've already gotten Ruthie's book and destroyed a page in it and sent it back, but she hasn't gotten mine yet. And since she hasn't gotten hers back yet, either, I don't want to blog it until she can see it in person.

So here's just a peek. This is Ruthie's book when I got it:

I have to say, hers is GROSS. It had chocolate or something squirting out of it, and I had to be careful how I carried this so it wouldn't get on anything. I already asked her not to do anything food with mine. I know I'll have to do food in mine eventually, but that kind of thing really grosses me out, so I'm going to use non-sticky/squirty foods in mine! ;)

And here's my book:

This isn't actually how I mailed it, though- I was going to, but the post office has been misplacing my packages (grumblegrumble), so I actually had my fiancé mail my book at the same time I mailed Ruthie's back to her, and he put them both in a box. Saved postage and it's not like I could really afford to buy us both new books if they got lost, ya know?

If it wasn't obvious, my color of choice is green. Ruthie's is purple. :)

And here are our books together:

I thought this was neat because even though Ruthie is one of my bestest friends, I haven't been able to meet her in person yet (we're on two different sides of the country), but our journals have hung out. I'm amused that we have vines on the same side, although mine are also on the top. Her name's flipped from mine, but the books are facing the same way, I think.

Next week I'll blog the page I destroyed in her book (as well as a secret message I put in it. Shhhh!). ;)



And STILL haven't drawn anything for the LotR challenge. I feel so bad about that because LotR is my favorite thing ever, but I just haven't had a chance. :( I'll really try this week, though! I've been itching to draw something from the "Barrels out of Bonds" chapter from The Hobbit, so we'll see for next week. With all The Hobbit news going on, I want to do stuff from that.

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Want to join the art adventure?
Ruthie and I would love to have you along on our art adventures! If you want to know more, check out out this post and if you're playing along, feel free to join our flickr group. Each week we do a different WTJ page and every month is a new drawing challenge.

Did you join us this week?
Below is the link list/blog hop thingy. Did you do the Lord of the Rings June challenge and/or the WTJ "mail" page? You have until Tuesday (the 28th) to blog about either challenge (or both), then come back here and add your name and the link to your blog post.





The Next WTJ Challenge
I'm not assigning a page in the WTJ since Ruthie and I still don't have our books, and I have no idea if Josh and Diana have swapped yet- probably not. So look for the next challenge on Ruthie's blog next Wednesday (the 29th) or so for the next WTJ page.

But hey, don't forget the Lord of the Rings drawing challenge runs until the end of the month!

Elfsisters' Art Adventures, Week 7 - Fun with a funnel

Hooray, it's week 7 of the Elfsisters' Art Adventures! This week we mailed out our journals (I'm swapping with Ruthie for a short time and my fiancé is swapping with my friend Diana) but before doing so did the "Make a funnel, drink some water" page so we had something to blog about this week (next week we'll blog the mail page). And can I say, this one was messy and fun! Or, rather, it was messy for me, but not for Josh- he took the more boring route.


This was taken before it became a cup- it's all pretty and normal-looking still. On it I drew two wonky beach balls (one looks like an Easter egg because apparently I'd forgotten how to draw a beach ball), two rubber ducks, a toy sail boat, lots of water drops, and my fiancé drew a water elemental (that wave looking thing). You know, aquatic things- er... minus the accidental Easter egg. LOL!

I used washable crayola markers in the hope that I could have some fun with that. And it worked out exactly like I wanted it to: messy and colors all over my hands.


This was as I started to drink from the cup- as you can see, it immediately sprung a leak from the bottom.


Sipping from the cup lasted all of about three seconds before it completely broke apart in my hands. And then proceeded to leak marker all over me. As an artist who usually has her hands and clothing covered in art supplies, this was fun and par for the course. ;) In hindsight, I should have waited for the marker to dry before taping it and filling it with water, but I've never been known for my patience.


This is the funnel when it was mostly dry- as you can see, the washable marker did smear like crazy and I had to use a paper towel to sop it up so it wouldn't stain everything around me. I don't mind my hands being odd colors, but I figured my fiancé's mom wouldn't want her kitchen counter blue. ;)


And here's the funnel flattened and taped back into the book. It was actually really easy to make flat again; the tape had mostly unstuck as I was drinking from it, so it wanted to go back to flat on its own.

The one rubber duck I drew you can still see, and the wonky beach balls are kinda visible, but the bottom duck and the water elemental are almost completely smeared. It's hard to see, but the first few letters in "Make" and "Funnel" ended up over top of that lower yellow blob that was once a ducky.

All in all, lots of smearing and blurring, which was exactly what I was hoping for! :D My fiancé drank out of his cup before doing anything to it- I thought that was rather boring, but be said he didn't want to drink marker. Sheesh, there wasn't much marker that got into the water while I was drinking it, and it's just crayolas.

I've found that Josh is taking a much different approach to his Wreck This Journal than I am. Where I'm trying to make it as colorful and randomly artsy as possible, he's just doing what he can to wreck it and plans to have no book left over when he's done. Which I know is the point, but I'd like to be able to keep this journal (hence why I'm not putting food into it like he is; I know there's a food page, but even for that I'm not going to use anything sticky. I can't keep a book if it attracts bugs!) and to me, just having it fall apart isn't fun. I want color and lots of it! Then a way to keep that color so I still have it in the future, ya know? I'm making a mess, but not so sure if I'm wrecking. Maybe I needed more of a "Mess This Journal" or "Smear this journal in too many art supplies". Heh.



And crud, I still didn't get anything Lord of the Rings done for our June drawing challenge yet! Don't worry, though- I really really want to do something for my dad for father's day, so I'll have something LotR next week. And if it helps my case any, I did also take my dad to see "Fellowship of the Ring" at the theater Tuesday night for an early father's day present. So I did get my fill of LotR this week! ;)


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Want to join the art adventure?
Ruthie and I would love to have you along on our art adventures! If you want to know more, check out out this post and if you're playing along, feel free to join our flickr group. Each week we do a different WTJ page and every month is a new drawing challenge.

This week Ruthie is going to be hosting the WTJ page and you'll be able to find the page we'll be doing next on her blog soon. If you're joining us, you'll be able to drop off your blog link there for your "funnel" page (or the LotR drawing challenge) once she gets that post up.

Elfsisters' Art Adventures, Week 6 - Though this be madness, yet there is method in't (geeky madness, of course!)

What time is it? 4:30... no wait, it's time for me to blog week 6 of the Elfsisters' Art Aventures, not sing along to 90s music. ;) This week for our Wreck This Journals we did the "Drip something here. (Ink, Paint, Tea.) Close the book to make a print" page.


I broke out the acrylic paints again, but also grabbed my fabric paints and some embossing powders. At first I tried diluting the acrylics so they dripped better, but that didn't work; it just soaked into the paper barely making a print when I closed it (you can kinda see that on the left page). After that, I just dropped some patches of the acrylics. Luckily the fabric paints squirted out much more nicely.

I did this in two or three shifts because the paint kept tugging the paint free of the other side of the paper (too tacky, I guess), causing the paint to rip away from the paper, so these dots aren't entirely the ones that gave me the final product.

And speaking of, here's what it looked like when I was done:

I think this came out REALLY pretty, but "though this be madness, yet there is method in't" (it's always time for Shakespeare, right?). There's a reason I picked these particular colors. This month I've been working pretty much nonstop on a story for a writing challenge; there are three sets of colors here, representing three of my characters from this current story. (Is it weird that I see characters and writing in terms of color?)

Geek out time!
At the center is Meren, my wood elf wild mage; a girl with power, but no control, whose chaotic magic generally involves the forest around her (don't mess with her or she'll throw bats at you). Her colors are greens and browns, representing her forest and her clothing and tattoos that blend her into said greenery. Mixed into her paints are dots of shiny copper powder and some green embossing powder.

Her colors blend into the blues above her- that's Kryro. He's her centaur brother (not by blood, obviously), scouting/border guard partner and her protector, and the only non-mage in this particular story (he'll protect Meren with every ounce of his strength but her magic frightens and disturbs him...). He's from her woodland environment, but prefers the blue of the sky above forest clearings to the wood elf's beloved dense forest. With all those legs, he likes someplace he can run. ;) Mixed in with the paint here is blue embossing powder.

Below (and intermingling with Meren's colors) is Phillip, a rather egotistical human Illusionist who's her antagonist... sort of. He and Meren have a very odd relationship and spend half their time hurling spells at each other and generally getting in each other's way, and the other half of the time almost friends. A sort of amnesia doesn't really help this. ;) At the time of the story, he's very showy about his appearance, wearing a black robe with silver runes and stars and keeping his black hair very long. But... well, this changes. In the story purple factors in greatly due to a magical backfire (lets just say he can't remove the purple), and he gives up his silver in favor of red, a far darker (as in evil) color. He switches from showy and flamboyant to mysterious and downright creepy, but that's mostly after my writing. Still, I wanted to hint at that, so instead of using red paint, I threw in red glitter and red embossing powder to hint at what was to come. (Just don't want to get too in detail here because my elfsister is already going to catch on to this far too quickly, lol!)

And here's a closeup of the one page, so you can see the texture and powder a bit better:

Needless to say, in June this page is still REALLY tacky and keeps sticking to itself. I'm going to have to keep wax paper in here so the paint from one side doesn't completely pull it off the other side.


I didn't get a chance to work on anything "Lord of the Rings" themed for the June drawing challenge yet, but next week I'll try to have something! :)

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Want to join the art adventure?
Ruthie and I would love to have you along on our art adventures! If you want to know more, check out out this post and if you're playing along, feel free to join our flickr group. Each week we do a different WTJ page and every month is a new drawing challenge.

Did you join us this week?
Below is the link list/blog hop thingy. Did you do the Lord of the Rings June challenge and/or the WTJ "Drip something here" page? You have until Tuesday (the 14th) to blog about either challenge (or both), then come back here and add your name and the link to your blog post.





The Next WTJ Challenge
This week's task is a bit different- there are two pages that we'll be doing.

Part 1: Close your book and look at the back cover. Yup, we're mailing it this week! A few of us are sending it to each other (Ruthie and I are swapping, and my friend Diana is swapping with my fiancé, Josh. We'll keep theirs for a short time, do the "Ask a friend to do something destructive to this page" page, then mail it back to the person who owns it, probably in a box the second time around, since the book will already be stamped and addressed from being mailed the first time), if anyone else joins in with this challenge, just follow the actual instructions and mail it to yourself. ;)

Part 2: Before mailing it off, do this one first! Find page 39, the "make a funnel. Drink some water" page. I have no idea how well this will work, but we'll be using our WTJ as a cup this week. Finish this, get pictures, then mail off your book.

Ruthie will have a post up on her blog next Wednesday (the 15th) for you to drop off your "funnel" blog entry.

The "Special" Pages
Don't forget, we'll be doing a few long-term pages during the course of the adventure; these are ones that will take longer than a week to complete or have to be done at a specific time.
These are:
-Collect Fruit Stickers
-Use this as a Test Page
-Collect the Stamps off of All your Mail
-Document a Boring Event in Detail
-Fill in this page when you are really angry
-Collect pocket lint
(I'm also adding the "grocery list" page and the "scribble with borrowed pens" to the long-term list because there's no way I could personally finish either of those pages in a week.)

Art Update - Trying to get jewelry and writing done when my vision is much like a funhouse mirror

Haven't been doing a whole lot of art recently; mostly I've just been restocking a few things for craft shows. I've been doing them pretty much every weekend- 'tis the season! Otherwise I've been trying to not do too much close-up stuff. I needed bifocals, which I just got this weekend and am still trying to get used to, so my vision is rather wonky at the moment. Moving my head quickly or moving my eyes not straight ahead means I end up seeing the world through a funhouse mirror. And my animals have a bad habit of getting directly under my feet- precisely the place I can't see clearly at all. Is that white fuzzy blob my pekepoo or did we get a new pet sheep? Is the black blob my cat or did I leave a pair of boots there? LOL!

I did make and list a few things recently, though!


This cell phone charm was a custom order for someone who wanted my druid one minus the word. Yay, leafies and trees!


My only newly listed chainmaille thing recently, a stretchy rubber purple and black bracelet. That's here on Artfire and here on Etsy.


Just lots of jewelry and charm things. The random small things at the bottom left are going to go on chain earrings as soon as I can see clearly enough to see tiny jump rings again. Arg, what a pain this vision thing is.

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On the other hand, I have been doing a lot of writing for the next Fantasy Big Bang challenge. I fell really behind with this from the vision problems and a respiratory infection that wouldn't leave me alone last month, so now I'm scrambling to get what I need done for the rough draft deadline on the 15th. Luckily my writing muse seems to love a rapidly approaching deadline (why, I don't know) and has given me 10k words in about two weeks. Whew! I still have about three scenes to write, but I have lots and lots of notes and outline, so I should be fine.

This story doesn't have a lot of plot, per se, but it does have a lot of characters; the narration switches between four: an inept young wizard from the past, a talented but unlucky Illusionist from the present, a wood elf wild mage whose magic is powerful but unreliable at best, and her centaur brother who is the only non-wizard in this whole mess. What ties these characters together is a protective magical item that keeps switching hands and causing more problems than it's preventing. Fun times. ;)

Since my eyes have been wonky, I'm writing it out on paper where I can see it better, then typing this up on the computer. This is a change because I'm used to just writing on the computer for the whole thing, but knock on wood my muse is fine with paper and ink.

The good thing about paper is that not only do I have all my writing in one place (that's the outline), I can also draw maps in the same place. That's a map of my kingdom there. Still working on that, too, so I'm sure I'll make a mappy blog post soon.

So yeah, hoping this post is at least somewhat coherent! I'll just be grumbling over here about needing bifocals at 27. If my mom calls me "grandma" one more time, I may throw a skein of yarn at her head.

Elfsisters' Art Adventures, Week 5 - Fingerpainting fun time! Who doesn't love a mess?

Welcome to week 5 of our Art Adventures! This time around I picked the "This page is for handprints or fingerprints. Get them dirty then press down" page because, darnit, I wanted to make a mess. ;)

I broke out the paints because this page totally called for some fingerpainting. This was my mess as I was starting- wee, I was all foresty colored!

Didn't use the markers this time around, but they're usually in the same location as the WTJ. This time it was all paints- used three colors of green (light, metallic and bright), a brown and a purple.

Next I painted swirls onto the palm of my hand:

The swirls were also used for the treetop on the page my hand is hiding. I used my beloved greens and browns for this page, but added in purple since that's my elfsister's favorite color and we're doing our books simultaneously. :)

And here's the finished product:

If you look closely you can see a semi-circle in green pen near the top of the right page. That was me trying to trace my cat's paw after the paint had dried. This did not go so well because she kept trying to either pull her paw out of my hand or plop down on the book:

Sigh. Any other time she's got her paw in my book, but this time she wanted no part of that. So instead she must have thought "I don't know what crazy Mommy is trying to do to me here, so I'll just sit on top of whatever this thing is until she gives me lovins and/or treats". And since she got both, her plan worked. ;) Why does everything I own end up under a ton of kitty fat? LOL!

Don't worry, the book was dry by the time she flopped down on it. It's so hot today that I had trouble getting the paint to stay wet even when I was painting with it!

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I didn't have a chance this week to work on anything for the Celtic drawing challenge, so I'll toss that into next week's Adventure post because I still have one more design I want to draw out. But since it's now June, that means we have a new theme for the month! It's... drumroll, please!

Lord of the Rings! And absolutely no one is surprised. ;) I figured this would be the perfect month for this theme because the trilogy is being shown again in theaters this month- I'll be seeing FotR on the 14th and TTT on the 21st.

If you're joining us, here's how it works: you can draw (or paint, I suppose) anything, as long as it fits the current theme. In this case, things inspired by LotR, characters, locations... whatever! As long as it's related to LotR, it's good- and yes, anything Middle Earth counts as LotR (so The Hobbit, The Sil, random locations, etc). I'm not entirely sure what the heck I'll be drawing, but I bet Smaug will be involved. He usually is. ;)

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Want to join the art adventure?
Ruthie and I would love to have you along on our art adventures! If you want to know more, check out out this post and if you're playing along, feel free to join our flickr group. Each week we do a different WTJ page and every month is a new drawing challenge.

This week Ruthie is going to be hosting the WTJ page and you can find the page we'll be doing next here on her blog. If you're joining us, you'll be able to drop off your blog link there for your "handprints" page (or the Celtic drawing challenge) by replying to that post since there's no link list widget this week.