My First Craft Show pics!!!

This last April was my very first craft show that I participated in. At the show, my friend Deanna took some pics with her camera for me. Yes, it's been awhile since April, but it's better late than never. So here are the photos. The pic above is me with my creations.

The white case in the photo above displayed my Artful Pen collection. I recently purchased an acrylic displayer for my pens. I bought it for $10, at a Hallmark store going out of business. What a bargain! I don't have a pic of it yet.

When I look at these pics, I think of all of the ways I want to improve the "merchandising" of my work. Since my first show I found some new display fixtures from a couple of local gift shops going out of business. I'm so glad that I was able to find a tabletop spinner to hang my hand-made pins on. It will look so much better than having them just laying flat on the table. I also found a nice floor spinner to hang my Petite Purses on. Yay! Click here to see the pics of my Petite Purse display spinner.

Up near the top center of the photo stands my Bride and Groom Recyc-a-lite penguins, that I customize. Below the Bride and Groom are my Recyc-a-lite bunny and chick sculptures.

The framed print is a giclee print of one of my watercolors. I had a raffle prize basket with some Easter treats and a Recyc-a-lite chick sculpture.

I was fortunate to have three helpers for my craft show booth. Unfortnately, it was not too busy, so we didn't have too many customers to wait on. In the photo above are Pat, Renee and myself. Renee was looking at my necklace that I was wearing that my sister, Sue, made for me. And my third helper, Deanna, is taking the photo of us.

Here's one of my Recyc-a-lite Chick sculptures!!!

And here's one of my favorite pics of my Recyc-a-lite bunnies.

A couple of my Recyc-a-lite penguin sculptures.

And last but not least, my ladybug sculptures.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my first craft show pics. My second craft show will be at the end of November and I'm hoping that my "merchandising" skills will be more effective then. I'm busy getting more pieces done for the November show. Talk to you later! :-)

Life of an Artful Pen from beginning to end, part 3 the "finale"

Ta-da, it's the "finale" of my Artful Pens in process series. Now you can see my Bee Artful Pens "buzzing" through my blog in living color. But first things first. My last entry ended with the process of mold-making. Now I'll discuss what happens after the molds and castings are made.

The photo above shows my bee pieces attached to the pen clip with some strong glue. Note, the pen clip was first covered with a layer of Apoxie Sculpt to ensure a good foundation to build my design upon. And the beauty of Apoxie Sculpt is that it adheres to itself and beomes a "solid" piece after being placed on another piece. This characteristic of Apoxie Sculpt ensures that my design is solidly attached to the pen clip.

After I attach the bees to the pen clip with glue and I patiently wait for the glue to set, I go back and fill in any "open" areas with some Apoxie Sculpt. To help smooth out the Apoxie Sculpt, I use some water on my fingertips. This can be a sloppy/drippy process. If I get any drops of water mixed with some Apoxie Sculpt on the pen surface, it will be permanently be there once it's cured. And that's not the result I want to end up with. Thus, I use a clear sheet of plastic beneath the pen clip to help prevent drippy drops from messin' up my pen surface. Another method I recently used to prevent this messy problem is using a coat of liquid mask on the pen cap surface. It's a bit smelly, but works pretty nicely and after I'm done with the pen, the liquid mask peels away. You can see the liquid mask "in action" in the next couple of photos. That gummy yellow looking surface is the liquid mask safely protecting the pen surface.

There's the liquid mask on the pen cap of a bee piece that just went under the Dremel treatment. I try to clean up and smooth out the surface of my pieces when needed. And my Dremel stone grinding bit works wonderfully to tackle this cleaning task.

In the photo above, I used a yellow colored Apoxie, to touch up areas on the bees. Yes, Apoxie Sculpt comes in a few different colors, but my preference is using the neutral gray color for most of my work.

After the Dremeling is completed, it's time to put a coat of gesso on the surface. This helps me see if there are any remaining areas that need to be cleaned. Plus, it provides a nice surface/foundation to start painting.

So, now comes the fun part, the painting. The pens go from this:

. . . to this, pens with a colorful coat of paint . . .

. . . and finally, pens coated with some glaze to protect the painted surface.

What pen design is your favorite, A, B, C or D? Please comment below.

One other thing I wanted to share is that one of my spotlights that I created at the ByHand site is featured at the ByHand Gallery blog. Yay!!! Stop by and check it out. I created a spotlight of some the adorable and colorful items from some of my "hearted" Etsy stores.

Life of an Artful Pen from beginning to end, part 1

I wanted to try to give you a glimpse into how I make my Artful Pens.

So here goes.

The photo above shows 4 of my pens at different stages of it's "life." Pen "A" is the pen before it is embellished, when it is "born." Pen "B" is what the pen looks like after I add the first round of Apoxie Sculpt. During this phase, I want to make sure the pen clip is completely hidden from view. This also gives me a better foundation to build my designs off of. You may notice that I also attached something to the top of the pen cap. This is my little ladybug, which is my "mascot"/theme for my business and my line of work. Within the ladybug I inscribe my initials "CL." Pen "C" is at the stage when I attach my design to the pen itself. And Pen "D" is when my design is coated with a layer of gesso just before painting.

The first photo shows a pen with balls of Apoxie Sculpt. I measure out equal parts of part A and part B of Apoxie Sculpt and then mix both parts together for at least two minutes to ensure that it is mixed thouroughly. If it is not mixed thouroughly, it won't cure/harden properly, not fun. The second photo shows my pen along with a few original pieces made from polymer clay. These "originals" will be used to make silicone molds.

The two photos above show how I prepare my pieces to be made into molds. I use either clear pieces plastic or thin pieces of cardboard that I save from packaging. There's nothing more exciting than to have a package that can be used to help you out with your projects. I prefer using the plastic since you can see through it. Anyway, I get my plastic and cardboard stash and find sizes that will work well for each piece. Then I grab the good ol' glue gun and add a dollop of glue to my piece and carefully position it on the plastic backing.

Using the backing helps to achieve an "even" edge to the mold. And when I say "even" I use the term very loosely. The photo above shows a few pieces all ready to be molded with silicone.

Stay tuned to my next blog post when I show how I make the molds from silicone.

A Nice Feature at the Hazelnut Cove Blog & Some New Projects

Sunday at the Hazelnut Cove Blog was kind to feature me at her beautiful blog. Her blog has a nice and airy feel to it, please stop by her blog and see for yourself. She did a wonderful job at describing my artwork and my Etsy shop. Plus, I answered some questions provided by Sunday, so you can learn a little bit more about me and my work. Thank you, Sunday for featuring my work. Your compliments about my work are very much appreciated. Reading what you said makes me smile and blush. Oh, and please stop by Sunday's profile at the ByHand website. She is also a fellow "ByHander" like myself. It's a wonderful online community of crafters and I'm so happy and thankful to have found such nice people, such as Sunday, at the ByHand site.

Ahhh, today I was so relaxed and contented while working on some new pieces. I worked on some new ideas out of polymer clay. I took a photo of some of the newest in polymer clay form. Hmmm....maybe I will make them into Artful Pens or maybe a pin or a magnet or maybe one of each and make a matching set. It's so wonderful to thouroughly enjoy time spent creating and working with your hands. I'm also working on painting my new Bumble Bee pen designs too, so James can buy one for Birdy. Some new pics of my Bumble Bee pens all painted in full color should be buzzing into my blog soon. Don't miss it!

It brings me such joy to sculpt and paint. Today was a good day.

A shoe, some watermelon slices, citrus slices, eyewear and an "old school" rotary telephone sculpted in polymer clay. Now I need to get the good ol' sandpaper and Dremel to shape and define them a little more. I love to Dremel my pieces. Fun, fun, fun! :-)

Have a good day and weekend everyone!

Some Designs in the Works & a little "Idol" chatter

I'm working on some new pen designs right now. Currently I'm getting ready to paint 4 Bumble Bee pen designs. I also have an Apple Design and Unicorn Design in the beginning stages of design for my line of Artful Pens. The four bee designs are shown below. Not too attractive looking at this point, but that's where the magic of color and paint comes in. Once they are painted there's a whole new life brought forth, they will be trasformed from dull to "wonder"ful soon.

My Unicorn and Apple designs are first made with Polymer clay as shown in these photos. The next step will be creating a hand-made silicone mold from each piece and then casting them with my favorite medium, Apoxie Sculpt.

My Apple design shown above needs to be cleaned up a little with some sanding and/or Dremeling. Yay, power tools!!! Each piece is separate, so I will need to attach them all together. I may try drilling a small hole in each piece and connect them with a small wire in each drilled section. This will help keep them together when I make a mold from it.

And now for a little idle chatter, oh, I mean "Idol" chatter. Tonight is going to be a tense night in the world of American Idol. The competition is so tight this season. Any of the three have a good chance of making it to the finale next week. It is going to be a little sad next week after Idol is done for another season and I won't be able to see my fave, Danny singing on stage each week. I guess I will need to keep busy working on my crafts and wait until Idol returns next year. However, I don't know how much I will enjoy next season, after having someone so talented from my home state this year. It took 8 seasons of Idol for a Wisconsinite to make it on Idol. So exciting!

There's Renee with a "paper" Danny while we were waiting for the concert at the Summerfest grounds. We enjoyed our Ga-Ga for Gokey Day! :-)

Danny did a wonderful job last night. "You Are So Beautiful" sounded amazing and a "masterclass" as Simon noted. I sure hope he and Kris are the two finalists. Both of them have a more universal sound in their voices and music versus Adam, who tends to be on the screechy side. I know a lot of people love Adam and his music and his style, but not me. I don't care for his high-pitched voice. The sound makes me uneasy, like a blaring siren. No thanks! I voted for Danny tons of times last night. Can you guess how many times?

Last Friday some of us at the Danny Gokey Day concert were discussing Danny's universal appeal. A couple of people we talked to mentioned that they thought that Danny has a larger fan base than Adam. And they both did not care for his screechy sounding voice. Out of what I've read it sounds like there are a lot of people who do not care for his voice. The people also noted how Danny has never been in the bottom three all season. Way to go Danny! Go, Go Gokey! :-)

Burned out bulbs with a "Bright Future" & more!

This week I went to a Recycling Center to pick up some burned out light bulbs for my Recyc-a-lite sculptures. I found out about getting light bulbs from the Auburn Recycling Center in my local Freecycle network. I was so happy to hear of someone offering an unlimited supply of bulbs. Thank you Gerda. Yay! Since some of the bulbs were dirty I hosed them down outside in the beautiful sunshine today. After washing them I thought, "These dirty bulbs are going to have a bright future!"

I've also been working on a new Artful Pen design for a fellow "By Hander" named James, of Birdy Knits. His wife is a bee fan, so I have three different designs in the works. I'll keep you posted. Hopefully in about a week I'll have some "in process" photos posted in my blog. Stay tuned!

Any American Idol fans out there?

Tomorrow I'm going with Renee to see our favorite American Idol, Danny Gokey in Milwaukee! Yay! I am excited. Renee was able to borrow a nice camera to try to get some good pics tomorrow. I will definitely have to post the pics from Danny Gokey Day. :-)

Which came first, the Artful Pen or the Artful Box?

I design Artful Pens. What are Artful Pens? They are pens that have their own special style and unique personality. Have you ever seen a pen with a hand-made mini sculpture attached to it? Something with a Palm Tree or an Ice Cream Cone or a Can of Grape Soda? You won't see pens like these sitting on the store fixtures at a retail chain. They are not an average run of the mill pen to be tossed aside. These are pens that you will become attached to. If you are unable to find a design from my selections, you can request a custom order. They can be distinctly designed to suit your tastes, interests and preferences.

How did they start out? Back in college I wanted to design a unique pen for my Senior Art Show for my visitors to use to sign in my guest book. I wanted something distinct and a pen that would reflect my tastes and personality.Another feature that I wanted in my distinct pen was "re-usability." If I was going to spend a certain amount of time creating my pen, I wanted it to be re-usable. Luckily, I found a nice and simple designed refillable gel-ink pen that would work out perfectly for my special pen.

The next task was deciding what type of "artwork" to attach to the pen along with what to make it with and how to make it? Since I was working with Apoxie Sculpt in my sculpture classes, it was an easy decision to make. Apoxie Sculpt adheres to just about any surface and is extremely durable, meaning it was a perfect match for my pen.

For my first pen design, I created a leaf with a ladybug sitting atop the leaf, because I have a fondness for ladybugs. Since there was a metal clip attached to the cap of my refillable pen, I used the clip as the foundation for my piece. While working on my design, I wanted to ensure that the metal clip was completely disguised by the ladybug and leaf. This design/method also ensured that my attached "artwork" would be securely attached to the pen. My ladybug and leaf were not going anywhere except where my pen went.

After designing my pens, I wanted to find a box to properly present them in. Since I couldn't find the right type of box for my pens, I set out to design my own boxes for them. Welcome...the Artful Box! A box specifically designed to present your Artful Pen in. After, much effort of trial and error and testing appropriate materials, I'm getting close to providing the boxes through my on-line stores and exhibits. Please take a look at my boxes and pens to see what you think. I appreciate your feedback and comments. Thank you!