Stuff I'm really proud of

These are some of my works that I've been really proud of. Some are for sale, some aren't, some were actually sold (huzzah)! Since I'm not a trained artist (unless you count those drawing classes I took in 3rd grade, which consisted mostly of the teacher having us copy images from old Nature magazines. I imagine it's much like what Andy Warhol's trained crew of artists had to do), I get a little overly critical of my work, seeing little flaws and getting down about them. But I still love what I do, and sometimes, just sometimes, I think that the stuff I make comes out practically perfect in every way (to quote Mary Poppins)! These are some of those items. Enjoy!

This painting is one of the first large acrylics that I've done and I still can't get over how awesome it came out. "Saturday In The Park" is actually the name of this painting, done before I even had joined Etsy and he's now the banner for my Saturday In The Park store. And yes, it's a line from the Chicago song.
I wanted to do something funny, colorful and relatively easy (note to all artists : Manatees are very easy to do. Grey blob, add cute muzzle, big eyes and fat flippers, double chin and boom! Realistic manatee) and I was inspired by Bren Bataclan's work (click here to see his awesome paintings). Bren Bataclan did a "Smile Boston" project while I was living there (leaving free paintings around Boston, telling people to take the painting as long as they can make people smile throughout the day. What a cool idea!) and while I never found one of his works, I was definitely influenced by his style. And I love love how it came out!

This is one of the first pendants I made. I call him Swirly Gold Sheep. Fairly simple, but I love the look of it. His swirly golden fleece (much more easily attained than the mythical one) and big ol' green stone eyes! So cute! I'm a big fan of knitting, though I haven't sold any of my knitted wares yet. I tend to foist those on family members. This sheep reminds me of the two times I went to see sheep being sheared when I was in grade school. I passed out at the sight of blood both times. But I also got to be the first one to pet the lambs afterwards!

This is Hercule, the Dapper Cockroach. My husband and I had to deal with a mini cockroach infestation when we moved into one of our apartments and it inspired me to create a larger version of this painting. I figured if I could think of the cockroaches as silly mustachioed gents with bow-ties and monocles, I'd be a lot less scared of them. Amazingly enough, it worked! I'm still not a huge roach fan, so thankfully the exterminator got rid of them all. All except for Hercule.

This guy is a bit more "Mature" so if you're afraid of things that loosely resemble male genitalia, you should scroll past this next work.

This is Jareth, the Knob-lin King (a phallus pendant parody of Jareth the goblin king from the movie "Labyrinth")! Geeky phallus pendants/magnets are actually how I started out selling on Etsy. I made a bunch for a friend's bachelorette party and she, knowing how much I was a fan of buying stuff on Etsy, suggested that I could sell them! So I have. Jareth is one of the pendants I've sold so far, along with "Dildo Baggins" a Lord of the Rings parody. I think I have WAY too much fun making these guys. :)

This green Cthulhu pendant is one of the creepier items I've sold. If you don't know about Cthulhu, a tentacled, winged evil ocean god created by the writer H.P. Lovecraft, I highly recommend reading his horror stories! This little guy came out just perfect! Perfectly evil!

This is a sketchbook I've topped with a design I call "Mr. Blue Sky" (yes, from the ELO song). Made from mushing a whole bunch of blues together, stamping with script, glazing over it with a silver paint and then adding a rainbow, clouds, beautifully shiny dichroic glass stones (if you've never heard of dichroic glass, check it out! It's become one of my favorite forms of glasswork on Etsy! So shiny and sparkly!), and a silver key charm. I wasn't entirely sure how this would look until it was done, but the writing across the sky and the bright eye-catching rainbow and key just sealed it as one of my faves. Makes me feel like I had a little extra magic in my hands while I was making it. If only I could buy more magic on Etsy...

And lastly, this little lovesick robot. He's not for sale. I made him for my fabulous husband. I was inspired by all of the awesome robot creators on the Etsy website. There are just so many and they're all so talented. I don't think I'll ever get into making lots of robots, but this little guy just warmed my heart as I was making him (probably because of my feelings for the recipient of this robot). Who can resist technological romance?