Creative Thursday

gocco valentine's + Plan B

If you tune into my twitter stream then you are one of the lucky one's that heard me carry on about my many failed gocco printing attempts yesterday.

I had BIG plans for printing some, first time ever, tiny gocco Valentine's this year. You know how I'm loving the gocco these days...But as often happens, plans change. I went through almost 5 screens and 10 lightbulbs before my final screen turned out. By this time I had given up on hand printing the valentines and just printed my favorite new bunny design {inspired by the year of the rabbit, officially starting today!!} on the little cloth pouches that the tiny cards will be packaged in. I still do not know what caused the first screens to come out so poorly, but I did learn some new techniques in the process. There's that 'positive spin' on a dining room filled with multiple gocco failures = a big mess.

So, plan B. Tiny valentine's illustrated by hand and digitally colored and printed on eco-white card stock. Personal favorite, "I am over the moon for you" and I managed to get an eiffel tower in the mix to. Paris love. Something about the coloring, they resemble letterpress cards...another printing technique I'm dying to try.

They are now over at the shop, a limited edition of 25. Hope you enjoy them! Did I mention they come with confetti hearts too? Oh yes they do! A little love from me to you.

making tiny valentine's, I mean business cards

 

 *Edit* Sunday, January 16 ~ the inspiration of DIY business cards kept on going... and today I came up with a gocco design that I love. Now, not only was I productive while watching the Golden Globes tonight, but there is another business card design/valentine to be added to the mix. Just know that if you get one of my business cards at Alt, it has been created by hand by me, it is a one of a kind tiny piece of art  infused with love for you. Mwah!

 

Do you all know Ez of Creature Comforts? 

Her blog is beautiful and inspiring. just is. In fact in a recent post she shared a tutorial on making some new business cards. You see, she is also speaking at Alt. In fact, we are speaking on the same panel! And she realized that she needed new business cards a little too late in the game to get a rush order placed.  So she made some. They are lovely, and each one is a tiny original piece of art.

This is when it also occurred to me that I too am out of business cards, so inspired by Ez I decided to make some of my own as well. A combination of card stock originally intended for bookmarks, cut in half, a printed label with all the pertinent details accompanied by a character, adorned with a heart sticker or two {in the spirit of the season} should be noted that some of them are total spangle, puffy with glitter! signed by me, oh and I'm going to town on some of them with my Martha Stewart punch. 

When you create for a living sometimes it's nice just to create for fun. As I'm making these, instead of thinking of them as business cards, I'm imagining giving them to people as a tiny valentine's wish. 

beneath the stars :: new gocco prints in the shop!

Friday already?! It IS! 

I've had a really good, busy week, that has included catching up, I mean REALLY catching up, preparing for classes at Squam and online with the next e-course, all while delving further into my new found passion for a "simpler life" ~ another reason I've been a bit scarce here on the blog and a topic I plan to expand on soon.

Remember the new gocco prints I left you with last week? I have decided to embellish each one with original painting, and some mixed media {bunnies need dresses and skirts, you know}. They are a limited edition of 19 and due to the original embellishments, no two are alike. They will be titled, signed and numbered in light pencil. I've just listed the first three in the shop today.

Also I wanted to say thank you to Noelle for inviting me to share my thoughts on working from my home studio over at her blog. Not only is Noelle aka PinkBathtub and Jetsetpaper one of my favorite designers, but she's just one of those online friends that I know I'd enjoy visiting with in person ~ one of the reasons is probably because she enjoys a good glass of wine as much as I do.

Speaking of a glass of wine....is it wine o'clock yet? And on that note, happy Friday!

quietly creating

So, it goes like this...If you listened to an earlier video posted last week, then you know that while I'm a good multi-tasker,  I've learned that my creative focus can only handle one, maybe two projects at any given time. Why? at the risk of sounding too sap ~ because I give my creations "my heart". There's just no other explanation, and this also means that my energy has to be allocated wisely. 

After what feels like a rather long painting and creating hiatus, it's time for some new Creative Thursday creations!

That's where I've been, quietly creating. 

And this means that the video experiment is temporarily on hold because creative energy is going to some newness ~ including gocco prints which you see a glimpse of above. And on that note, everything is also temporarily on hold, as I'm heading to the beach for a few days for what is becoming our annual mini surf trip. {Next year, I say Hawaii!} 

While I'm away I leave you with one of my first podcasts where the table is turned and questions are being asked of me by the lovely Kelly over at Women Wise Marketing. And Molly invited me to share some thoughts on her blog. And you should check out Christine's very "real" and thoughtful post about artists and making money among other thoughts on what it means to be successful.

Have a wonderful week, as our summer slowly winds down. I don't know about you, but it's beginning to feel like this fall will be the beginning of lot of good newness, don't you think? Like a lot of the heaviness that has been weighing people down is beginning to lift. I think it's time.

a tuesday bear & owl

The creating continued over the weekend...and it's been a while since I created a gocco print. So here's a little tuesday bear & owl for you, Oliver and I believe you know Oscar?! These prints are available at the shop and are a limited edition of 16 with 14 left. hope you had nice holiday weekend!

love wish ~ a new gocco creation

Here's one of my creations from yesterday. I decided it was time to pull out the gocco printer again. This image also has hand painted color details that I've added, so each one is a unique print. You can find it right here at Etsy, along with 4 new LARGE size prints that I've added. I've started getting requests for my work to be larger and I have to say turning these characters into a bigger size is inspiring me to paint LARGE. I think I've said this before on the blog, and I'm just so into the ease of painting small, for scanning and shipping reasons, but sometimes as artists we have to be willing to take our creations into new territory. Anyway, they look so good BIG!!! that it must just be time to EXPAND!

Speaking of BIG ~ there's going to be a big event this Thursday at the Etsy shop, so stay tuned!

Oh, and I can't forget to share ~ here's Sean painting last night. It turned out AMAZING, a Mark Rothko inspired piece that he's hanging in his office. We skipped our movie in honor of creating, but the fondue was YUM!

gocco Saturday

"orange leaves" 5.5" x 7" and "green leaves" 5.5" x 7"

As I mentioned in the last post, I was happily obsessed with gocco printer again on my Saturday. These are actually two separate prints, but I designed them to be "one tree" if you hang them together (I imagine them as a tree transitioning from summer to fall). I think I originally had 10 of each of these, but I put them together before they were completely dry so now 6 of each of them are available. Sean's niece recently asked me if I ever make mistakes, and the answer to that would be a big "YES" ~ and I followed that answer with, "but that's how you learn! not to mention sometimes "mistakes" make for really interesting art." (you know, I always like to put a positive spin on things) ;)

And this little fellow, well he's just cute!

"wishing and hoping" 5.5" x 7"

You can find the new gocco prints right here, at the usual place, the Etsy Shop.

more about gocco!

owl gocco with original illustration available here at Etsy

Hi Nannette! I'm so glad you asked about the gocco printer. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, I completely forgot to explain it. The link above will give you more detailed information. But, basically it is a little screenprinting machine that was originally developed in Japan. It allows artists to make an original drawing, and re-create it as a print. What's so fun about it, is that it involves more hand work, versus using the computer for everything. I imagine that as we rely more and more on the digital world, the pendulum swings back inspiring a trend to create more by hand.
I learned about the gocco from some of my favorite artists who make everything from prins to tea towels to t-shirts with the gocco! I'm working on tees next, by the way. Very exciting.
Now, I'm a bit confused about the "state" of the gocco. Apparently it has been discontinued, but I've recently seen a new printing product released, so if anyone out there knows the status of the gocco, let me know! I do know that you can still buy the printer and the supplies online.

I hope it will continue to be produced, because it is so much fun to use, and who doesn't love the name ~ especially when you've gone loco for gocco?!

Thanks for the fun post today Jan. And thanks Holly for including Oscar in your fresh Etsy finds!

Also, I'm releasing the original tree paintings for sale this week, one every day via my daily painting subscriber list. You can find them here.

i’ve gone gocco!

oscar among flowers, gocco print, 5.5 x 7.5 in.

My first bit of good news, couldn't wait. I've decided to start making gocco prints to add to the collection. Oh, my! I had no idea how fun it is. Almost my entire Saturday has been dedicated to the gocco, ink, paper, prints everywhere ~ an entirely new obsession.
I chose the oh so sweet Oscar as my first candidate for the gocco. He's a limited edition of 24 and you can find him right here in the Etsy Shop.
I hope you enjoy this little fellow.

and here he is framed in the IKEA ribba