Etsy Treasury

One of my ACEO prints, called "Fireworks," made from one of my art quilts, is in a 4th of July treasury on Etsy today. It's in the lower right-hand corner. Clicking on the image will enlarge it. Here's the link to the Etsy site.

Antares Revisited

In a previous post I wrote about the yacht, Antares, and created a picture in Photoshop using a photograph we'd taken of Antares.

I carry notecards and ACEOs in my two Etsy shops (Uncommon Cloth and Paper Press), and I wanted to make use of this image. Unfortunately, I'd done an 8"x10" picture, and the proportions didn't work right for either the notecard or the ACEO. Back to the drawing board.... My new image ended up being horizontal in orientation rather than vertical. Actually, I like it even better than the first image!

I've used "Silver Sail" for both a notecard and an ACEO.

Then I decided to use Antares' silhouette with a different sunset.

This one turned out "vertical" rather than "horizontal." While the reflection in the water looks anything but real, I liked the look of image, especially the rich colors.

I named this image "Antares Sunset" and again used it in both a notecard and an ACEO. If you click on any of those links, you'll see that I show the original picture of Antares, as well as the sunsets that I used.

Etsy is an online site for selling all things handmade and vintage. If you've never heard of Etsy, and are interested, here's a link to their main page.

My First Post

My first post, and my first time blogging....

I'm beginning a new chapter in my life. I retired from my full-time job on February 1st. I want my days to be filled with creating art - the messy kind and the computer kind! My messy kinds of art include painting, gluing, working with clay - and I include making art quilts in the "messy" part because it's actually physically creating something.

My computer art involves working with Photoshop, which is my absolute favorite software. I do what I call "digital paintings" and I have also developed lots and lots of notecards and ACEOs in Photoshop. (An ACEO is a type of artist trading card. ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions & Originals.") Here's an ACEO I call Blue Norway. My father-in-law was born in Norway, and I found the original of this picture in one of his photo albums. I scanned it and worked on it in Photoshop to clean up the creased photo and to get this look.

Here's what the original photo had looked like:

(Click on the images to see larger versions of the pictures.) You can see why Photoshop is one of my favorite toys! I've made about 50 ACEOs, and if you're interested, you can view them at my Etsy shop.