Umbrellas and Raindrops

I guess this massive snowstorm in New England (and other parts of the country) has inspired me to do a piece with precipitation.

Here is the design for the cover of a checkbook sized datebook I am working on.

I had a lot of fun working on it. Tomorrow I am going to the studio with Ernie and I am going to figure out what material and color it looks best on.

I think in the new year I will also play around with this as a fine art print.

Funny, I think that working on something that I don't intend to be fine art -- at least not something I expect to be framed -- puts less stress on me and in the end I really enjoy the outcome and in turn have ideas I want to make into fine art prints. Hmmm, guess it all comes back to Art and Fear, huh?

I was also thinking about how much I loved to send out my holiday cards this year. The thing is, what I love most about screenprinting (or printmaking in general) is that it makes fine art accessible to all. By sending mini prints through the mail, I am sharing my art with those I love and those who appreciate it. If you want to get a handmade Bethany print next year, please sign up with your mailing address on my mailing list. Would love to have you! And believe me, my mailing list isn't overwhelming -- I think I sent out one email this year and my only snail mail was actually the holiday card.

Coming soon, notes on my discard project. Stay tuned!

Oh Deer.

The deer cards are finally done! I am actually pretty excited about them!

For sale by contacting me or by visiting my Etsy Shop! All holiday card packs can be shipped priority at no extra charge. Please just let me know you found my cards on my blog...

Super Lightbox

Sorry it has been a while. It has been so super crazy with our visit to Minnesota and all the printing I have been doing in the studio...

I just wanted to post one of the super cool photos I got from the simple and cheap lightbox tutorial I found on FamTrek. Wheee!

And don't forget, even though I haven't taken all of the photos I should with the cool lightbox, my holiday cards (and other items) are still for sale at my etsy site!

Holiday Cards for Sale

I have been quite busy this fall in the studio and as a result, I now have hand screenprinted holiday cards for sale. They are either available by emailing me directly by visiting my Etsy Shop (buzzbuzzbee.etsy.com).

Card prices are as follows:

• 1 card: $4.00
• 10 cards: $25.00
• 50 cards: $100.00
• 100 cards: $175.00

Interested in other quantities? Please don't hesitate to contact me!

See below for designs available:

A couple of notes:

• All cards are flat cards
• Each card is signed on the bottom right corner. If you prefer this left off, please let me know.
• Each card is stamped on the back on the bottom right corner with "Bethany Schlegel Art + Design | www.bethanyschlegel.com. Again, if you don't want this on the back of your card please let me know

L I G H T S

These lights are printed on heavy white cover stock. The cards are flat, measuring 8 1/2" x 3 1/2". Please indicate color of envelope when ordering:

• red (this will be default if not specified)
• white
• translucent

O R N A M E N T S

These ornaments are printed on recycled chipboard, along with the words "Best wishes for a warm and wonderful holiday season." The cards are flat, measuring 8 1/2" x 3 1/2".

Please indicate color of envelope when ordering:

• white (this will be default if not specified)
• translucent
  

H O T C H O C O L A T E

These steaming mugs of hot chocolate (with whipped cream, of course!) are printed on recycled chipboard, along with the words "warmest holiday wishes." The cards are flat, measuring 3 1/2" x 4 7/8".

Please indicate color of envelope when ordering:

• white (this will be default if not specified)
• yellow
• translucent

Some of you voted for the deer image. Unfortunately, this has been giving me trouble and is not yet available. I will be happy to let you know when this is available -- just drop me a line telling me you are interested.

In the Press: My Work on Cakespy's Blog

So, I have long been a huge fan of Cakespy, as an artist, a blogger, a food experimenter, a person...So what could be better than when someone I admire so much gives a shout-out to me? The most fabulous Cakespy posted about my cupcake cards yesterday.

Thanks Cakespy!

(You can purchase these cards at my Etsy shop along with new holiday cards...)

Bulbs are done (well, kinda...)

So the bulb holiday card is done, but it looks like I am back to the drawing board, er, um, printing table, since I had technical difficulties with about 75% of them. I am going to try and salvage some of them and see what I can come up with, but in the meantime...I do like how the ones that actually worked look! I am hoping to be done with the new batch by this Friday.

Another Holiday Card Finished

I just finished another holiday card which is available for sale at my etsy shop.

I am really enjoying the look of ink on chipboard, and in this case, especially loving the retro look.

In the Press: My Work At Cupcake Project Blog

Stef over at Cupcake Project wrote a lovely mention in her ab fab cupcake blog! I am so glad she enjoyed the cards I sent to one of my favorite cupcake making divas!

Last spring, Tina and I teamed up with Cupcake Project through our blog, Scoopalicious, to do an Ice Cream Cupcake Roundup! It has been great getting to know Stef through the blogging world. Her cupcake recipes are amazing, and I was first drawn in by her Shirley Temple Cupcakes.

Please visit my Etsy site to purchase these birthday cards!

I actually have done a bunch of cupcake watercolors I will have to post soon. 

Mail Art Received

It's rare that I get to see how mail art I sent arrived and I rarely ask...but Pam so graciously sent me a photo of the mail art I sent to her in Ohio, and it's cool to be able to share it back to you all. Pam is a friend from high school and we are both obsessed with Scrabble. It's good to be back in touch with her again!

A Drawing A Day, 10.17.08

Here's another drawing a day -- of course the last one was in the beginning of September! 5x5 inches, watercolor on Claybord. I don't know how long it took me.

Busy as a Bee

I have been in the studio a lot lately, printing cards. I came to remeber that being a card designer was something I always wanted to do, and I am finally doing it. As soon as I get envelopes, these will be for sale, and the final three designs (yep, -- I decided to print them all and I also have one more that was supposed to be a custom order but got nixed so it will also be available) will probably be available sometime in the next couple of weeks for sale as well. In the mean time, congrats to Shioka who won the drawing for the free cards.

44% voted for the bulbs
29% voted for the deer
27% voted for the ornaments

Funny thing is, the only one I have to show right now is the ornaments. I keep putting off the bulbs because of all the colors involved -- ugh! Quite a bear to print.

I also worked on some birthday cards -- cupcakes with a subtle "happy birthday." My original idea was to do them on chipboard in the pink, as most of them are, but I played around with the chocolate frosting as well as printing them on white. These were super fun and leave a lot of room for options. The cards are flat and measure 3 1/2" x 4 7/8".

Colors may vary slightly due to the differences in monitors.

A Bit Political: Obama and Ice Cream

So I was just playing around the other day, and I got a little political -- and added politics to something I love...ice cream! I guess it is kind of creepy, but also fun!

If you too like Obama and Ice Cream, you can get an Obama Ice Cream item here.

Holiday Cards: Input and Enter!

The holidays are quickly upon us. Ok, wait, no, I am not normally a person who thinks about the holidays well before Thanksgiving, but since this year I want to print and sell holiday cards, I thought it would probably be good to get started. But I must admit, it's been pretty hard to get into that mode while it's still seventy degrees outside.

So, here is the deal. I need help deciding which to print. So here is how you come in. Vote for your favorite (or favorites!) using the poll on the right hand side of the blog and then comment below with your email address or email me your contact information, and you can be entered to win a set of 10 hand printed holiday cards. (In addition to voting, comments are also welcome).

Please also contact me if you would be interested in preordering at a discount.

These cards will be flat and sized at 8.5 x 3.67 inches and silkscreen printed and come with envelopes.

Ornaments printed on brown chipboard.

Bulbs printed on white cardstock.

Deer printed on brown chipboard.

Please also pass this link along to your friends. Thank you so much for your input! Please enter by this Sunday, October 5. Thank you!

P.S. While voting for the cards, make sure you are registered to vote by clicking the link directly below my poll!

Playing With Beet Juice and Raspberries

Untitled, 5x5 inches. I was trying to draw these raspberries one day a couple of weekends ago. I got so frustrated I smushed them into the clayboard and spread them around. I liked the background color. I had some beet juice/salad dressing (by the way: steamed green beans, canned beets and Maple Grove's Lime Basil Vinaigrette make a nice salad!) left over from lunch and poured that on the clayboard too. I let it dry and then worked into it with watercolors (of the leaves I picked up when walking Ernie -- thanks Ern!) and the fly stamp I made.

I had fun with this.

FG Bethany Does It Again

Looks like FG Bethany is still quite popular at MyFonts.com. From a recent newsletter...

Bethany was one of the featured fonts in last month’s Rising Stars newsletter. It has been doing extremely well since, occupying the top spot of our Bestseller list for weeks. Bethany is spirited and spontaneous, but has better legibility than many other handwriting fonts thanks to the openness and simplicity of its shapes. The smileys, of course, are a very nice bonus.

It is a very nice write up. I can't wait to actually know how many sales I have! You can also purchase it at Font Garden, the foundry that produced it.

Orange Tree Notecard

Orange Tree notecard is now available for sale on Etsy! Sorry for the delay in posting!

Playing Around: Orange Tree.

Today I played. I cut paper, I taped it to transparencies, burned screens and loved the process. I made these orange tree cards -- no computer...best feeling ever.

I'll be selling them on Etsy, but I left them at the studio tonight because I couldn't wait for them to dry. In fact, the last 20 or so I had to print in very dark light because we lost power on Bedford Street and Prospect Street. Needless to say, I wasn't waiting around in a dark studio for these guys to dry!

Today I also started my study of tomatoes, which is as much a study of tomatoes as it is new methods of working with mediums. I wanted to do more on that today as well, but alas, the power...

A Drawing A Day, 9.8.08

Carrots. 37 minutes. 4 inches square. watercolor on clayboard. Lunch from today. Not sure how I feel about it. Scans always look better to me than the real thing.

On another note, I can't seem to find my Page-a-Day book and have decided to end this project. It wasn't what I wanted, the paper was too glossy, and it ended being something I had to force myself to do at the end of the day. Forcing wasn't what I wanted from this project, so I have decided to focus my energies elsewhere.

Art = Books?

When I was younger, I had a friend tell me a magic number of pages I should read before deciding whether or not I wanted to continue reading the book -- too few pages and you didn't give it a fair chance, too many and if you didn't like it, you probably would continue not to...The number seventy-five seems to stick in my head, but that seems awfully high...

Anyway, I digress. I was thinking about this with art. How do you know when enough is enough and no matter what you do, it is not going to look any better? Take the baby print for example. I don't like where it is going. Do I abandon it? Do I take a break from it? Do I do seventy-five different things to it?

Cropping it helped, but I am still not sure I like it. I was going to incorporate flies as well, but I don't know. I had to make the fly drawing into a rubber stamp though, because the detail was too much to come out on the screenprint. We'll see what happens...

Technically Speaking

My art feels like one big technical difficulty after another. Why can't it be easy?

Fly Paper

Not really sure...was playing with these fly drawings for something else, but I did something not as I wanted for the other project but I loved the result. So here it is. Don't know what to do with it, but it sure is pretty.

Here's the Detail...

Here's a detail of something I have been working on. It was intended as a piece for a show, but I don't think it will be done in time and I am not thrilled with how it is coming out. Though I do have to say that by looking at just this one part, I am a bit more excited about the potential.

P.S. Can you guess what we are making?

MyFonts Rising Stars

I know, it has been a while. I have been busy working on bigger projects. Right now I am trying to do one that focuses on the theme of "Kitchen" for a show I want to enter. My original goal a long while ago was to enter a show quarterly. I wasn't very good at this but I love the idea and I am going to try to start that up again.

So, MyFonts sends out a monthly email called Rising Stars, and my font (previously mentioned here) got quite a good review:

Font Garden’s Ellinor Maria Rapp has been keeping a rather low profile since we interviewed her back in December. Now she’s back with a vengeance. Selling a staggering number of copies in a few weeks, her new font Bethany has confidently strolled to the number one spot on our Starlets list. Bethany is as spirited as any of Font Garden’s handwriting fonts, even maintaining a spontaneous authenticy when setting heavily-accented languages. And for those who have trouble hand-drawing a smiley, Bethany has two of them to use on your computer.

Thanks to Tina for forwarding me this review and for encouraging me to submit my font to the FontGarden as well! My favorite parts of this review? "...Bethany has confidently strolled to the number one spot..." and the fact that they used "material girl" as the words for the sample text. Little Bethany history for you...when I was about five, I was listening to the radio and shortly after went into the kitchen singing, "Because we are living in a Cheerio world and I am a Cheerio girl..."My sister commented on the hand-drawn smiley, which I don't recall being asked to do, but I think Ellinor cleverly pulled it when I wrote some comments to her about my writing -- yes, I have a habit of putting a lot of smileys in my notes -- how seventh grade!

Bbelief

I wanted to share a project I have been working on for a while.

A while back I finished the album cover design ( for The B-Flat Project's new album, Bbelief, which now is available for sale on iTunes. I am not much of a music critic, but when I design for albums, I listen to the songs over and over as I am designing, and I have to say, I really enjoyed having Bbelief on repeat!

I did the design, but I did not do the actual illustration. That Brian and I found on a great site of scanned, public domain images from old books. Thanks, Liam!

This is the second album cover I have done with Brian of The B-Flat Project, and working with him is always wonderful. He pushes my ideas, challenges my creativity, and even has me indulging in philosophical studies. How does one illustrate "belief"? As one might imagine, we went back and forth with a lot of ideas for this album before settling on the cover we chose. You can read more about this experience on Brian's blog.

I have known Brian for 23 years of my 29 year life, and its been such a wonderful journey going from academic competitors trying to out do each other in our third grade bookworms (If I read 50 books one semester, Brian read 53...he was always a little bit ahead!) to friends that challenge each other's creativity.

Cabin iPhone Pictures

A while back I promised to post the iPhone pictures I took at the cabin. There was something uniquely beautiful about them to me. Nothing special, but I liked them...

A Drawing A Day, 7.30.08

This is a little different from what I usually do for a drawing a day -- it's much looser.

The thing about pen is that it can be so scary because you can't erase, but at the same time, it's much freer, too, if you allow yourself to embrace the mistakes. This one was so much fun. I set my timer for 30 minutes, turned on the John Lennon tribute album Instant Karma, took out my 9 x 12 sketch pad, found some objects around (and ate some of them too -- the basil and the blueberries) and just drew. It was so liberating.

I then came upstairs and colored it loosely in Photoshop, just to see how it would react as a screen print. I am not sure how I feel about it in color. I don't think I like it with color.

What I love best? the dead Black-eyed Susans.

A Drawing A Day, 7.29.08

Not sure why I fall in and out of this drawing a day habit, because the truth is, I like how it makes me feel like I did something each day -- whether or not it is good...

This one took 25 minutes. It is 6x6 inches.

Working on a baby print

Here is part of the image of the baby print I am working on. I don't have too much to say about it. I am not sure where I am going with it, or even at this point consciously why I am working on it, but I guess that is half the fun.

The image is a found image from an old book.

New Onesie Designs!

I have designed a couple of new onesies. I am not sure which of the two I am going to continue, so I am having a contest to get feedback! Please visit Scoopalicious for more information and to enter. Contest ends Sunday, July 27th.

Happy National Ice Cream Month!

Bethany Font!

Font Garden now sells my handwriting as a font! Fun! I had the wonderful Ellinor of Font Garden make my handwriting into a font and she also decided to sell it in her shop! Now you too, can own Bethany. Later in the summer there will also be an alternate version, but if you buy Bethany now, you can get the update for free.

A Drawing A Day, 7.9.08

Part of me thinks these are overworked, part of me likes them.

Watercolor, about 7 1/4 inches square, 31 minutes.

Have to use these peaches today as I dropped two of them as I was heading outside. Super.

Good to get away from my computer, the technical stuff of my website is killing me.

A Drawing A Day, 7.4.08 and 7.7.08

So, I wasn't as perfect as I planned in keeping this Drawing a Day up, but it was a holiday and a weekend. I have a feeling that weekends are going to be especially difficult this summer as we have a ton of weddings and other events...

I am so not thrilled with this watercolor, but again, I did it. These day lillies (?) were at our cabin in Vermont. Kevin and I went to up to Shadow Lake to spend some time with Uncle Charlie, Fred, and some of our friends up on the lake.

This image is about 7x7 inches, done in watercolor and I spent 30 minutes on it. This was about all I could spend before I ripped the page right out of my watercolor block.

I wasn't really feeling this image, but I did have a great time with Kevin's iPhone camera. As soon as I get them from him, I will post the collection of self portraits and sky I was taking.

I realized that one of my most unproductive art making problems is when I have somewhere to be and I can't spend the time I want to invest at the moment on a project. This is really frustrating.

I had to get home last night to get ready to go to my first meditation class at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. That ended up being great, but in the meantime, I felt rushed on this image. I thought I would have more time to do this drawing, but by the time I finished pulling the bottom two colors of the print I am working on, time was running 0ut quickly.

Anyway, about this drawing that I do not love either...Drawn on July 7, 2008. 6x6", graphite on paper, 31 minutes.

In other news, I made great headway on my website today, so I am excited to be moving on that. It is pretty tedious and has been hanging over my head so I cannot WAIT to get that done. I am hoping to get the main site up by July 31, but I am not sure that will happen. We'll see. Hopefully putting that date out in the public will motivate me to get moving.

A Drawing A Day, 7.3.08

It is absolutely beautiful out so I decided to it out by our wildflowers and try to draw them. The mood was perfect. The temperature is perfect -- it is one of those not too hot, not too cold days, and you are aware of the weather only because it seems to blend in perfectly with your own body temperature.

I was sitting in the shade facing all these beautiful specimens of plants which are finally beginning to show their colors. Bob Martin was on my iPod singing about Lowell and the Kerouacs and all this was reminding me of how happy I am to be living in New England with the seasons and the history.

It's a bit windy out so I had to take a couple of drawing pauses while I waited for things to get still. Finally, I decided to stop the drawing when the breeze blew the plant leaf I was drawing so much that it got stuck under another leaf and it changed my whole image.

This one, again 6x6 inches, took about 38 minutes to draw.

Going back outside to inspire some screen prints.

Just a little note, I am going to be away for the next couple of days but I really will try to keep up with the Drawing a Day. It feels so important to me right now.

A Drawing A Day, 7.2.08

A little shout out to Dr. Liam and Dr. R!

Not thrilled with this drawing. In fact, got pretty frustrated. "Gave up" after 22 minutes. But again, I did it. Yay!

The drawing is 6x6 inches and done in pencil.

On another note, went to the ICA today. Great Anish Kapoor exhibit. Hm. I didn't know Kapoor did the famous Chicago Bean.

A Drawing A Day, 7.1.08

I drew something from our farm share today: a strawberry. It measures 6x6 inches. I don't love it. Particularly, I think the "line drawing" is too cartoony, and the others were just frustrating. But what matters is I did it, I spent 30 minutes drawing today.

I am really trying to do this daily -- yeah, I know, I skipped four days, but I was away, and being away doesn't allow for such regularity in drawing...but now that I am back in Waltham, I didn't skip a day! Hey, once every five days is much better than once every three months!

A Drawing A Day, 6.26.08

After way too long, I am back with A Drawing A Day (What is this? A Drawing a Quarter?!). And guess what? I am loving it. If I have an unproductive day or I can't get motivated, I just feel like at least I have done something. Yes, that is exactly how I have been feeling. And I feel good about this watercolor. I am going to keep doing cupcakes because I love the and they are popular with the audiences right now, and it's really neat to see how my drawings change over time.

I have realized how much I love working with a practically dry brush on this clayboard.

This one is quite small, only 4"x4". I love the intimacy of such a small painting -- both while making it and in the end, looking at it.

A couple notes to self:

1. Do this more often. It makes you feel good.
2. You also like using black Bravo markers -- a lot.
3. Good thing I am making this "note to self" list. I can't even remember the last of the three in a span of minutes. Oh well.
   

Teacup Card

I made this card for my dear friend Sarah's tea themed bridal shower, and even though I loved it, couldn't post it until after the shower.

So, here it is. I love the print and its simplicity. It is a notecard, but could be framed as a nice, simple (and inexpensive) print.

You can but it here, on Etsy.

International Child Art Foundation

This isn't about my art.

I found this foundation I am madly in love with.

The International Child Art Foundation.

I just need to figure out how best to get involved.

Frustrated

So no, I don't love the new header, but I can't get it to work like I want it to, so it is going to have to do. I am trying to make it match my new website to be, but blogger, though wonderful in so many ways, doesn't give me much leeway in terms of changing the header. So this is it for now. Oh well.

Oh, yeah. Even more frustrated with the new website. That's why I tried to work on the blog "look."

Alas...

So that is the the look I am going for at right...it is simple but I want the art to speak, not the website so much...The top is the original InDesign document, and the bottom is the coding as it is right now -- I do have to say I am impressed with my ability to translate it in Dreamweaver. However, SO much work to do on it...I need to...

1. Choose the art/design to use
2. Figure out the way I am going to show multiple pages
3. Figure out the way I am going to show images a little bigger
4. Take pictures
   

Don't hold your breath waiting for it. I don't expect it up too soon.

Onesie Designs

So when I am having a mental block, I design simple little designs that will be good for onesies, so I can sell them either at shows or online.

I have been having a mental block...

Here are some ideas...The top three are other onesies I have done in the past, the remainder are new ideas.

The bottom cupcake and ice cream...I love the simplicity, but the cupcake is a four color job and the ice cream is a two color job. Not sure I am up for that.

The higher up ice cream and cupcake is nice because I will use the shirt color for the frosting/ice cream color, which keeps it a two color.

Finally, the giraffe was designed because of a suggestion by Marsha. I am especially curious to see what SHE thinks of it...I don't know. Does it NEED spots? I love the simplicity of it without...not so sure.

Jessie, working on a guinea pig design. This is a bit harder to simplify. But don't give up on me!

Etsy Shop: Sale and New Items

Been doing a lot of updating, posting, etc. to my Etsy Shop. I think Etsy is a wonderful concept and I love buying as many of my gifts as possible for independent vendors on Etsy.

I put up the print of the girl reading as a donation to ReBooK. I am very excited about this little print and I hope it can help out my sister's non-profit. I think it is a great cause. I love to read and I wish everyone had the luxury to do so.

Many of the tees I have been are on sale as I try to clear out my inventory. There are currently nine listings (both short and long sleeved tees, and tank tops) that are on sale, but more will be added over the next couple of days. Perfect for this hot weather we have been having.

Also added some new hand printed Moleskine journals. I really enjoyed printing these -- I love the look of screen prints on kraft paper.

Onesies are still being uploaded daily and I have had a few requests for giraffes, cheetahs, guniea pigs (or as I liked to call them when I was younger, "skinny pigs") on the onesies so we will see what comes of that. Also have an ice cream onesie in the works -- it's Scoopalicious! As if an ice cream onesie weren't a long time coming! Personalized onesie offerings are also in the works!

I guess that is it to report right now...

More onesies and children's tees!

I have added a few onesies and young children's tees to my etsy shop, so feel free to take a peek!

Page A Day, April 15 - June 3, 2008

So I decided that I really hate the process of putting all my images of page a day up. It is so tedious, and by the time I get them scanned, uploaded to both Flickr and Picassa, I just don't want to link each and put them in the blog. I love the image of how all the pics look in the Flickr page anyway, so I decided I would just show you that (this time I am showing all from Jan 1 to date, but in the future it will just be the new ones!) and then link you to the first page of the new images in Flickr and Picassa.

Picassa
Flickr

I hope this is ok. If you really hate this new format, let me know via comment or vote on the right.

Busy doing, not so busy blogging

I haven't posted in a while. I think that is good actually, as it means I am busy making/creating. Lots of freelance. Have been working on and off for a while on the new/modified design for One Pearl...this one has been challenging and fun and it is still in progress. Great cause.

Also have been trying to define "belief" and figure out how in the world to illustrate it.

Have been working on my sister's site for ReBook. Unfortunately, the old site was outdated, hard-to-update, clunky looking...I designed it my earlier days when I thought it was so cool to design everything as an image and chop it up and post it on the web. It is still in progress and some of the functionality doesn't work -- don't try to send a message using the form just yet...but the mailing list form works -- thanks, A! Are web pages ever done?

Did a few prints off of the design for ReBook...one of which I will add to my donation prints on Etsy.

Both are mixed media, printed on the pages from a very old and outdated Nancy Drew book -- this book actually refers to "colored people," which is why I am glad I tore the pages out. Outdated books like this don't need to be in existence! Ha, looks like the book I tore up, The Clue of the Tapping Heels, is 70 years old, published in 1939!

Anyway, I tried two different ways of going about this. One was I actually glued two ripped pages on a larger stock so I could print my favorite size, 6x6 inches. I probably should have glued the pages together, cut them to 6x6 inches and then adhered them to a larger page, but I was a little more "spontaneous" than that, so some of the have lines going right through the girl's head where the paper ends. Something to think about. But on the more ripped pages, I kind of like that effect, so we will have to see.

The other I printed directly on to a page. I had to shrink the image significantly. One thing I liked about this was that I had printed a purple background that I hated, so I printed over in copper...I love the depth that this created.

Additionally, I have been experimenting with Jacquard screen printing inks, which I LOVE LOVE LOVE. I am really learning how they work...it takes some practice. They were drying quickly so I added glycerin, and I really liked how that worked. Unfortunately, I learned my lesson the hard way -- a lot is not better. The blue ink took forever to dry when I added a little too much glycerin!

I made a cool invite/greeting card that I am also happy with, but that will also have to be for another time as I want the guest of honor to be surprised by it when her party happens in later June.

At the same time, unfortunately, my page-a-day and my drawing-a-day have become more neglected.