New Work! Hardhat stickers that rock!

Even though I have spent more time at my computer than my easel lately, I have managed to make the best of it and spit out some new work that can be done right here. The latest project, a hardhat sticker for Technical Welding Inspection in Kuttawa, KY. Apparently these stickers that promote all these companies are hot commodities for the hardhat-wearing set, and the coolest guys have the most stickers. Also, the cooler stickers you have to trade, the better (or more maybe?) you get. Honestly, I don't know how that all works, but I do know what the stickers look like (since I did them):

Buy handmade!

Lately I have been feeling really guilty for not doing anything new in my art, and not adding to my shop or posting anything artistic. Worst...artist...ever...I know! Truth be told, I have been to the doctor several times for my shoulder, which has hurt excrutiatingly bad since last fall and has prevented me from doing much, and finally got a diagnosis. Turns out I have bursitis and rheumatoid arthritis, which sounds terrible, but can at least be controlled. Now that I finally know what is wrong, I can finally begin to heal and treat it, which is a good thing. The meds I am on now are amazing wonder drugs, and I am feeling better than I have in months! I also recieved so many well wishes and prayers, which I thank you all for, because it truly puts everything in perspective. One was even from an reader of this blog that was praying for my pain, while she is fighting cancer. Talk about perspective.

Despite the fact I have been absolutely terrible about posting new goodies to my shop and creating new things, I still buy handmade whenever possible, and even managed to cross off everyone in my Christmas list last year with handmade. I was very proud of that. Not only is your money going to someone who has personally put their heart and soul into it (and appreciates your business, no matter how small), but you are also getting something truly unique and top quality. My friend Libby put it in a funny, but true, way on her blog:

"I hate buying crap from China, so that's one main reason I buy handmade and why I encourage you all to buy handmade. When you buy from China you support communism...and a little puppy dies each time you walk in wal-mart....and baby birds fall out of their nest each time you THINK about going to wal mart...and volcanoes erupt and take out whole cities and towns when you BUY something from wal-mart....you get the picture. Its just bad. BUY HANDMADE!!!"

Libby makes incredibly soft, natural, and soothing soaps and sweet hippie clothes, which I am the biggest fan of. She also sent me out of the kindness of her heart, all kinds of feel better stuff for Sierra when she got in her bike accident last fall. The best thing was unrefined shea butter, which did amazing things for fading Sierra's scars and speeding healing, which I never would have even known about if it wasn't for her. Another good reason to buy handmade- where else do you get that personal of a touch?

I promise, dear readers, I am on the path to healing and will have new work to post soon. Keep your eye out, cause once I start, it's hard to stop me! First on the list is a commissioned painting of a Tuscan street scene, which I am pretty excited about. I plan on working all week on that this coming week, along with starting my Tai Chi classes and visiting the spa for a massage! Ah, life is good...

OMG!!!

Come get a start on your Christmas Shopping at the CCA HOLIDAY CHEER BAZAAR. Saturday, November 22nd from 9:00-3:00 p.m. held at the Community Christian Academy High School, located at the corner of Highway 45 and Lebanon Church Rd across from Paducah Athletic Club.

Lots of booths including Jewelry, Fabulous Bags and Purses, Crafts, Home Decor, Christmas Decor, Children's Books, Candles, Skin Care, and all sorts of fabulous vendors in between - even Baked Goods and Cookware!!

Register for a FREE basket full of GREAT gifts from many of our Vendors!! Including this super fun pendant (and matching necklace) and from Daydream Art Studios:

FaLaLaLa

Available online at http://daydreamartstudios.etsy.com and at the Holiday Cheer Bazaar at Community Christian Academy in Paducah, KY this Saturday from 9 am to 3 pm. Proceeds from the Bazaar benefit Hungarian missions and the CCA Cheerleaders.

More Snow...

flakes, that is! Every day this week I'm going to show off a different handmade ornament using my snowflake drawings I showed you before. It's finally been sunny enough (even though its very chilly! Brrr!) to finally photograph all my glittery delights. I completely glittered the house putting glitter on the inside and outside, and then added even more sparkle and bling with genuine Swarovski crystals! The snowflake design floats on the inside and is transparent, and then has a matching transluscent snowflake charm on the outside. Pretty, right? I love how they turned out, but then I am sort of hypnotized by shiny objects.

All are available at the Holiday Cheer Bazaar at Community Christian Academy in Paducah, KY this Saturday from 9 am to 3 pm, or in my online shop.

Shoppin' Around the Christmas Tree...

is fabulous fun when you can stay warm and cozy INSIDE shopping over 20 vendors and take the tree home when you're done! Well, maybe. Featuring a gorgeous, fully decorated tree from the talented Beverly at Grand Rivers Florist that will be for sale/ auctioned off, and of course, I will be there selling my collection of 2008 ornaments (in a snowflake theme this year) along with jewelry, fine art, and vases. Snowflakes like this one, that I painstakenly drew with "hidden" images (ok, so they aren't really hidden well, I'm not MC Escher for crying out loud), which proved to be harder than it looks or sounds:

Not to mention 20 some other vendors from Mary Kay and Tupperware to Silver Chics and other local artisans, it promises to be a great show! Great for early holiday shopping and getting in the holiday mood.



As long as we're getting in the holiday mood, while you're in town be sure to walk through Patti's and enjoy all the holiday lights. It gets more beautiful every year, with more and more lights. The elves (and by elves I mean my friend Kim and other volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce) have been hard at work decorating town, and the staff at Patti's has been workin since October getting all the lights up. Tonight they get lit at 6 pm, and I am very excited. It is just too beautiful to describe, and almost makes up for the fact it's too cold to go out on the lake for a few months. Almost.



You can read about it all here. I have been nagging Kim to get bloggin', and now she is showing me up! Seriously, she has a great blog about all the happenings here in our awesome tiny town. Check it out!

Pomegranates and Winter

Persephone was the Greek goddess of spring. She was forced to marry Hades, the god of the underworld, and while she was gone in the underworld, her mother Demeter, goddess of the Earth, refused to let anything grow or flourish until her daughter was found and returned. Hades finally relented and let Persephone return to her mother, but on her way back, she ate some pomegranate seeds- the forbidden fruit of Hades- thus sealing her fate. For punishment, Persephone was forced to return to the underworld to be with Hades once a year, one month for every seed eaten. During this time, myth has it, Demeter mourns her daughter's absence by again refusing to let anything grow, or as we know it, winter. When she returns, Demeter allows regrowth, making Persephone the goddess of spring and regrowth. Her true name, Corinne, come from the Greek word Kore, meaning maiden.





No wonder I find this story so fascinating, huh? Not only was I named for her, I think pomegranates are the coolest, most interesting fruit ever. That's why I made this new pendant:



Available now in my shop.

It's Snowing in the Amazon!

Ok, so not really, but this week has been a wierd mix of Amazon, Brazil, and snowflakes. Amazon.com, that is. If you don't already know, this is the place to shop for anything not handmade. Toys and DVDs are always cheaper than even sale prices anywhere else, shipping is free half the time, and you can find what friends and family really want by searching for anyone's wish list. Oh, and my brother works for Amazon.com designing the website or software or something like that, and he just got married and is expecting baby number one! So I'm doing my part to make sure his job is safe from budget cuts. This week I got half of my Christmas shopping done, saved a ton of money, and got free shipping! Now to start making all those handmade with love gifts!

A lot of the gifts I love to give are different ornaments every year. This year I decided to make snowflake ornaments, which I also sell at holiday crafts shows locally and in my online store. Here's a peek of the designs before I turn them into ornaments next week. I am pretty excited to design some for a contest in a few weeks for Bluegrass Etsy.

Oh, and speaking of Amazon, this week has been Brazil week in homeschool. I have learned a lot about the culture, government, wildlife, and of course, food! In this house projects usually have either art or food in them (or both). So here's the drink of the week, not alcoholic but jacked up with caffeine instead.

Brazilian Iced Chocolate

2 oz bakers (unsweetened) chocolate

1/4 cup pure cane sugar

1 cup double strength coffee, hot

2 1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cup Coke, chilled

Whipped cream to top

Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Stir sugar into melted chocolate, and gradually add hot coffee while stirring constantly. Add milk and continue to stir until mixture is creamy and smooth. Cover and chill until cold, then stir in Coke. Serve over ice, and top with whipped cream if desired.

Enjoy!

dressing up!

Its been a fun weekend starting with Halloween on Friday, where Sierra had either the cheapest costume as a "bloody patient," which cost only an old pair of pajamas and $2 worth of fake blood from Walmart:

Or the most expensive, if you count the over $600 cast on her arm, which was what inspired the costume in the first place. Also, in our house, even the dog dresses up, much to Lady's dismay:

But it calms her down, albeit from shame I think, so she can be around the neighbor boys without jumping or barking. They came over dressed as Ghost Rider and Spiderman. It just proves no matter how dangerous the costume is supposed to be, when they're little, it's cute no matter what!

Even P-O, the exchange student I placed in Lone Oak from Belgium had fun on his first American Halloween! He was very excited to carve pumpkins for the first time ever, and dress up for the day, which he told me only young children do back home.

Now that its all over, its time to start thinking about the holiday season that is fast approaching! I am hard at work designing holiday ornaments and finishing three custom paintings that have to be in the mail this week. Stay tuned for pics this week of my newest work!! In the meantime, happy fall!

fly away...

So after a long weekend of hanging out with good friends, between a dinner party catching up with old friends and celebrating Josh's birthday, I was very tired, but in a good, loved way. Then yesterday evening, we went to get new tires on my car and an alignment, which I was happy about considering its needed both badly since I was hit from behind like 2 years ago. I was even getting some performance tires (hey, the guy at Sears said they were the only ones on sale) that Josh kept singing some rap song for- something about Sumitomo tires-but whatever, I just wanted to have it all done and not have my car go crooked on the road. I did decide I love the way autoshops smell, with the new tires and all that- is that totally wierd? Anyway, we ended up finding out the car was worse than we thought and had to pay twice as much for some wheel bearing thingie, argg, but hey, at least now it is finally all done and I will be safe...

So in the meantime, I just figured I would list something in my shop that wasn't car related since I'm over it. I'd rather fly like a bird...

Both sparrows are cool hand cut pendants that come with a necklace and are way cool. I love 'em anyway!

New works

Sierra is finally feeling better, enough so anyway that I can sit down and take a break from playing nurse long enough to actually chack my email and such!! So this weekend I worked long and hard updating my blog for Bluegrass Etsy, my Etsy shop, and my website. The website was long overdue and was the most work, so take a look and let me know what you think! I am pretty happy with it, although I am almost blind now from a weekend at the computer, so its hard to tell!

I also added this painting, Damage, to my etsy shop, http://daydreamartstudios.etsy.com/, in honor of the "damage" Sierra sustained last week on her bike, with 100% of the profit going towards her medical bills for her injuries.

Visit my website, daydreamartstudios.com, and let me know what you think!

xoxo, Corinne

Seaside Dreams and the great blogs

Its a charmed life! Ever go to the beach with your kids, collect boxes full of shells that you lug back, only to wonder a week later what to do with them? Anyone with kids is probably faced with pocketfuls of rocks shaped like things, pretty shells, and other outdoor treasures all over the house. After our recent trip to Clearwater, Florida, visiting my grandmother. We brought back tons of shells from the number one rated beach in the US, Caledesi Island. One look tells you why it's so highly rated:

Not to mention it's one of the few beaches left with great shelling. We found probably 50 unbroken sand dollars alone. So upon our return, I decided to start making things with the shells, in the grand tradition of grandma, whose house boasts a vast assortment of shell crafts. One of my favorite things I have made so far is this charm bracelet with shells we found:

The greatest thing about this bracelet is that not only is it the newest thing in my shop, it is one of the 50-plus things on sale for 20% off from now until October 19th, for Bluegrass Etsy's Octoberfest Sale! Check out my shop for awesome deals, or go to the Bluegrass Etsy site for a complete list of great sales in tons of shops.

As long as you're browsing the web and reading blogs of artsy people, check out Cherished Dreams. She writes about tons of interesting crafts, mainly showing off beautiful quilts she makes. We're keeping it Bluegrass this week, since I am in the quilt capital of the US!

Fall Beauties

Today is another beautiful fall day and I cannot get enough!! I finally get to open the windows this week, after a summer of captivity to the air conditioner thanks to Josh, whom I swear sweats in the snow. Yesterday I even took a long walk with my mom and Sierra, hills be damned! Of course my mom, visiting from Illinois and not used to hills at all, was not as gung-ho about the walk through the neighborhood as we were. But, at least it was just cool enough to not sweat about it.

It was also nice enough for me to take plenty of pics of my new jewelry, just in time for the team wide sale the Bluegrass Etsy team is having in a few days. One of my favorites is this necklace I made, using coral, slices of shells, and freshwater pearls:

Super big news about a super big sale coming up!! Details announced Sunday, October 5th!

A little fun to start your week...

I have been busy posting all sorts of new pendants to my shop this past week, with more additions everyday this week as well! Some of my favorites are the newest in my sillhouette pendants, these rockin' mudflap girls:

Even though they're a little gross on a sweaty trucker's mudflaps, they're a lot sexy on jewelry! I just adore them, but couldn't find much jewelry like this, so I decided to make them. I made both an afro mudflap girl and the traditional girl because I couldn't decide.

I also have lots of other sihouette pendants coming soon, so keep your eye out! Remember, if you are clever, and have a better name for them, be sure to let me know for your chance to win a $20 gift certificate if I use the name you come up with! Just visit my shop, name any sections you want, and send me your suggestions in a convo. If I use any, I will send you a gift certificate fo every name I use. So get naming!

Big Contest, Big Prizes!

To celebrate the launch of my new line of pendants, and my 120th blog post, I am having a big sale for readers of this blog only! From now until September 26th, enjoy 20% off all orders $12 or more (including shipping). All my new pendants come with your choice of a necklace, complete with silverplated hardware, so you can completely customize your experience!

I am also woman enough to admit when I need help. Readers, I need your help! My talents apparently do not extend into naming stuff and even writing descriptions. I see witty, clever names in other shops, and I want that too! So, from now until the end of September, if you can come up with a clever name for any of my shop sections (on the top right side of www.daydreamartstudios.etsy.com), and I use it, I will give you a $20 gift certificate! Name them all and win big! Thanks all, and happy naming!

Vacation

After meeting all kinds of great, interesting people all weekend and nearly sweating my body weight in water at the Arts and Crafts Show, I am off to Clearwater, Florida for a week of family fun in the (hopefully) sun! I will be back, in rare bloggin' form September 9th. Be sure to visit my Etsy shop that week, as I will be adding an entire new line of mix and match pendants and necklaces that range from super kitschy to super pretty, dozens of new gemstone necklaces, bracelets and earrings, and new paintings! Until then...

New Work

I have been hard at work making new jewelry in time for the biggest art and craft show of the year in this area, Kentucky Western Waterland's Annual Labor Day Weekend Arts and Crafts Festival. Whew! What a name! Here are two of my newest favorite pieces, my butterfly and roses earrings (above) and this pretty daisy chain bracelet:

Its been a hard decision whether or not to post all my new, fun jewelry and other art in my Etsy shop before the show. I finally decided I will be posting some new pieces, but not most of them so I can save some surprises for the show! In addition, I will also be giving away promo bags with an assortment of handmade samples from other Etsians at the show. Stay tuned to see what some of these items are as I get them!

Speaking of Etsy and jewelry, have you checked out this fellow jeweler/ blogger/ Etsian? Teresa of Inspired Designs makes mainly copper jewelry that is beautiful with a rustic elegance, and her blog is interesting and amusing. Check it out!

xoxo

Kitschy Pendants and Earrings

My new pendants and earrings feature vintage/ retro photos printed on super durable and lightweight plastic. I have everything from squirrels (of course!) to guns to these fun jukeboxes:

Check back to see my flowery and paisley patterned pendants! Coming in the next week! I love paisley more than I love squirrels, believe it or not. xoxo

Inventory Clean Out Sale!!

I have spent the last few days hard at work taking inventory of everything I have made in the past two years. In doing so, I have found things I have forgotten all about!! All of this hard work is in preparation for the craft shows I have coming up- the KWW's 33rd Annual Arts and Crafts Show on Labor Day weekend, the Paducah BBQ on the River Festival September 25th ,26th and 27th and Hunter's Moon Festival October 10th. Check out this little pretty:

To celebrate cleaning and organizing all my inventory (no small feat, if you have seen my studio!), I lowered all my prices in my Etsy shop!! So even if you have been there before, go back and look again! Almost everything is 25% to 50% lower than before!!

xoxo

Shout Outs

I spent all day Saturday at Green Turtle Bay for Marina Day doing facepainting and launching my new line of graphic design and photo pendants. I probably gave 150 kids and even adults painted "tattoos" and bedecked cheeks with turtles, hearts, anchors and sailboats, and got great reception on my jewelry as well. The weather was gorgeous, the food was wonderful, and a great time was ad by all! In addition, I recieved a shout out on the blog, Laura K Finds Her Way, a clever, funny, and well written account of life and current happenings here in Western Kentucky.

In looking at this whole shout out phenomenon, I also discovered this fun little blog dedicated to art made in the round-robin style, where the same thing travels all of the world to a circle of crafters and artists who all add something before sending it on. Flory's Crafts is a little peek into a wonderful concept! In addition, the multi-talented Flory has a poetry blog with lovely musings and prose. Check it out!!