Join us for the Second Annual Decatur Home & Studio Show! November 13th & 14th 4:00-9:00

It's almost time for our second annual Home Show!  My Mom and I have been working hard to find new artists to add to our already wonderful group.  We had two top priorities; one that their work be of top quality and two, that each artist adds a different category to our collection.  So we now have: handmade soaps, puppets, children's painted furniture, retro-style art prints and beautiful hand made totes and diaper bags in addition to the beautiful selection we offered last year of; topiaries, gorgeous jewelry, antiques, lamps, altered books and paintings.  Scroll down for a sampling of some of the artisans we are offering!

Kat Wiranowski also known as Sudstress

has been making soap for about five years and her passion for it just keeps growing.  She works with an incredible array of essential oils, herbs and more.  Add this to her gorgeous sense of design and packaging, and you have a winner of a product!  You can visit Sudstress and her soaps at her Etsy Shop.

         Nicole Wimber designs totes and diaperbags

                                        all made with incredible attention to detail and style.

Each bag has a reinforced handle and is lined and trimmed

with an accent color complimentary to the fabric.

To see more

examples of her work,

visit her Etsy shop HERE.

Lindsay Mahaffey is a professionally trained artist

focusing in the

area of jewelry design. 

Her colors and unusual designs are magnificent!

Heidi Staven Carpenter dreams up the most
whimsical puppets you've ever seen!

She will also have some of her fabulous children's chairs available. 

Her company is called "In Jest Puppets" ,

check it out for for more examples of her work!

Angela Traunig designs retro-style animal prints

perfect for a child's room.

She specializes in customizing

each of her designs to
fit the needs of her customers. 

For more examples of Angela's work, click HERE.

                                 Meredith Smiles  is a consultant for Tastefully Simple;

and will have
their delicious products
for sale at the show.

 You can check out her website HERE.

Stephanie Mealor Corder is a professionally trained

artist who creates acrylic paintings

primarily of flowers
and enjoys experimenting with

altered books. 

For more examples of her work, click  HERE.

Join us for the Home Show

November 13th & 14th 4:00-9:00

249 Forkner Drive

Decatur, GA 30030

Another Treasury!

What a nice surpise yesterday, to get an email informing me that I'm in another treasury! Elizabeth Graf, who I've heard referred to as "The Queen of Treasuries" kindly included my work in her art gallery collection. The treasury will be up until Tuesday evening and you can see it for youself HERE for a limited time.

As far as Elizabeth goes, I really enjoy her work, meant to reflect the good and beauty found in our everyday surroundings.  Her work is hugely influenced by tropical themes and rendered beautifully with oil paints.  Take a moment to check out her wonderful paintings, they are lovely!  Click HERE to visit her Etsy shop.

I love this painting featuring Morning Glories, you can find more info about HERE.

This piece is titled "Abyss" featuring

 some of the animals one might find there. 

For more information,

please click HERE.

A lot of Elizabeth's work is inspired

from happenings in her own garden.

I love this piece, painted of the view

from her studio window.

Click HERE, for more info.

 I really enjoyed Elizabeth's

description of this painting, here a snippet of it, "

I used neon reddish-pink in the background to give this painting a special color and glow. It looks wonderful hanging

on the wall above my mantle piece......".

And we have a winner!

Based on the drawing compiled by http://www.random.org/ , Susan is the winner! I've emailed Susan with instructions on how to redeem her $15.00 credit.
Thanks again to all who entered, check back soon, I'll be posting another drawing sometime in the next week!

RANDOM.ORG Integer Widget: "True Random Number Generator

Min: 1
Max: 8
Result:
5
Powered by RANDOM.ORG"

Flight of the Butterfly

As an artist and a gardener, I find butterflies to be amazing creatures, adding an extra element of beauty to their surroundings.  Every year, in the fall and the spring, Monarchs, the "king" of butterflies, make an amazing migrational journey.

Here is an excerpt from a great article I found titled; "Migration of the Monarch Butterfly "
      "Monarch butterflies are not able to survive the cold winters of most of the United States so they migrate south and west each autumn to escape the cold weather. The monarch migration usually starts in about October of each year, but can start earlier if the weather turns cold sooner than that......"                                
if you're interested in reading more, you can find the entire article HERE.

On Etsy, there are any number of artists who are also fascinated enough by Monarchs as well as other types of butterflies to feature them in their work.

Here are a handful of MY favorites!

Angie of the Artangel shop on Etsy

 created a beautiful painting

 featuring the flight of butterflies title,

"If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies"

To see her on line shop, click HERE.

MDaisleyMoffitt's homage to butterflies

is a lovely representation of

the abstracted natural forms of butterflies. 

To see her entire collection of work, visit her Etsy shop.

Kenneth Rougeau featured butterflies

 among other things in his ACEO (Artist Trading Cards) titled,

 "Returning" 

You can visit him and his work at his Etsy shop.

Eva Juliet created a wonderful piece

emmulating the flight of butterflies titled,

"It's never too late to be what you want to be! 

For more information, check out her Etsy shop!

Six Sisters on Etsy,

has featured butterflies

 in several of her pantings,

 you can see her entire store HERE.

This is a piece by

Lois Reynolds Mead representing a Monarch butterfly in the format of collage. 

You may see more of her work in their Etsy shop.

Interested in more cool butterfly stuff? Check out this fascinating VIDEO featuring the FLURRIES of Monarchs as they pass through on their way home.  Notice how business-like they are, there's very little ditzy fluttering from one plant to the next; it's just flying, food, rest and more flying......I think they are incredible!

New Acrylic painting! "Moonlight Serenade"- Parrot Tulip in White

I just finished my newest acrylic painting called "Moonlight Serenade" featuring a focused down view of the interior workings of a white parrot tulip lit with various glowing hues of white.  For more information, please vist my Etsy shop.  Enjoy!

Don't Forget! My contest ends in Eight Days!

If you haven't entered to win my contest yet, please do so!
Here's the link:
http://dragonflydegignstudios.blogspot.com/2009/10/enter-to-win-my-contest.html
Good Luck!
Stephanie

The Art of Bubbles

Good morning, this is the first of a series I will be posting featuring art that is interesting, unusual or just plain STRANGE!  For today, I found an article based on the beauty  and science of bubbles.  The article alternates between presenting examples of WONDERFUL art emphasizing bubbles, to scientific explanations and theories of bubbles resulting in a great article that is not only full of information but also replete with beauty.  Enjoy, I promise it'll bring a smile to your face!
   http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/intriguing-and-bizarre-art-of-bubbles-in-photography-and-nature/art

Taking inspiration from the article, I researched artists on Etsy who have featured bubbles in their art.  There were quite a few, but these examples were above and beyond the others, so with their permission, I'm able to show them here.

 Diane Clancy has created a whole series on bubbles, available in her Etsy Shop.  "Violet Mist" is my favorite of her bubblescape series. This Violet Mist has lots of light and illumination to guide you through all misty paths. This is to inspire, delight and uplift you!

 Jo of Green Island Studios says, I see each bubble in my art as representing the human condition: We are each of us a perfect, and unique entity, one that shimmers with gloriously brilliant colours, and roams the world on it's own course and then is gone again in an instant, leaving only memories of it's perfection and beauty. That's the essence of it anyway....

And Elizabeth Graf often features fish in her paintings so of course bubbles are often rendered as part of her work.  She always pays such lovely attention to color and detail!  You can visit her Etsy shop HERE.

 Lana Dashevsky's work strongly reflects the power of light, color and form. You can view her and her art HERE.

Another Treasury!

My work was chosen by Kristin Love to be in another treasury!  It's up until Tuesday afternoon, so if you read this before then, take a moment to go look at the other artists.  You can see the treasury HERE.  It's well worth visiting!

For that matter, as far as Kristin Love goes, her work and art philosophy are pretty great too!  She works primarily in clay, creating original hand built, slip cast, wheel thrown (and much more!) as well as the occasional  wall hanging or painting also renedered in the format of clay.  To top it all off, when using her kiln, she works using green energy- so her work is enviromentally friendly as well.  Take a moment to see Kristin's Etsy shop  .

The theme of this lovely cup is based  on the quote "THE JOURNEY IS THE DESTINATION" by Don Eldon

For more details and information, click HERE.

"KOI AUTUMN EQUINOX",

In her shop, Kristin describes her artistic process in creating this lovely tile; "First I rolled out the big clay slab, cutting it with the Koi design in mind and then after the tile was bisque fired, I drew the picture in pencil then layered and layered the glaze paints in order to achieve the depth of color you see on the finished piece.

For more details and information, click HERE.

" The OPEN Bowl"
Kristin's description of this piece goes on to say, "This is one of my unique black, white and 1 color "doodle" bowls and it measures about 6 1/4" in diameter and is 1 3/4" deep. My "doodle bowls" were born out of a need to simplify my work and are a direct reflection of that choice, they are like a warm little hug that you hold in your hands....ORGANIC COMFORT BOWLS!


For more details and information, click HERE.

"UNDER THE STRAWBERRY MOON"

About this piece, Kristin says, "This painting is part of a bird series that I am slowly working on and I am VERY EXCITED and more than happy about the way it came out, because unlike painting on canvas I NEVER KNOW how the finished piece is going to look until I open up the kiln. "

For more details and information, click HERE.

When Graphic Artists get Bored

Check this link out, it is an AMAZING collection of altered images, just incredible stuff!http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=hYMRepK_aqw

New Treasury!

Good morning,

I was pleased to find myself in another treasury today, created by Klaire of Mystic Silks.  Klaire is an incredible artist specialising in the media of silk; through which she creates paintings, scarves and pillows.  She also has a lovely selection of watercolor, oil and acrylic paintings.  Please take a moment to visit her Etsy shop.

This is one of Klaire's mixed media works combining acrylics and oil paints featuring a focused down image of a beautiful hummingbird feeding.  For more information on this piece click HERE.  I absolutely LOVE the colors in this, but then again, I love the color in ALL of Klaire's work!

This painting is titled, "Picasso's Moon" made up of a silk painting featuring the woods at night, with a full moon reflected in pond.  You can see more details on this piece HERE

This painting was was inspired by the words from a Neil Diamond song"Lost on a painted sky, where the clouds are hung with a poet's eye...

"Lonely looking sky, lonely looking night, and being lonely never made it right, never made it right---lonley looking sky....Oh, Glory looking day, on a lonely looking sky"

Love, love, love the feeling this one invokes!

Click HERE for more info on this piece.

This painting is named "Fickle Winds" featuring sailboats tossed about on the sea at the mercy of those fickle winds mentioned in the title.  For more details click HERE.

Enter to win my contest!

In my quest to create an  "Art Blog of Excellence" (she says with tongue in cheek,lol) I have become a member of Etsy Giveaways where Etsy members offer items for the sole purpose of; you guessed it, GIVING THEM AWAY!
The prize will be $15.00 towards any item of your choice in my Etsy shop!
So how to enter and win you ask...
1. Visit my Etsy shop, and have a look around, then leave a comment here about any of your favorites from my shop. The winner’s name will be drawn by random number generator next Monday, October 26th. Be sure to leave an email where I can contact you.
2. Post about this giveaway on your blog by linking to http://dragonflydegignstudios.blogspot.com/  Please then come back and leave a comment with a link to your post.
3. Twitter about the giveaway! Then please come back, leave a comment and a link to your twitter!

Don't forget, the winner's name will be drawn Monday, October 26th!
Good luck!

Arting Challenge: Art--So-Mo-Fo

So, there is this wonderful art challenge every year, called "Art Something Mo-Fo" where anyone who likes to create art can participate.  The basics of the challenge are to create a piece of art for every day of the month of October.  Last spring we did one for April as well.  It's great fun and a fabulous group of people who get together in cyber space to paint, draw whatever inspires them and comment on one another's arting.  This group is actually what pulled me back into the world of creating regularly!  I rarely have time to do a complete piece in one day (if I'm lucky I get about two kid-free hours a day to paint) so what I do is post my works in progress.  Check it out though, there's a lot of eye candy in there http://community.livejournal.com/artsomofo/!

New painting!

Here's newest painting from my Zinnia series.  This is an original 12" X 12" acrylic painting portraying the dynamic inner workings of a carmine red zinnia. The center feeds to the pale green stamens which in turn lead to the curling twists of petals in the process of opening. The composition is completed with a grand finale combining petals of vermillion, crimson and burgundy.  You can see more photos of it and my other works at my Etsy shop.