Above The Fold

Hot Air Balloons – Balloon Festival

Koi Drawing/Painting

Watercolor Pencils

I’ve been missing being creative. I haven’t sat down to really DRAW in so many years. And the last time I created a painting was even longer. My mother encouraged me to try and pick it up again, but I didn’t want to invest in a huge purchase of art supplies, so water color pencils seemed like the happy middle ground. I’ve made a few “paintings/drawings” using them, and still getting the hang of it, but I really like the medium and it works really well with my current life situation. There is not a lot of cleanup, creating something doesn’t take a long time, and doesn’t require long “drying” times. Certainly not creating amazing works of art, but I am having fun.

Here’s the first one I created with the pencils.

Cranes from an unfinished project

My husband had asked me to create a larger mobile for him. I have all the cranes for it completed, but I’m unsatisfied with the method I have of attaching them to the mobiles. I still haven’t found a solution. So the cranes have been sitting on my desk for over a year. Sad, too, because I had gone to the trouble of finding sone really cool and unique handmade, screen printed paper.

Larger Crane Mobiles

After dabbling with the smaller crane mobiles, I started playing a bit more with larger mobiles. I prefered double and triple tiers and equally balanced sides. This one I created as a gift for my parents.

Mini Desktop Crane Mobiles

In December of 2008, I was looking for a unique holiday gift to deliver to a number of my clients. I eventually came up with the idea to create these mini-desktop crane mobiles. I attached a little tag with my name and website on them and sent them out to a handful of clients (those that had kept me particularly busy throughout the year and/or those that I thought would appreciate the kind of unique/odd gift)

I eventually created a number of extras and attempted to sell them on Etsy.com – however, in order to show some kind of a profit on the item, I had to price them in the range of about $15 (and even then, my profit margin was pretty low). I had a handful of them listed on Etsy and most of the listings expired without a sale. (I sold only two) I also donated two of them to be auctioned off to benefit the Girl Scouts.