Birdcage necklace

I played with different beads and pendants and the result was four necklaces for four color types named after seasons. This one is definitely Summer - with its cool powdered colors,darkened metal and slick casual appearance.
Planned to put it on Etsy but other urgent plans made me put the holidays Etsy selling on stop.

There is a tiny bird in a ring inside the cage!

During the Bead Extravaganza show I was stopped with compliments by every other person when I wore this necklace:)

Artjournaling with friend

My artist friend from Germany came to visit me. So much fun! We brought catalogs from some shops in nearby plaza and sat down in the evening to make new pages in our artist journals.

When I saw the lamps on photo it immediately brought to my mind the pictures of ladies in crinolines and ballerinas in tutus.



Have you noticed that a hummingbird on a stamp is made entirely from butterflies?

Why am I not working???

I want to feel like that:



But actually I feel like that:



Something is preventing me from drawing:(

Artist's date. Old bicycle necklace.

I went to my artist's date to Michaels this time. My first intention was to check some unfamiliar things - for the crafts I didn't yet have a chance to try. But all in vain! They have a surprisingly big bead department now so I ended up rummaging through all the treasures. I put parts and beads together enjoying mock designing. And then I saw a fantastic old bicycle pendant. I start thinking - if I put this and this together and make the pendant a focal point and finish it for selling... But wait a minute! It's my artist's date! I am not doing this for profit - just for nurturing my little artist inside! I should make this necklace for myself!

So I bought everything I thought would go well with the pendant. And the pendant itself, of course:)

The store was closed, I went home. And made this. And I love it! Will definitely wear it for the next artist's date.

New notebook, new lists

Last week I decided to try Mark Forster's system AutoFocus. I have a certain obsession for lists of things and his system is build on one continuous stream of listed items. You sure would need a new notebook for the new system - so I decided to go to an artist's date ( as I'm on week two of Julia Cameron's Artist's Way) and find a perfect notebook. It shouldn't be too small - Mark said 25-35 lines to a page. But it shouldn't be too big - my backpack is rather small.

I spent an hour in the paper department of Borders and was almost desperate - nothing said eureka! to me.
But finally on the last shelf it was - my preciousss!

Funny and bright new notebook - love it, love it, love it!

Handmade Ideas Book

I always carry with me a small pocket notebook for ideas. If you think that you'll remember that bright flick without writing it down - you are most definitely wrong. The other wrong thing to do is to write it down on some scraps of paper. They will be lost almost immediately. The small book in sturdy cover is the best friend of ideas! I write in it when see good idea in a book or during the show or something coming to me just among everyday chores. They are a great pleasure to flip through while waiting for something. You will be surprised how many of the ideas have already escaped your memory.
This is one of my ideas book that I made myself. It based on the notebook that I bought in the art shop in Israel long ago.


It's 1/4 of letter size paper (A4 for the other world). The covers are made of book cardboard covered with silver decorative paper. I drew pictures on heavy textured paper and glued them on the front cover - my favorite cat, words "ideas" and just tiny decorated strip.


Paper inside is rather heavy extra white printer paper.


The binding is a variation of Japanese stab binding done with a narrow satin ribbon.

I still have my previous ideas book not filled so this book is waiting its turn.
May be some day I'll make a little bunch of them for selling on Etsy.

I love little things

One more of my flower fairies.

What I've brought from the book store

Bag full of treasures. I'm so afraid that due to crisis some great magazines may be terminated! Hope we don't stop buying them and all of them survive.

Some cute bunnies

A couple of weeks ago we spotted a pair of fat cute bunnies on our backyard. Our first impression was that was some kind of garden sculpture. But no - they were real bunnies. I decided to take them inside and send my daughter to ask neighbors, maybe someone cried already missing them. Bunnies were quite friendly, the smaller one - I guessed it was a girl - came to me to make introduction. The boy ran a little around then also was caught and brought inside.



Our guinea pig Cyrano was very agitated - he squeaked, he stood high in his pen and I took him out to make acquaintance with the bunnies.

Meanwhile our daughter found the owners. They asked her when she had found them - which day - they didn't even know that their bunnies had escaped!


One last glance - they are so, so, so cute! Yellow, big and round - like from kids book.



And off they go!

Next time they are in our backyard I'll keep them!!

Flower Faires

I decided to change my buddy icon on flickr and tried different photos of my works. It's not easy to cut a picture 48x48 px and make it look good. Now I have an icon from this picture. I love making tiny flower fairies from the silk flowers! You see they are really small - they are sitting on some kind of a computer manual and have a pack of compacts behind them.

New member

Our daughter was devastated by her pig's death. So we decided to go to the pet store and have a look. Just have a look.
And we returned with a new family member. He is quite an opposite of Afanasy - smooth, silky, quick and adventurous. When I saw his prominent curved nose in the profile I immediately said - Cyrano! And at hearing this everybody decided suddenly that we should take him.
For all of us it was a certainly comforting not to see the pig's den empty.

Our piggy

I haven't been writing here for a while. Our guinea pig Afanasy has passed away. Those who don't have pets can't understand how much grief brings the death of such a small creature. He didn't make it just a little to be 7 years old. It's a lot for a guinea pig! He traveled with us from country to country, sometimes by a separate plane, lived with us in the hotels, apartments, houses, always cheerful, always purring...

Stones home

Now all my stones ( OK, most of them:)) are living on one shelf in the bookcase. I lowered the upper shelf and now they have a cozy little place among my children's illustrated books.
Click to see the whole picture.

Mouse with a basket

I'm a very methodical person. As I'm working on children's book illustrations now and still has not decided on technique for it I have bought samples of several different papers and am playing with them.

This was 2-ply Vellum paper. Pencils go on it very smoothly but texture of paper still can be seen. It is something silicon-ish for me in this paper.

The costume was inspired by lovely children from Kate Greenaway's books.

Hand painted rock. Orange guinea pig

This little guy is also a prize for a guinea pigs show. He has the cutest red eyes I ever painted.

One more with the close-up of his face:

Painted rock. Calico cat.

It was painted a year ago for a man who wanted to give little cat and bunny stones to some women he knows for Christmas. The Calico Cat is my favorite. So I brought her to a photo session . A tiny wicker chair and a little pillow made a perfect entourage.

Hand painted rock. Silkie guinea pig.

I painted a bunch of guinea pigs for some cavy show prizes. I would love to have such a prize myself!
Though an old piggy we own is not of show quality but we just love him.
This one painted is Silkie or Shelty guinea pig. They have long beautiful hair.
More pictures of the stone:

Painted vinyl record. A Raven Combing a Wind

I've repeated one of my older pictures on a vinyl disc.
The Raven flies through the tangled winds leaving them combed behind.
Love the idea - it gives me the soothing feeling.
That record is in the Rome gallery also.

Painted vinyl record. Butterflies 2.

One more of my painted vinyls. Using silver pen on the records is very tricky - ink goes into the grooves and makes lines furry.
I love that red queen butterfly! Have painted it several times on rocks.

Old record - new life

Last year the owner on NY APW gallery invited me to take part in the show featuring paintings on the old vinyl records. I bought a bunch of old discs in a thrift store and began to experiment.
The idea with butterflies sprang immediately to my mind, but I painted several other discs and a lot of try patches on spare records before came with a result that I liked.

It can be hung easily by putting a push pin through the middle hole. I especially love the fact that it can be hung in any position - the symmetry of the butterflies make the composition perfect any time.

Now it went to Rome to another exhibition of vinyl records - VINYL FACTORY Group Show (VINILIFICIOCREATIVO VOL.2) at the MondoPOP International Gallery.

Hand painted rock. Red Cardinal

The very first book on rockpainting I saw many years ago in Germany. It wasn't like Lin Welford books. It was full of little birds, very cute and touching. I remembered that book when was painting this red cardinal - one of the symbols of the festive season.

My daughter's Monkey painted rock

My daughter has a thing for monkeys. Jane Goodall is her hero. One day she brought me a stone from the backyard and told me to paint a monkey for her. I obeyed:)
So this is her Monkey stone. It's round and heavy, nevertheless sometimes she takes the stone to school with her.


You see it's not any particular breed of monkeys, it's just a cute little friend.


The Monkey stone is painted all around though usually I leave the back side unpainted for the customer to see original color and surface of the rock. But this isn't just a collector's item, she wanted to play with it.

Tree of Life necklace

Instructions for this beautiful pendant long waited in my bookmarks. I just didn't want to make a circle wire base myself. Fortunately on the last visit to Micheal's I found a pack of big silver colored rings. Bingo!



This was a present for my daughter for New Year Eve. She doesn't like beads and rarely wears my beaded necklaces. But this one I knew she would sure like.



I had not enough coral chips so I had to add some seed beads of the same color between chips. Nobody noticed:)

Instructions can be found here: Beadstudio. Very easy to follow and bound to be successful!

Corgi stone

I painted corgi stones twice. It's always difficult to paint an animal with big ears,while those with round head and small ears are very suitable for painting on the rocks. But I think this one turned out beautifully. It was intended to be a gift and customer asked me to convey happiness and joy in the dog's face.

My silver Madeline.

ACEO.
Madeline the Cat.

Proud cat and its hand painted rock portrait

One more of my December orders. Portrait of a gorgeous cat from Canada. The customer wanted it as a gift so the stone came with a pillow and a cute Japanese little basket.

Christmas tree

We still have it:)
Behind the tree you can see a part of my children books collection. The girl in red is not a picture, it's a beautiful book of princesses with illustrations by Rebecca Dautremer, extremely talented french illustrator. Above the book there is my watercolor poppies picture. Beneath it you can see my painted cat stone and mysterious metal box. It was a gift from my friend from Belgium and she also didn't know what it is for. Her husband bought it some time ago from some antiques dealer in Scotland. The dealer didn't know its purpose and even how long he had been in possession of this box.

Close-up of the toy spaniels stone

There are a lot of curly ears but I didn't have troubles with this rock. Sometimes something makes work on a pet rock unusually hard, you know the feeling - you are painting and repainting and it's not there. This one was a pleasure. These big-eyed dogs are so funny and cute. They are English Toy Spaniels or Charlies. The black and tan on the right is a King Charles variety and the Tri on the left is a Prince Charles variety.

Hand painted rock

Portrait on the stone of English Toy Spaniels Carly and Bentley. They are adorable little dogs and I'm pleased with the likeness I achieved. Their owners are happy. So am I. They sent me this picture of the painted rock and originals.