Be Mused Art

I have been really enjoying the creative everyday challenge. I don’t always blog about my creative endeavors, but since signing up, I have done at least something creative each day. I have also began to look at some of my everyday chores as opportunities for creativity.
I think one of the biggest changes is realizing that organizing takes creativity. My home and studio is still a work in progress, but if I can’t think of something I want to draw, at least I can do is find a home for something or find something else I can file in my nifty new file cabinet.
Another one is food. After getting that art degree, for 3 years I didn’t draw or paint. Instead I became very creative about fixing food and being frugal as well as making crazy quilts from estate sale finds. I was very good at it. But when I took up the brush again, I became completely absorbed in my art and less creativity went into my every day living. I am learning to get that back a bit. Starting with creating more healthy foods for the family and trying to keep the costs down while I am at it.
But the July theme for Creative everyday should be a breeze, because lets face it my creativity has usually been about me. yeah J and the kids can benefit from it such as the cooking or activities for the kids. But if it wasn’t something I enjoyed I would probably find some way to get out of it.
Designing clothes for K? Really it is just plain fun. Helping C with things he needs to get done for college? Keeps my brain functioning and I get real quality time with my son. Fixing Bentos for J and the kids? It is just a fun way of packing the lunches.
Maybe a lot of it would be considered chores, but with a little creativity those chores become fun and something I *want* to do. So it really is all about me. I suspect we are all like that a bit. People choose the volunteer work that they enjoy the most, go to college in order to try and get jobs they love, have kids in order to experience the joy of watching someone be introduced to all the fun life has to offer.

I have become addicted to a show on BBC America called “You are what you eat”. And it has me thinking a bit differently about food. I am already a member of an organic produce co-op, but I can’t say I was making the best use of what I was getting. And with money getting a bit tight for everyone, I am also trying to go back to my original frugal ways.

So My first priority is to use what I get from my produce pick ups, which is every other week. Then I am working on using mostly what I have already in stock in my pantry and freezer. And with all this try and make it all healthier for the family.

Tonight’s menu was
Grilled Salmon (from the freezer, purchased on sale)
Grilled Zucchini (co-op)
Carrot-Pineapple salad (carrots from co-op, pineapple bought special cause I was craving it)
Brown Rice (from Pantry)
Sushi (nori was in the pantry, rice - panty, veggies co-op)
Strawberry Dessert Cups (leftovers and strawberries bought special)

Recipes:
Grilled Salmon
Frozen Salmon Filet cut into quarters (freezer)
lemon juice (fridge)
pecan oil (pantry)
salt pepper. (pantry)

I just marinated the salmon in all the other stuff. Grilled on my Foreman grill on low. until flaky. I will admit it was a bit too lemony and next time I won’t let it marinate half the day.

Grilled Zucchini

Zucchini (co-op)
Pecan Oil (pantry)
salt pepper (pantry)

I cut the zucchini in half length wise. I poured a bit of the oil into a pie pan just enough to coat the bottom and added salt and pepper then put the zucchini in flat side down so it was nicely coated then grilled it on medium on the Foreman grill.

Carrot Pineapple Salad
3 Carrots (co-op)
1 can chunked pineapple (had dh pick it up from store on his way home)
mayo - about a half cup (fridge)
1t lemon juice (fridge)
1t sugar (pantry)

After shredding the carrot I set a small bit aside for the sushi and the rest went in a bowl with everything else and mixed.

Brown Rice

Brown Rice (pantry)

I just cooked it in water in my nifty rice cooker, cause I can’t cook rice on myself. It is my one serious cooking block.

Sushi
3 nori sheets (pantry bought a few weeks ago intending to experiment)
2 avacados (co-op)
onion chopped (co-op)
garlic clove (co-op)
splash of lemon juice (fridge)
salt (pantry)
Julianne cucumber (co-op leftover from yesterday’s salad)
carrot shredded (co-op)
Cooked Rice (pantry)

This turned out easier than I thought and I only made it cause the avocado were needing using.
diced avacado, garlic, onion (just a little bit) lemon juice, and salt all put into a food processor until creamy.
Spread the avocado mixture on a nori sheet except the last inch. cover half with rice and then lines of carrot and cucumber on the rest of the avocado. Roll tightly moisten edge to seal. Cut into slices.

Strawberry Dessert Cups

strawberry sorbet (freezer)
strawberries (from store bought as treat for J)
stoneyfield farm vanilla yogurt (fridge)
4 fluted ice cream glasses

I put about a tablespoon of the sorbet in the bottom of the ice cream glasses, filled the rest of the glass with sliced strawberries and drizzled with vanilla yogurt.

The sorbet was leftover from my dental surgery, and the yogurt was the last little bit leftover from my morning smoothies.

Yes, I made a lot of different stuff tonight. But I had a reason. tomorrow is C’s 18th birthday party and graduation party. We are going to be away from home, and I doubt I will want to do much cooking tomorrow night. Half the salmon is leftover, half the sushi, half the avocado spread, and half the carrot salad.

I am thinking that tomorrow I will either make salmon patties or a pasta salad with salmon and have the carrot salad and veggie sushi on the side.

Also you might notice that a regular oven was not used at all. It is summer in Texas and I hate having the oven going. I was already miserable with just the foreman grill and rice cooker going. Very happy to not have to heat much tomorrow unless I decide to cook up some pasta. Leaning more and more toward a salmon salad on lettuce wraps.

Okay, for those that have been visiting for awhile you might have noticed a few changes in the last couple of days around here. I think I have things the way I like them now. Maybe a few more links needed to be added to the right. But for now it is all good.
BTW check out the new shaded version of the catfish.

Well here is my second set of bookmark designs. These are the completed ink drawings, not just the coloring page outlines I showed of the mercats. I am offering the drawings for sale in etsy as a diptych set.
Wouldn’t these cute little kitties look cool matted together in a 2 window mat and hung on a wall in a library or bibliophile’s home.
I can’t wait to get these printed and matted as bookmarks as well.
BTW, I am working on the shading details for the catfish as well. I think they would also make a cool diptych.

I am working on some bookmark designs. These are the first of them. I thought it might be nifty to offer them as black and white coloring sheets with 4-6 per page (depending on how well they fit on standard cardstock pages) as well as full color laminated bookmarks. I am of course still in the design stage of it all.
Here we have the mercat/catfish. I am also thinking that I need some fairy cats, witches and dragons. If any of you have any ideas for subjects for bookmarks, please post it here and I will get to work on it.
But while you wait on the bookmarks you can find the deisgns at cafepress and imagekind.

This was fun. This ink drawing was inspired by a drawing in my sketchbook that I did over a year ago. I took the basic dragon form and his bottle of potion, and for the final ink drawing I added the nifty steampunk-ish pipe system to the background.
This guy is currently available on etsy and fun t-shirts and gifts featuring this drawing are at cafepress. If you want the original, you better snap it up quick, because I am seriously thinking of sending this drawing to armadillocon this year.

Between June 10th and 14th I will be participating in the etsy YArt. I have 2 different deals that I will be offering.

Deal 1 - ACEOs for only $4. Just purchase the 2 ACEOs Regular price for these is $12-$16.99ACEO

Deal 2 - Large scale original paintings 50% off. I will be reducing the price of many of my large scale orginal paintings and moving them from the “original painting” to the “sale” category of my etsy shop. So the price will already be reduced when you purchase from the sale category.

Well it is finally complete. I am real happy with how the dragonflies and fairy wings turned out. I honestly have no idea how I did it, but the dragonfly wings look like they are vibrating off the page. And I really like how striking the white pattern dots made the fairy wings.

As you noticed in the other WIP posts the background was a wash of purple, blue and just a few hits of yellow, but I also added some light blue spirals to the background at the end. And I replaced the original spots on the mushrooms with cream spirals.

Well, I had my second showcase on etsy yesterday and today I checked my numbers on google analytics. At this point my busiest ad on project wonderful had expired.
So the results are with the etsy showcase I got 49 hits. It costs $7 for one day.

With project wonderful I get between 51 and 154 hits a day. My most expensive ad costs me $1.50 a day and I have never spent more than $2 a day, and most days it is still under $1.50 because of the fluctuating prices on project wonderful.

For hits, I would have to say project wonderful is the way to go.

For each of the hits from project wonderful I get 1.5 page visits each time on average.

For the etsy it is a bit harder to figure out the numbers, but it appears to be somewhere between 2.5-3.0 pages a visit.

Still making pages per dollar for me to think project wonderful could be more profitable.

But in the end Twitter is probably the best advertising I do. It is free, low effort, and gets me 3.66 pages per visit.

I am going to have my work exhibited at ApolloCon this year for the first time. I am very excited about it. And I spent my Saturday night filling out bid sheets and matting drawings for the con. I am going to be sending 8 different original works of art. 3 matted drawings, 3 watercolor ACEOs that have been matted to fit 5×7 frames and 2 8×10 acrylic paintings.