Rebecca Homecca

Here is what I’ve been working on in Art Studio. It took a little longer than planned because I missed a couple weeks with this cold/allergy mess. I bought a book on clearance with different watercolor lessons in it and this was one of them.
It was pretty fun. Especially making the sky. It’s probably 5 different layers and took several sessions to get the colors I wanted.
The tree was also fun and interesting. I used masking fluid on the tree part while I worked on the sky and ground. Then I removed the masking and painted in the tree. The painting really came to life once I got the tree going.

Last night hubs and I went to a fundraiser for the Art Council. My Studio went together and bought a table.

There was a silent auction and a live auction (we did not bid on anything). There were also games like Spin to Win and the Money Machine. I won 2 coupons to the ice cream shop. Someone from our table won $90 in the 50/50 though!

Here is hubs in the Money Machine.

He did not win either. Some guy cheated by catching all the money in his sweater.

And because I am a nerd I took a picture of our table. It had our name on it like we are official!

The attendance was way down and it seemed as though the bidding was pretty weak too. I can’t imagine trying to raise money for the arts during this economy.

Tuesday night I went out to dinner with my BFF Em (yes I sit next to her for 8 hours a day…but somehow we still don’t get all of our words in!). We were supposedly knitting, but I don’t knit. I do talk though, so I did that instead! Got home late (and by late I mean 9) but had to talk to hubs (still don’t have all my words out? Good Grief!) for a few before bed and went to bed too late.

Wednesday I had art studio and even though I got home usual time, I still went to bed late!

I don’t know why I am having such trouble getting into bed on time. But it is catching up to me I can tell you that…

There is a “postcard” show that we were all going to enter, but it proved to be more difficult than you would think! Basically, you had to make 4X6 paintings. Since I had just made a bunch of cards for that Christmas show, I was a little burned out on working small. I tried for the past 2 weeks, and finally gave up last night. So I started a new painting with snow.

Snow is very difficult because it isn’t just white, there are reflections of other colors and shadows. But I just read an article in a Watercolor magazine about it.

Yes there truly is a magazine for every interest.

Speaking of art…tonight one of our friends stopped by tonight to buy one of my paintings to give as a gift. How exciting!

Now that we’ve had dinner and are sitting down to relax I feel like I could go right to sleep. And I just might as soon as the laundry is done!

I just got my check for the Christmas sale we had at the Arts Council and I made $29.40.

Shopping Spree!

Finally! A picture of my booth.
I took some pictures of the other booths too that are up on Flickr. There is some really neat things there. It’s probably good that when we had the opening reception I didn’t bring my purse! Although, I am volunteering there on Friday.
And by volunteering, I mean shopping (well, I might help a few customers while I’m there).

I think our booth turned out nice. I like the trees. It adds height and interest. I have my handmade gift tags on there and another lady made snow man ornaments.

If there was an award for best booth, we would win for sure!
But there isn’t so I only win in my head. Not that I am competitive or anything.

I hope we sell a lot. The arts council said this is there biggest selling show every year. Just depends on weather or not people want to give art and cards for presents I guess.

Tonight after work I headed up to the arts council to get our booth set up. We got the tables and everything set up, but since I was the only one who actually brought their stuff to sell, it’s a little empty.

It was a little frustrating that no one was prepared, but it’ll all work out in the end. We have until Wednesday night to get it all set. I plan on stopping by then to see how we look and will post pictures then.

No point in taking pictures of an empty booth!

Looks like we weren’t the only ones behind the eight ball. There were several other booths that didn’t have any product at all.

We did get to sneak peek at the ones that were set up. There is one lady that takes old sweaters that are still in good shape and re-works them into cardigans with trim and buttons. They were really cute.

There was one other watercolor booth set up. Her stuff was quite a bit more expensive than ours. It was painted well, but was little fussy for my tastes.

I really tried to keep my prices in the “impulse buy” range. If it’s too much, you might think twice and I’m all about making the sale!

We have a little Christmas tree in the corner of our booth. I made some little gift tags and hung them on the tree. It looks really cute!

Here’s to big sales!

I’ve been busy as a bee getting ready for this Christmas show. It’s not an art show so much as a gift show, but they like to have hand made and arty things.
In addition to my regular printed cards I am now offering handmade art cards. I basically take paintings that maybe didn’t work out, but still had nice elements (like the apple there), and cut out those parts to make the cards. A few of the cards were painted specifically for card making. Each one is unique, and they come in sets of 3, all tied up with a ribbon.
We will have room in our booth area for unframed work and some small framed pieces too.
I still have quite a few cards to finish, and they all have to be priced. November 9 is our set up date, so I better get to it!

There has not been too much going on lately because I’ve been laid up with some kind of animal flu; bird, pig, salamander, or some such critter. But my mind is all over the place. I think it’s all the couch time.  I have all these things I want to do but no energy to do them.

Our windows just came in, which means my weekend is booked. We really need to get those in before the snow flies! Although I would like to see hubs use the caulk gun while wearing mittens (not that he actually wears mittens, but it is a funny visual).

I have a secret project Em and I am working on, but I can’t blog about it and it’s killing me. One of them will hopefully be a Christmas gift for someone who reads this blog, so I can’t tell you about it. But it’s going to be awesome.

I’ll give you a clue…it involves food.

Today, for some unknown reason, I signed up to have my cards and a few paintings at a Christmas Sale. Now I also have to get cards made and all put together.

I also thought of a new art project I want to do. More on that later, I have to order some supplies.

It’s Tuesday so I’m watching Biggest Loser and trying to not have a snack. I never snack during shows, but this show makes me want to eat things. It’s not right.

Yesterday started out with a trip to the Chiro-cracker (back is getting better, somewhat) before heading downtown to ArtPrize. We told the Doc where we were headed and that started a whole discussion on what to see and how awesome it is. The girls that work there chimed in too.

Since it was drizzling rain we stopped at the store to buy an umbrella. We told the guy we were heading to ArtPrize, which is why we needed an umbrella. That started a whole nother 10 minute conversation about it.

Needless to say, people around town are so geeked for this thing. And after spending EIGHT HOURS walking all over looking at art and seeing all the people walking around (during the day on a Friday. Unheard of.), I can see why. I told hubs, I think this is the first thing in a long time that something actually lived up to all the hype (and then some).

The crazy thing is after walking around for eight hours we saw almost 50 venues and didn’t come close to seeing it all.

It was fun to see all the art, but also fun to go into buildings I had never been in before. We took this crazy back elevator up to the top of a building that is now used as an art gallery, but once was a secret meeting place for the Masons!

It was awesome to see people of all ages downtown, doing those things too. And spending their money on food, parking, transportation, etc. The boost to the downtown economy has been awesome.

I also read in the paper that some of the empty office buildings are now going to be sold or rented as a result of people going to ArtPrize.That was an unexpected benefit!

Some of the art is a little out there, but I think that is to be expected at something like this. And, we saw stuff from as far away as Rome, Italy (hanging in the back of a salon no less).

Even though the weather wasn’t great we had a good time crossing venues off our list. Hubs has pictures over at his site.

This afternoon hubs took me on a date to the local art museum. They built a new one a while ago and we had never been.

Architecturally, it is a very unique building and it has all kinds of “green” design things in it, which is cool

As for the art, it was a little lacking. Now they are in between special exhibits, so it was only their standard fare. But there just wasn’t very much in there.

The old building was small and they made it sound like they had a bunch of stuff in storage and couldn’t display it all.

I’m not so sure about that now.

My other complaint doesn’t lie with just this museum, but all art museums. There is no flow. There is a bunch of small rooms, but no flow from room to room. I’m always afraid I’m going to miss something.

If you’ve ever been to an IKEA, you recognize the idea of good flow.  There are even arrows on the floor telling you that you are in fact going in the right direction. These museums need to visit and IKEA and get this figured out.

The cool thing about the museum is the focus on American painters. I am not real familiar with American artists as the art world likes you think all great art happens in Paris. Now there are a lot of so called Americans that spent an awful lot of time in Paris (like almost their whole life) but it is something I would like to learn more about.

All in all in was a beautiful day to be walking around down town with a nice boy.