Sweet Home Alabama

I hope your Memorial Day weekend treated you well. I know mine did. We took advantage of the extra day Daniel had off and went to visit family down in Alabama.

My weekend included lots of river views...

And turtle feeding. (They *love* dog food!)

Country sunsets.

Golf-cart rides.

And "cow wrangling".

(They mostly just ran away from us.) The closest I could get was to this yearling.

As usual, the visit wasn't long enough. But I'm thankful we got to go at all.
Happy Tuesday to you!

StudioFinn Shop Update

Crescent Moon Dangle Earrings

Rustic Metal Shards Earrings

Tiny Nature Charm Necklace

Nacre Pendant with Genuine Pearl

Forest Floor Charm Necklace

All of these will be appearing in the StudioFinn shop over the next few days, if they're not there already! Etsy's photo uploader is being extremely slow, so I'm listing things as my patience allows.

I think the Crescent Moon Earrings are my favorite : )

More New Things

I finished up, packaged, and shipped a custom order for a friend of mine over the weekend. She provided the photo and I did the rest. It's a gift for a friend of hers. I hope she loves it!

The miniature day lily I got at the Farmer's Market last weekend has starting blooming! I love its yellow. Such a happy color.

I've also been playing with some new tools. By "new" I mean I got them as Christmas presents and hadn't touched them yet. It feels good to take a break from glass and work with metal again. The StudioFinn shop will be getting some much needed attention over the next few weeks.

I've also added a list of links (to the right -->>) titled "People I Know". So many of my friends are getting/building websites of their own, showing their amazing talents, that I feel the need to share them with you. Check all of those links out. They are all amazing. You won't be disappointed. I am so proud to know so many talented artists.

Wishing you a happy and productive week!
-K

New Addition

We added a new member to the aquatic family this past weekend. Meet George! He (I am assuming it's a he, although I think snails can change sexes? Don't quote me on that though!) is a "Blue Mystery Snail" of the aquatic variety, obviously. I think the name is derived from the color of their shell, which you can't see at all here. But it's a beautiful bluish-grey. I'll try and get a photo of it sometime soon.

Our aquarium gets a fair amount of sunlight and algae has started growing already. Instead of getting chemical drops to clear the tank up, we wanted to take the more natural approach to maintaining our little ecosystem. Snails love algae. It seemed like the logical thing to do. If you look really closely you can see his little mouth going to town on that glass. I love his little "moustache" too.

The Beta (who I affectionately refer to as "fatty fish" because he can never get enough to eat!) hated George the first two days we had him, but I think he has figured out that George poses no threat to his food supply so he's stopped picking on him. Thank goodness.

Cloth and Glass

Art isn't the only thing I sandwich between glass.

My cloth and glass creations can be found for sale here.

A Preview

Some more small paintings that I've been working on lately.

Weekend Wrap Up and a Backyard Visitor

I hope everyone had an amazing weekend. I know I did! Saturday was filled with fun adventures. Daniel and I went to the Jonesborough Farmer's Market Saturday morning and picked up a few goodies, including a miniature day lily, cherry tomato plant, and some gluten free peanut butter dog treats that my dogs go crazy over. I am so happy its farmer's market season. Buying local really is the way to go.

Then Saturday afternoon we went out to Kingsport, TN. for the annual Racks by the Tracks beer tasting and barbecue festival. I had a blast. There were probably 20 different beer tents there. $25 got you in to sample as many beers as you wanted, along with a souvenir glass, and the food was amazing (although not included in the ticket price, which is understandable). There was live music as well. Overall a great community event.

We also had visitor over the weekend! This little guy hung out under our porch light for a few nights, catching bugs I assume. (If you look really closely in the first photograph, you can see a little something hanging out of his mouth. Mmm.) I hope to catch some more photos of him again, if he's around.

I just love the patterns on his bumpy skin. And those golden eyes!

Hope your week is off to a good start : )

P.S!!! I have still been listing lots of new stuff in the shop that I haven't posted on here! Please stop by and check it out!

My Pups

I wanted to share some awesome photos of my dogs that my sister took while I was still living in Florence. They're a few months old, at least, but too good to pass up.
I just love this picture of Phoebe. There's something about it that I can't quite put my finger on.

She's a young girl, still growing. It's funny to look back and see how her body (and head) have changed shape/proportion.

Duke being regal and calm.

I forget what we were bribing them with here, but Phoebe sure did want it! Look at that snaggletooth!

Happy Friday the 13th you all!

I Almost Forgot!!!

The ever popular Glass Bundle Necklace is back in the shop as well!

I have two listed that are ready to ship!

I'm quite proud of this design and can't believe I haven't blogged about it before. This necklace has made it to the front page of Etsy several times and rivals my tree pendants in popularity. Each piece of stacked glass is meticulously cut and ground. These beauties are painstaking to make, as I hope you can tell from the photo.

Give 'em some love! And happy Hump Day to you all!

New Stuff in the Shop!

As promised, new items are up in the shop!

This Violet Branches Pendant can be found here. And in case you were wondering, yes I did take that photograph. I obviously have quite a thing for trees.

I also listed some other fine art print pendants, which can be found here. All of my fine art print pendants include either prints of original drawings of mine, or original photos of mine. You won't find them anywhere else.

I haven't listed a hand-painted grey tree in a while. This one can be found here. If you are interested in other tree pendants in a variety of colors, click here.

I'm happy to have some paintings listed as well! Right now there is just this turquoise tree painting and a green tree painting in the shop, but I will be listing more later this week. You can find them here.

"Ghost Tree" Series: Painting Preview

It feels good to be back home after a hectic (but fun!) weekend in Atlanta. Daniel and I met up with my sister and Drew and had a lot of fun exploring the city after the Dunwoody Art Show was over, but I'm just not used to the big city. It's nice to be back in the mountains again.

I have some paintings that I'm getting ready to list on my Etsy shop this week. These photos are a sneak preview of some of them! If you are interested in specifics on these pieces (or one piece in particular) feel free to email me about them. (You can find my email address in my profile, I believe. I don't list it on here because it's amazing how fast trolling devices will pick it up and spam the crap out of you!)

I will also be busy listing leftover pendants from this weekends inventory as well. My goal is to list about five new ones per day this week. They won't all be appearing here on the blog so make sure to check the KeelyB shop regularly if you are interested in any jewelry.

I've got a lot of other new things/ideas in the works as well. It's all very exciting. I'm glad the show is over now so that I can focus my attention on other things! I won't be doing another art show until September of this year so I'll have a lot of time to focus on the Etsy shops, this blog, and my new projects.

I hope everyone's week is off to a lovely start!

Tree Paintings

I created some small acrylic paintings to take to the Dunwoody Art Festival with me. I wanted to share them with you all before I go (the festival is this weekend!). Whatever doesn't sell down there I will be listing at my KeelyB shop when I return home next week!

The red and green trees are 5 by 7 inches in size. Custom orders for pendants and/or jewelry are always welcome.

I think the turquoise trees are my favorite. They're small, at just 3 by 4 inches each, but would look great as a pair together on a wall. I've been on a huge turquoise kick lately. My old studio in Florence had turquoise walls and I miss that room so much! I think I'm going to paint our old wooden kitchen chairs a lovely turquoise color one of these weekends...

In case I don't get to write again before the show, I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Tornado Relief T-Shirts

My dear friend Maggie is doing an amazing thing to help raise funds for tornado relief in Alabama. She's offering hand-printed (silkscreened) t-shirts for sale at her website for an affordable $15.00 each. All proceeds will go to the American Red Cross. Her goal is to raise $1,000.00 but I think we can all help her achieve more than that!

The design will be printed on high quality Alternative Apparel shirts (which I love!) and sizes available are Sm-2XL. Click here for more info. and to order one for yourself. Even if Alabama isn't your "sweet home", the tornado victims sure could use your help in rebuilding theirs. And besides, these are some awesome shirts.

A quote from Maggie:

"On April 27, 2011, several cities across the state of Alabama were devastated by tornadoes. I am blessed in that my family, friends, and home are all still safe...so many were less fortunate than I was. The death toll is nearing 300 and hundreds of people are still missing.

I called Tuscaloosa home for 4 years of my life when I was a student at Alabama and some of my close friends still live there. I have been unable to physically go help the relief efforts there due to work, but I'm going to do what I can to help from here.

I originally designed this shirt with the intent to sell it for profit, but I would rather donate the proceeds to the relief efforts across the state. My goal is to raise at least $1000 to donate to the Red Cross. I will be placing the first order for shirts on Tuesday, May 3, and printing them as soon as they arrive. I will continue to take orders after that as well."

So far, the response to her t-shirt design has been overwhelming. I am so glad folks can come together and support one another. The cleanup in the South will be no small endeavor. You are an inspiration to me, Maggie!!!