Kirsten Bailey: Art

I remember when I was a kid there was an empty field (we called it “the bush” even though there were hardly any trees), where we used to love to go exploring.  One Spring the field was filled with Queen Anne’s Lace, and to my young eyes it was an amazing sight.  I gathered up armfuls of the beautiful flowers to take home to Mum – who was slightly less than impressed, and explained to me that they were weeds

I still love the simple beauty of Queen Anne’s Lace, and last weekend was inspired by the memory to create this painting:

I had a browse around Etsy for Queen Anne’s Lace themed items, and was amazed at how many beautiful things I saw!  It was really difficult to narrow it down to a few items for this week’s Saturday Selections.  Here’s what I came up with:

First up is this gorgeous Teal Green Queen Anne’s Lace Jersey Scarf by Papavier.  It looks so soft and cuddly and I love the asymmetrical design.

What better to pair such a gorgeous scarf with than this Ecofriendly Hemp Bag featuring Queen Anne’s Lace by Uzura?  The colour matches beautifully, and I love the contrast of the dark Queen Anne’s Lace on this bag compared to the light design on the scarf.  It’s eco-friendly and big enough to fit all your bits and pieces in, and maybe a bit of shopping too – perfect for taking to a handmade market!

I knew I wanted to include a pendant in this post, and there were so many beautiful ones to pick from on Etsy that I agonized over my choice for a while.  In the end, I was won over by this amazing Engraved Queen Anne’s Lace locket by Star Creations.  The detail is just incredible and I love the little bird’s nest.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip down memory lane   Try doing a search for “Queen Anne’s Lace” on Etsy – there really are hundreds of beautiful things to find – and don’t forget to check out the stores of the lovely people I’ve featured today.  Have a great weekend!

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It’s been a great weekend for me art-wise!

Yesterday I presented a talk and tutorial to the lovely ladies of the Springfield Lakes Art Group.  I demonstrated some of my watercolour techniques to them, and talked a little about my keepsake boxes and promoting art with Etsy.  I was really nervous but had a great time.

This is the painting I did as part of my demonstration:

Today I  finished and delivered the commissioned piece I was working on for a dear friend of mine.  It was very satisfying to see it finally hanging on the wall:

As one door closes, another opens they say – well, as I completed this commission, I received a new one – a customer wants a personalised painting similar to a painting I sold titled “When it is Dark Enough”.  I look forward to the challenge of creating a piece she’ll enjoy!

I finished two other watercolours this weekend too, titled Poppy Field and Winter’s End.  I also started work on two acrylic paintings which I hope to include in the upcoming Abundance exhibition.

I got a print done of my Sunset Storm painting for a customer in the US, and at the same time did some 4″ x 6″ prints of various paintings to make into cards.  I also put in an order for some new business cards from Moo.

As you can see, I got a LOT done this weekend – I didn’t get any housework at all done besides cooking dinner tonight, so I owe it all to my wonderful husband that I got so much arty stuff done

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It’s been busy busy busy for me lately, and it looks to be a great year for art!

I thought I’d share with you all a few upcoming events I’m involved in.

Firstly, I’m excited to announce that I’m going to be a part of an exhibition at the Art Factory gallery in Merivale St, South Brisbane.  The exhibition is called “Abundance”, and it will feature an abundance of different styles of art – 10 artists in total are featuring their work.

Many thanks to Michelle from Art Salon for all her hard work in organising this exhibition.

We’ll be having our opening night on Friday the 19th of March from 6pm till 9pm, and then offering morning tea on Sunday the 21st.

Last year I was happy to be able to support Variety by donating a painting to their Heart Art Show.  I’m delighted to be able to donate another painting this year – although I’m a bit disappointed the show is going to be on at the same time as our Abundance exhibition, so I won’t be able to go along.  I’m hoping my painting will make some money for charity though!

My third exciting upcoming event is a talk about my art and technique for the Springfield Lakes Art Group this Saturday.  Public speaking is not my forte so I’m slightly terrified, but I hope it will help me to grow as an artist and a person.  I’ll try to write a post afterwards and let you all know how it went!

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We’ve had a bit of a rainy week this week (in fact it is raining as I write this!), so I thought I’d do a rain themed Saturday Selections of my favourite items from around Etsy.

First up is this awesome stainless steel raindrop necklace with brain contours titled ‘bRain‘ by Morphologica.  Perfect for a geek girl like me!

My next rainy-day favourite is this cute set of “Rainy Day, Time to Play” gift cards from Red Letter Studio.  They would make lovely gift cards for a rainy day, or someone who’s young (or young at heart!) and loves to play in the rain:

I just *love* this print by Kathy Panton entitled simply “Rain”.  I love the mix of colours and the way the paint seems to flow across the paper.  I sat and stared at this one for a while!  It’s easy to see why it made Etsy’s front page.

Finally, I’d like to include this print entitled “Kiss Under the Rain” by Afremov Art.  I’ve admired this artist for a while on Deviantart, and only just found him on Etsy.  The way he uses light and colour is so unique and beautiful!

Hope you all have a great week, and remember how good the rain is for the garden (and the farmers!), if not for getting the washing dry.

Prefer the sunshine to the rain?  Check out my latest post on Handmade Spark, Tropical Holiday.

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It must be a bright and beautiful kind of weekend.  I’m currently featured in three Treasuries, one of which I made featuring sellers from Handmade Spark.

Do you notice anything they have in common?

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I’m excited to announce that I’ve been invited to write for Handmade Spark.

The site is designed for sellers and buyers to connect.  Through the blog sellers wil learn about marketing, blogging, how tos, and much more.  Buyers will find new shops and items through the handmade features posted by me and a group of writers.  Handmade Spark is also a directory where sellers can submit their links, like Twitter, Facebook , and blogs.

I’m really excited to be involved, and I hope I can bring a little something different to the website as I’m so far the only Aussie writer.

My first post is about ACEOs.  I was inspired by the fact that I made my own first batch of ACEOs this weekend.  I love the way they look on the little easel!  If you’d like to find out more about ACEOs, you can read my post on Handmade Spark.

In other news, my painting Two Hearts, One Love has been featured on a Valentine’s Day post at Calico & Co., the Indie & Handmade Blog.  There are lots of other pretty things there too!

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Many thanks to Trina for thinking of a nice alliterative title for my weekly choice of favourite items from Etsy.  It’s much easier to find the time to write this post on a Saturday!

For this week’s theme, I’ve decided to go for the ever-classy black and white.

First up:  This gorgeous pair of handpainted leather heels by Mitsui.jing shoes.  I LOVE this idea of handpainted shoes – they are completely unique, and just beautiful.

Now for something completely different (and really cool).  I love all of Morphologica’s science inspired jewellery, so it was hard to pick just one thing to feature today.  I’ve decided to go for this Pyramidial Neuron necklace.  I love the idea of wearing a funky, cool piece of jewellery that proudly displays your science nerdiness – although only to those who know enough to work out what it is   This necklace is also available in white.  Why not pair it with some DNA Double-helix inspired earrings?

Inspired by Australian snow gum trees, this Snow Gum series of glass platters by Jens Studio would make a perfect addition to any home – black and white goes with everything!  I think these would look great with little appetisers on (like little sushi rolls!) or just displayed in the home.  I love functional art like this!

Finally, I just love this set of 6 elegant black and white fabric coasters by Odds & Blobs.  I’ve used fabric coasters and love them because you never get that annoying thing where the glass sticks to the coaster and gets picked up with it.  Also, if someone spills a drink on them you can throw them in the wash!  They’re a wonderful idea and this set in black & white is just beautiful.

Thanks for checking out my “Saturday Selections” this week!  Be sure to have a look at all these sellers Etsy stores, as they have lots of other goodies on offer!

I’m hoping to get some painting done this weekend, so will post later on with an update on what I’ve done

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It’s been a productive weekend!

I’ve done lot’s of work on my lastest commission, a painting for a friend:

There is a lot of detail in this one, and it is HUGE (I can only fit one panel at a time on my easel), so it’s taking me a really long time to finish, but I hope the result will be worth it in the end.

I completed another painting this weekend, and thought I’d show you the stages it went through:

Step One: Painting taped down and ready to go. I've also used tape to separate the four panels (as opposed to wrecking another brush with masking fluid).

Step Two: Spring colours - I decided on pinks, greens and yellows to represent spring.

Step Three: Summer is orange, yellow and green. You can see the paint was still wet when I took this photo.

Step Four: Browns, oranges and reds for Autumn

Step Five: Blues and whites for Winter

At this point, I left the painting to dry before removing the tape.  I painted a tree branch going across the top of the painting.  Here’s the result:

I also made some more art pendants this week, but that’s a post for another day!

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It’s been a hectic week with school starting again.  That’s my excuse, anyway.  Not sure what my excuse was last week.

When I came up with the idea of listing my favourite Etsy items once a week on my blog (an idea I’m sure I stole from someone), I chose Friday because I liked the alliterative quality of the title “Friday Favourites”.  I didn’t really think about how busy Fridays are for me!  It’s a shame that Saturday Favourites doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Anyway, rather than doing what I did last week and just completely forgetting about it, this week I’m thinking it’s better late than never.

And since I struggled through the first week of school this week (it was very hot in our classrooms!), I’m doing a back to school theme for this week’s Saturday Favourites.

This first item is a button I’ve featured before in a treasury, because I think it’s just awesome   Made by beanforest, this ‘Teachers Are Hot’ button has a double meaning this week – it was 36 degrees celcius in my classroom for the last few days so the teachers (and the students) were literally hot.

Isn’t this Robot Children’s Tote Bag cute!  Who doesn’t love robots?  This would make an awesome library bag.  All students at the school I work at are required to have a library bag if they want to borrow books – so why not have one as cool as this?  It’s from Tiges and Weince, where you’ll find lots of other cool stuff for kids.

All children need a pencilcase for school.  This Woodland Animals Pencilcase is so cute!  It’s handmade so you know it’s going to be better quality than a lot of other pencilcases (then the children will stop coming to me with broken zips to fix!).  I just love it because I think the picture on the front is super-cute.   It’s made by Pocket Carnival, where you can also find prints and originals of artwork like you can see on this pencilcase.

Of course, once you have a cool pencilcase, you need some cool pencils to go in it!  I just LOVE this idea of personalised greeting pencils by Right Brainy.  You can choose the paper and the message.  Would make a great gift to suck up to the teacher on the first day (hint hint!) but would also be lovely for your children – they will never have to worry about losing their pencils when they are so unique.

One last thing…

With Valentines Day coming up soon (are you reading this Matt?), I created an Etsy treasury featuring romantic artworks.  Art makes a lovely Valentine’s gift!  Check it out:

Have a great weekend!

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Tonight I’ll be hanging a selection of my paintings at the Coffee Club, Springfield.  So if you’re in the area, why not pop in for a great coffee, some delicious food, and take a look at some of my paintings in person?

Sorry the picture isn’t great – my camera has a habit of running out of batteries at inconvenient times.  You’ll just have to visit the Coffee Club and check out the paintings in person!

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