So, first of all, several new folks have started following this blog and getting updates from me, so welcome, and thank you for joining me! My posts are admittedly relatively infrequent, but I do like to share the big news and updates every so often. My home page also has a list of my upcoming markets if you’re ever curious about where I’ll be next!
So far this year I’ve had booths at three markets, one each in April, May, and June, and I’m returning to the Glorious Garden Festival in Bloomington, IL on July 11 and 12. I have applications in for local (central IL) markets in August and September, and have been accepted into the Sugar Creek Arts Festival In Normal, IL, for the second time in October. I also still have my booth at The Vault Art Gallery in downtown Tuscola, IL (along with about 40 other artists who have a vast array of interesting works). You can find framed art as well as note cards and journals there, and I just restocked last week!
The aforementioned good problem that I’m having, thanks to all of you who’ve bought some art from me, is that I’m starting to run out! At my most recent market, the Master Gardener’s Garden Walk in Champaign, I sold the Aquarium Tide Pool painting, which is one I did a few years ago. Several other originals of varying sizes also found new homes, leaving my grid panel display and my table tops just a little more barren than usual.
However, I do have several projects in the works for July and beyond. I’m painting more book pages, more watercolor originals, and sketching ideas for future paintings and themed series. I’m also expanding my note card and journal offerings; I’m excited to print out a few test samples for next month to see what you all think of them. My husband keeps telling me that I need to do note card versions of the book page paintings, so I’m finally doing it! I’m hoping folks like them as much as they like the pages themselves.
(A note about the book pages, if you’re interested: they come from a book called “The Ideal Garden” — which made the subject matter for the paintings easy to choose — and it was a donation to the library where I work. It was damaged and was going to be discarded, so I plucked it out of the recycle bin and took it apart, thus giving it a second life as art. Also, it’s old enough that the copyright has expired, meaning I can reproduce the pages. Just in case anyone was curious!)
I have a bunch of artwork that I’ve digitized (or at least scanned in without editing yet) and then didn’t do anything with, so I’ve been trying to get more prints and such made and put out into the world. I’ve been promising prints of the colorful bookshop for years, for example, and I’m finally going to get them done!
Again, thanks to all of you who follow me here or have stopped by a market to buy something or just say hi. I’ve said it before I’m sure, but in-person markets are so much more satisfying to me than selling in online shops like Etsy just because I get to interact with people and see their reactions. It makes all the work worth it!
Fairy Tree Studios 