Friday, February 27, 2009

17th sale on etsy today!

So I have been successful in surviving the week and today Lucid Optic Lab made our 16th and 17th sale on etsy today! Below are the items purchased:Jelly brained one of the items purchased today was this 8x10 print of one of my mixed media/digital collage creatures that I made by scanning in drawings of mine and layering them over photographs in photoshop. This is the second time someone has purchased this print from my etsy store and one of the more popular prints that we tend to sell more of at art/craft fairs
Blue Daisy Faery
This was the other sale for today. Its a 6"6" original acrylic + pen and ink painting of mine that is part of the "Cosmic Maiden" series. Now that I have sold that painting I only have 3 left out of the series:Cosmic Maidens series( click the image to full view it) The other one that i sold a few weeks back is the Long vertical green one on the right named "The Faery Sprout woman."
I am so happy that our etsy sales are picking up. It is such a rush when i realize we have made a sale. I cant even begin to explain how much I appreciate the support, or how much the exchange inspires me to create more. Danny and I were talking about expanding our presence online. This weekend we plan on opening up a store on redbubble.com, ebay, supermarket.com, creating a twitter account, a live journal account, and hopefully many other sites. This will help expose our art, tie dye, silk screenings to more people, hopefully increases interest/productivity. Marketing really isnt my strong point, but im learning a thing or two.
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Thursday, February 26, 2009

More snow, some watercolor scans, leading the life I love

Bathing in Babylon
The Grand Inquisitor
Pelted
Those are some recently scanned, older watercolors of mine that i just recently unearthed from one of my old portfolios....sharing is fun!
It snowed again! I was so disoriented when I looked out of my window this morning. I thought all this snow business was over with, but no! However I find that I am beginning to love the snow. I love the calm quiet blanket it seems to through over this busy city and my rush rush routine. Snow is so beautiful and very transformative. I love to sit in my rocking chair with a mug of tea in my hand, my cat on my lap....and watch the snow fluttering in the winds, collecting on the rooftops and trees. It is refreshing, thats what. Unfortunately when i awoke this morning the snow had already fallen, and only left an inch. Sadly enough by 11:00 this morning all the snow had already melted away.
Today i took the bus to work, partly because i dont like driving in the snow/hate driving in general/generally suck at driving....I have to take 2 buses to work. It takes me about an hour and 20 minutes to get there, and an hour and 20 to get home. I am finding that i really dont mind at all as long as i have a good book to read. Riding the bus gives me some much needed space out time...and i have found its the only place i tend to get any reading done these days. Today i started reading "The Psychedelic Experience, A manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead" by Timothy Leary. Its very interesting and speaks of ways in which a person can go through processes to strip away all of the mundane programing/conditioning that has been forced upon the mind through society/life style and environment....and how being free of all that mess one can finally experience the brain completely unbound and limitless resulting in consciousness expansion and for those dedicated and most attune: reaching the sacred state of nirvana.
Interesting quote from the book: " There are those who, in virtue of concentration and other yogic practices are able to bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and, thereby, to draw upon the unrestricted treasury of subconscious memory, wherein are stored the records not only of our past lives but the records of the past of our race, the past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not of the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe."-Lama Anagrika Govinda


Its almost Friday again. Danny did some really awesome screen printing over the last few days so i think we will be doing a photoshoot this weekend so we can start selling all these new silk screened clothings on etsy.....so stay tuned!
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

New prints are available for sale!

So, thanks to the scanner I purchased recently( I used money on a gift card my Aunt Linda had given me for Christmas, THANKS AUNT LINDA!) Danny and I have scanned in a bunch of new pen and ink drawings that we can now offer up for sale as prints. here are a few raw samples of what will be our new prints:

The Debutante

pandimensional kitten-head

Healer

Poetess

Mistress
....and there is much more to come! Many of these drawings here are yet to be finished/touched up but Danny is working on all that for me. We sell 5x7 prints for $7 and 8x10 for $15. We have also just begun doing some framing of prints and originals, we should have that all set and ready for purchase come our first art/craft fair of the season. Its all coming together! For now a few of these prints have already been released on our ETSY store: http://www.lucidopticlab.etsy.com/
What is super exciting is that Danny has begun a new round of silkscreening so we should have some new silk screen t-shirts up for sale + limited edition framed and signed screenprints.
So, keep checking back for newly released items!
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Friday, February 20, 2009

Art Vending season is already here!

So its February. The sun is peaking out more up here in Portland. One can already feel spring on its way. The first Saturday Market in downtown Portland of the year is this weekend. I don't have my vendor application in yet unfortunately. The Saturday market requires a business license but i found out that if you make less then x amount of money per year you can fill out a business license exemption form. I have all the forms printed out, now the hard part is filling them in. I really hate tax forms and all that nonsense....but we shall over come! Danny and I have decided to try out the Saturday market on Sundays because this way you can avoid the monthly member fees. So we plan to go on Sunday and see what the market looks like on its first day back so we have a better idea of what to prepare for/bring/expect when we do vend. Last Thursday art walk on Alberta street starts in March...its all happening! So i am feverishly finishing up all my little art projects and printing off some prints of all my new drawings and paintings. Danny is getting ready to burn some screens for silkscreen printing. We thought it would be super neat if we were also selling screen prints and not just inkjet prints.
So far we hit the ground running for this year. We are already at 15 sales on our etsy account and we are working on a logo design for Mama's Herbal Soaps: www.mamasherbalsoaps.com So far we have two logo options for her and we are working on the colored versions for her approval. One of the logos is based around a mermaid illustration that i did. Its a very circular shape and i am contemplating perhaps getting it tattooed on one of my shoulders or the nape of my neck cuz i love it so much!
So thats what is going on in my world.
Here is some dready journey news:
the DreadCam
Thats all for now folks!
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Friday, February 13, 2009

My partner in crime( not really...more like partner in LOVE)

This is a snapshot i took of Danny( www.flickr.com/lucidopticlab )
Danny my zigwomp-LOVE
Danny is the other half of Lucid Optic lab...certainly the brains of our lil company. He is my voice of reason and perhaps my much needed vain of sanity and i feel that i don't show him often enough how much i appreciate his presence in my life.
In the picture above he is modeling a shirt he Tie-Dyed that is now on sale in our etsy shop( http://www.lucidopticlab.etsy.com/ ). Isn’t he handsome? He has been working a lot on making very beautiful, psychedelic music on his computer. It seems he is using a program that allows him to layer sound clips together + add percussion which he works out on his keyboard or records his own live drumming on the djembe drums we have in the house. He is averaging three songs a week now...just bustin them out left and right. Hopefully sometime soon I can get him to set up a music myspace page so that he can share the music he is makin. Now that we are pretty much finished settling in Portland Oregon he is gearing up to start screen printing again, so that means he is off to the art store to buy some new screens and ink. Right now we are working together to push out a finished logo for Mama's Herbal Soups: www.mamasherbalsoaps.com/ i cant wait to show off the finished design piece its already looking wonderful.So we are certainly busy, but its the good sort of busy!
We made our 11th sale on etsy and it was an inkwashed card/print that he made of his knome graphic that we also have screen printed on t-shirts. Here is the print that we sold from our etsy store on 2-8-09: gnome2
Yay for etsy and thank you to our valued customers. I cant tell you how excited we both get when we make a sale. it feels great to have our artwork supported/appreciated. I think especially in this time in the world its important to focus on keeping art/the appreciation of art alive and one of the best ways of doing that is by supporting your local/global artists!
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Sunday, February 8, 2009

Dready Journey Day 16

So its Dready Journey day 16.
Dready Journey Day 16
Today i went to meet Stephanie: http://www.dreadgoddess.com/ She was super sweet and totally interesting. She did an amazing job on my locks using the crocheting method. I cant believe how quickly she finished off my head. I came in to see her with only the top 7 done and within an hour and 45 minutes she had all the dreads in place. It felt like only 15 minutes because she was super fun to talk to. I highly recommend to any dread head who happens to live in Portland to call Stephanie and make an appointment for some dread maintenance.!She did seem very impressed by the 7 that Danny did for me. The dreads should loosen up in a week or two and probably get pretty fuzztastic but in a way stray hair is good because it hides the less occupied areas of the head. Luckily Stephanie said there is little to no shrinking that happens with this method or else in a month i might of had chin length fatty dreads. I enjoy how individual each dread is with its loops and thicknesses an kinks and such. I cant wait to begin putting beads and charms in. i am so loving having dread locks.
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10th Sale on Etsy this morning!

Faery Sprout WomanThis is my 10th sale on etsy! A very nice and gifted lady from Bronx, NY bought this from my etsy store this morning. It is always such a thrill for me when i make a sale. It re affirms that my dreams/goals are on their way to becoming truth. I cant wait for the day when i can sustain myself and my life style solely on my art work alone!
There are many more paintings up for sale in my etsy store that are done in the same style/series as the one above. Here are a few and they are all priced very affordable:
Purple Maiden
another original painting 4"x12" on sale now for only $46 and that includes shipping
Blue Cacoon
This one is also a 4"x12" original painting from the same series and is selling for $46 including shipping costs.
Purple PixieThis one is also done in the same style/series as the others but since it is a smaller size( 6" x6") its on sale in my etsy store for only $25 including shipping costs

Thank you to everyone that supports artists, locally or worldwide. It is important as a consumer to realize and fully appreciate the authenticity and pride that shines from hand made artisan art and craft. It is also important as a consumer to realize that by buying handmade goods from individual artists instead of mass produced goods from corporations one is effecting major positivity in the world around them. Thank you for supporting the artists of today. Thank you for supporting websites like Etsy that allows forum for local artists worldwide to reach out to the publics of the world.


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Thursday, February 5, 2009

Shamanic Dream Book-Altered Book Art

I began my first altered book in the beginning of 08 and have worked on it on and off for about a year. I have always been very attracted to old books….I love the smell of ancient/dust filled slightly decaying books…..I come across them often in the most interesting of places, alley ways, yard sales, antique shops, trailer parks, public bathrooms, land fills, graveyards, open fields, abandoned buildings….its like treasure hunting! There is something mysterious and magickle about old books and it has always seemed a natural thing to want to create with them. This was my first altered book so it was certainly experimental and I learned a few dos and don’ts along the way. Within this book I used many different artistic mediums. There is a lot of acrylic paint, pen and ink drawing, photographs of mine that I cut and decoupaged with, I used a few different kinds of crackle mediums and paint, markers, highlighters, paint pens, water color, decorative paper, found objects, ribbon, yarn, tie dyed fabric…the list goes on.
Here are some scans I made of it( i need to change my blog layout so that it doesnt cut off my pictures. if you click on the picture you can full view it fine):

The cover:
Dream Book-Cover-Mixed Media

Page 1 and 2
Dream Book-Page 1 &2-Mixed Media
Page 3 and 4
Dream Book-Page 3 and 4-Mixed media
Page 5 and 6
Dream Book-page 5 and 6-mixed media
Page 7 and 8
Dream Book- page 7 and 8- Mixed Media

I will be posting this for sale in my etsy store: http://www.lucidopticlab.etsy.com/ once i figure out how much to ask for this piece.
The creation process was fun. I started out by sectioning the book into clumped pages by gluing them together with E6000 glue and setting them outside to dry. Once i had finished doing that i realized it would have been a lot simpler to rip out the majority of the pages and then glue the remaining pages together. In a sense i do like the effect that was given from using all the pages in the book because the pages i created are very thick. However since i used all the pages of the book its easier for the pages to want to separate themselves and do weird things like that. Once all the pages were separated it was just a matter of piecing together the scenes within the book using anything and everything available. I used your standard decoupaging method for most of the book. Once i was done with a page i would go over it with a nice thick coat of gloss varnish. This sealed the artwork nicely and gave it a nice weight of rigidness. However i have run into issues with the pages wanting to stick together because the gloss varnish tends to do that. To cure that issue i put fabric along the edges of the pages to help keep them from sticking. Perhaps if i had used a non gloss varnish there would not have been a sticking issue...i will try that next time. But all in all this was a really fun project that allowed me to experiment with all sorts of mediums/combinations of things. I will certainly have to begin a new alerted book soon. I have about 5 vintaged copies of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll i think one of those books would work perfectly for the next project!
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Discovery: Crocheting Dreadlock method.

Its day 12 of my dready journey and look at how nice and thick i have got them....within less then two weeks and i owe it all to one little tool: the Crochet needle! Crocheting my Dreads! Day 10
Upon watching this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3r_4dzYzsM
i learned the method of dreading by crochet needle. Using a very thin crocheting needle you start an inch away from the roots and just rapidly poke in and out of a lock of hair while turning/rolling every so often and it creates the most meaty/thick and tight dreads practically instantly. It works like sorcery i tell you....see how different my dreads are? they feel meaty and mature...its crazy really. I had danny do them...he did them very well. they are so tight and secure. It takes a long time though 30-60 minutes per dread. So far i only have 6 done. i love that you can completely ditch your rubber bands once you do a dread with this method. Michaels has the needles for $3.49. i am using crocheting needle size 12/1.00mm you might be able to use a bit larger of a needle if you have thicker/rougher hair but for those with very thin caucasian hair like mine i recommend the smaller crocheting needles


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