I've Been Tagged!

Here goes..........

1. I was born on Friday the 13th. The only time I remember the #13 being unusually lucky for me (other than being the date I was born)I was at a local carnival and played the fortune wheel. I even think I was 13 years old at the time. I played #13 four times in a row and it came up all four times. The guy running the wheel was visibly upset by this and all I got for my lucky streak was a small stuffed animal and the bum's rush.

2. I'm adopted.

3. When I was 20 three of my friends and I got together enough money to fly to Scotland for three weeks and backpack the countryside. We spent one night on the shores of Loch Ness looking for Nessie. He/she never made an appearance.

4. My dentist when I was a preteen was a local character named Doc Hoffman. He told me I had a bite like Ford gears. Looking back I take that as a compliment. He always drove antique Ford cars.

5. When I was about 12 I entered my first art contest. The participants had to produce a poster depicting the evils of littering. It was called The Litterbug Contest. I won! My first and only art award to date. I got my picture in the local paper and a free soda at Joe William's Cigar store. The Cigar Store had a soda fountain in case you're wondering.

6. I've been known to stay in PJ's for days without ever getting dressed.

7. I absolutely HATE going out shopping...for anything! God bless the internet.

Here's my list of tag-ies:

Valchina612
http://valdevriesartblog.blogspot.com/

Celeste Vaught
http://celestevaughtart.blogspot.com/

Lisa Ober
http://lisaober.blogspot.com/

Pilan/Mary
http://abstractionincolor.blogspot.com/

Ron Morrison
http://watercolourproductions.blogspot.com/

http://watercolourworks.blogspot.com/

Tracey Costescu

http://www.stateofartportraits.com/blog.htm

Note Cards

I've been working on a new project the last week or so. I'd like to produce a line of note cards using my Catitude series. Note cards seem to sell well at the gallery and many of the artists are taking advantage of this fact. I've never produced a card of any kind before and mentioned this to my good friend and fellow artist, Robin Neudorfer. She suggested I contact Diane Wright, a wonderful graphite artist and a very gracious woman who recently started a printing service on her website. Diane was an enormous help and gave me very useful guidence.

Diane made me realize I could probably print my own note cards at home for very little expense so I started to scan my photo editors for features that would be useful. Lo and behold my Kodak Easyshare program has a note card feature with many templates to choose from! Taking Diane's advice I purchased some nice 90# card stock and invitation envelopes at Office Max. I also splurged on a Fiskars 12" rotary cutter to make card cutting a breeze.

My next challenge was to create templates for the back of the cards. I wanted to show the name/number of the series, the title and of course my name/copyright mark. This I did using Irfanview, a free online photo editor I normally use for resizing my images. If anyone who reads this post would like to know more about Irfanview please let me know and I'll be glad to advise you. It has many useful features.

Now this all sounds easy...right? Not entirely. The card face has to be printed first, the card folded and then trimmed. Next the back must be printed. This can get tricky, especially with my printer. Running a folded card through a printer can cause paper jams(which it has)and the card can get hooked on something and the print can turn out cockeyed, etc. If I knew a better way I'd surely use it. I did perservere and got a few examples to show for it which I've posted above.

Now I'm considering text for the card face. I plan to leave some plain but would like to add text to others. Did I call myself clever? Well, apparently I'm not as clever as I thought. The text is still eluding me. I'll come up with something but I'm always open to suggestions. *hint hint*

CATITUDE 4~'Undercover Kitty'

I had to include this one in the series in part due to the nature of Gizmo, my youngest female cat. She's always been a bit high strung. Well, a LOT high strung actually. She also has overly large ears for her small face and huge 'headlamp' eyes. Little Mo' as we nicknamed her also is shy around strangers and typically hides under the covers on my bed when company comes. When I had workers come to redo my bathroom a few years ago Gizmo spent the entire five days undercover, coming out only to eat and use the litterbox. I know the workmen wondered what that lump was in my bed.

This one's for you, Little Mo'. Love ya!