Unorganized Chaos

Oy! I've been a bad blogger. Two weeks since my last post! I better get with it!

Ok, so to recap the last two weeks. . . .

Deluxe was a big success for me in my mind. My booth turned out pretty much how I had it pictured in my head and sales were good. Thank you to those who were able to come out and see me. I plan on doing it again in December. Here is a picture of my booth:

You can see more pics of my booth here and more Deluxe pics here.

The day after the show, me and my whole family left for Branson, MO. We had a lot of fun and with all the rain recently, everything was green and beautiful! Here's a family photo (I'm not in it since I was taking the picture).

You can see more pics of our trip here.

Coming back from vacation, I've been thinking about how so unorganized my life is. I need some structure! It seems like I am always doing things on a moment's notice or I get distracted by something while trying to do something else. I have a million things to do and only about 1% of it gets done! Is this normal? Am I the only one that has this problem? Please, someone tell me I'm not alone!

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2 More Days . . .

Only two more days until Deluxe Indie Craft Bazaar (Saturday) and vacation (leaving Sunday morning)! I'm pretty much ready for Deluxe but haven't given much thought to packing for my vacay. Yikes! I took Friday off so hopefully I'll be done with craft show prep so that I can focus on the typical vacation prep . . . laundry, getting a pedi, get hair done, pack, etc.

Anyway, here's some sneak peeks at what will be at Deluxe . . . sorry for the blurry pics (all taken from iPhone). If you won't be able to make it to Deluxe or don't live in the OKC metro area, no worries . . . all products will be in my next shop update on May 15th.

Button Cards - I am so excited about these! They turned out really cute when I got them onto the cards -- there are several different sets.

Paper Posies - These little gems look adorable on Scrapbook pages, handmade cards, gifts, etc.

Magnets and more buttons - all buttons that didn't make it into a set will be available to purchase individually.

These are some booth decorations that I whipped up (with the help of my Mom, thanks Mom!)

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Feature Friday - Kathy Panton

This weeks feature is another amazing, talented artist. Her name is Kathy Panton. Read on to get to know Kathy a little better and as always, click on banner/pics to be taken to her shop/products.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am an artist living in Brisbane, Australia. I currently work part time as a special education teacher, but what I really want to do, and am aiming for, is to be a full time artist. I have two cats. I'm a little bit quirky, I think I'm the stereotypical "artist type". I love chocolate, second hand shops, reading about peoples lives, philosophy, road trips, film, and collecting odd books from the 50s - 80s.

How did you get started in your current craft?

I returned from overseas (London) after doing some courses at St Martins School Of Art. I was really inspired there, and discovered some new techniques. On return, I was searching for some paper that would give me some of the painterly effects I was after. Although I wasn't really sure what I was after. The sales assistant at the art shop said "why not try this" and gave me this paper, which normally would not be used in the way I use it. I use gouache and watercolour on it, and got the effects you see in my work.From that I started doing collages of famous musicians, and over a few years, when I got familiar with the effects I could achieve using the paint, I moved towards the sort of work you see on http://www.kathypanton.etsy.com/I do have another style I use, which are super realistic 2metre X 2metre portraits of faces using graphite pencil. But because of the size, I don't have this work on etsy.

Where do you get inspiration for your artwork?

The inspiration is from colour itself. The process and technique dictates the work. I see things in the patterns and make things based on that. It can be quite a "busy" technique, and it has taken a while to develop a style, and because of the busy-ness of the patterns, I have to be quiet minimalistic, and usually use a white background. Recently, I have started to incorporate some of the vintage papers I have collected- like old music sheets, notebooks with handwriting, and other things.I do get a lot of indirect inspiration from looking at other peoples art, and regularly schedule an afternoon at Borders to absorb all the art magazines. I treat it like a library, and I think everyone else does too! Not my fault they have lounge chairs!

Tell us a little about your workspace.

Its a nest of cut up paper!!! Luckily I have a whole room for it, which consists of my computer, and a really large work table. I also have a cabinet of huge horizontal sliding drawers where I store the large sheets of paper before they are cut up. I really need several of those cabinets. It can get quite crazy in here. I have lots of "filing systems" for cut up bits of paper.I store finished artworks in another room, far away from the chaos in here. The other room is my library, where I have all my books on tall shelves, and store art materials. I also use this room for "Packing and Shipping".

Other than Etsy, where can we find you and/or your products ?

Etsy is my main site however I am on Threadless.com, a t-shirt company. http://www.threadless.com/profile/935453/kathypYou submit a design, and if it gets printed on a t-shirt you get paid! I recently joined, and currently have 1 design up for scoring http://www.threadless.com/submission/207139/Musical_ButterflySome of my earlier work can be seen on http://www.thestylefile.com/show.php?illustrator_id=163 This site is on the Australian Society Of Authors site.

Is there anything else you would like the readers to know?

I have some Pocket mirrors coming soon to my shop, and they should be cute!!

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