Coming Soon...

Next month my books and butterflies will be available to buy at the MassArt spring sale, running from May 4th to 10th. Below is a sampling of what will be available for purchase.

Your very own small butterfly collection. Each butterfly is hand painted in watercolor and pinned into a handmade box lined with cork. Every boxes lid contains the name of the butterfly as well as a carved indent of its shape.

These blank sketchbooks are inspired by old furniture from auction catalogues. Each book is wrapped in hand drawn paste paper and decorated with a  cut paper piece of furniture. Pages of soft drawing paper are sewn into a durable spine of bookcloth.

Month of Love - Fetish

This weeks theme was Fetishes, so I chose to do Formicophilia, which is apparently an attraction to insects. I basically just used it as an excuse to make more bugs in a box, though these ones are a bit more risque than the butterflies.

Month of Love - Favorite Love Story

Another week, another Month of Love piece! This week's theme was Favorite Love Story...

I guess 'favorite' and 'love story' might not be the best words to describe to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It's more like most unforgettable heartbreak of my young life. The books definitely do not qualify as love stories but for some reason the way they ended really stuck with me. I was also probably very jealous that people's souls were animals who hung around their person, talking with them and being their closest friends.

Another Month of Love!

It's February again, which means it's time for another Month of Love! This year there are even more artists doing a piece a week featuring a variety of lovey-dovey themes. This weeks theme was #nofilter Valentine.

I decided to do some cynical true meanings of various traditional Valentine's candies. These are worth looking at big, since some of the text is so small. And don't forget to check out all the other great work at monthoflove.blogspot.com

Butterfly Collection

I finished painting these butterflies a long time ago, like October-long-time-ago. But I was waiting on all the other elements to come together. Finally, one day the Goodwill, I found a small shadow box for $3 (that's a price you cannot beat) from which I stripped out the kitschy elements of the interior and painted over the slightly scuffed exterior. I glued a strip of cork board in the back and took a handful of pins from the fashion department at work. Then my butterfly collection finally came together:

I would love to make several more of these smaller boxes, I have plenty of leftover painted butterflies that wouldn't fit in this box.

Paper Dogs

These were some paper doll-dogs I made for a friends birthday card. Our favorite puppies are corgis and pugs, so it was incredibly fun and adorable to make.

Merry Christmas! (Book)

I usually like to make small handmade gifts to give to all the family friends I see around the holidays. After a busy month at work there wasn't much extra time so I went to my parents house empty handed. On Monday morning we were looking through our Christmas cards we had received and I was noticing all the great festive stamps people were using on the envelopes. I thought it would be fun to make more little stamp size books that opened up into Christmas cards. I ran to the local art store and picked up some matte board, an olfa knife and some decorative paper and hammered out a few books. This was the tiny adorable end result:

Literary Carry - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

This Literary Carry contains all the items listed on a first year acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Every student begins their journey with the same set of items.

This Years Reading List

I spent this weekend wrapping up a few outstanding pages in my sketchbooks. One was this ongoing list of all the new books I have read this year. I did some little watercolor thumbnails of the cover of each once I had finished reading it. There's a full list of titles and authors after the jump.

Month of Fear - What Was Your Childhood Fear?

This past weeks challenge for the Month of Fear was to make a piece about our child hood fear. I was pretty spooked by closets when I was little, imagining what could be in different ones. So I decided to make a little book about it.

Month of Fear - Recurring Nightmare

One of the challenges for Month of Fear was to make a piece about your worst recurring nightmare. I am not a big dreamer, so I did mine about the lack of sleep, which for me, is even worse. I get so caught up in my own head, twisting and turning through my thoughts, and it's stressful and exhausting.