SWEETIE THE PEPPERMINT CHRISTMAS FAIRY

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I worked in between turkey and stuffing but still had a lovely day:)

This morning it was back to the drawing board, me and Sweetie, the Peppermint Christmas Fairy! I have been seeing peppermint designs everywhere in the last week since I have been working on her. I have seen little girls in candy cane dresses, candy canes, surf boards with peppermint designs in a surf shop window and all kinds of packaging in stores. I bought some peppermint hot chocolate yesterday and this morning I worked on Sweetie with my candy cane candle burning, my peppermint mocha in my coffee and a candy cane stick in it! I was SO in the mood to work on her not to mention I was in the Christmas spirit! :)

Have you been creative today? Hope so, what have you guys been working on?

YOU INSPIRE ME!

I have to tell you all that you have SO inspired me this morning with all of your lovely goals and comments on my last post. Wow, you guys are amazing thank you for sharing your wonderful dreams with us!

To Stefania,
I LOVE your goals, much of them are mine as well! You already ARE a beautiful artist, my friend, :)

To Jennifer,
I already picture all of your lovely work in a childrens book and I know your art will be sought out by publishers everywhere! You are already a beautiful friend!

To Becky,
You already are accomplishing good things with your creativity. It shows in your blog and being a nurse is such a giving profession that we need more of that in this world! Thank you for sharing your lovely goals!

As for me, my goal is to have my art bought world-wide and licensed with a company/companies that will market it all over the world on different high quality products.

I want to share happiness, love and inspiration to the world thru my art.

I would like to be a positive role model for young girls all over the world.

To be in love again and to be married to a wonderful man.

To buy my mother a cute little cottage here in Corona Del Mar.

Thanks you guys for sharing your goals, we need to do that more often. Doesnt it feel great?!?

(Here is a little friendship and encouragement for all of you from "Sisters of Spring")
Michelle

MAKING DREAMS COME TRUE

I wanted to post "Rosie" today because I have been journaling alot lately about my dreams and goals.

Every one of my dreams is very precious to me and I have decided that I need to take them seriously and actually do more to make them into goals by taking steps to get myself closer to them.

I keep saying that I am going to submit my art to more companies for licensing and haven't done that for a while, so that is going to be my priority along with creating more art of course!

What are your goals? What are your dreams? I'd love to hear! :)

MEETING DANIEL MERRIAM

What an amazing night I had on Saturday. I went to an artist's reception for Daniel Merriam, one of my all time FAVORITE artists. The gallery had every inch of its walls covered in his paintings. What a treat for me and for anyone who enjoys his work! I saw my favorite called, "EVER AFTER" up close and personal, WOW!

I got to meet him an talked with him for a while. I have to say I was a bit star-struck and too embarressed to have him sign my post card to me, so I had him put my brother's name on the card! (he has been of fan of his work as well so he will definately love it). He says he puts in long hours, about 12 hours a day, when he's on a deadline. It shows, his body of work seems endless!

I'm sure most of you have seen his work but if not visit his website and help yourself to some wonderful inspiring and fantastic images! Have fun!

www.danielmerriam.com

"HOLLY" PRINT NOW AVAILABLE!

My new print, "Holly" the Christmas Friendship Fairy, is now available as a print on my etsy shop!

Please visit and let me know what you think :)

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=17663670

BLOG AWARD!

I have been lucky enough to be sent an Uber Amazing Blog award from Tashai. She is an amazing artist and I love her blog because she has so much wonderful things going on there. Please check her blog out at:

http://ultravioletwind.blogspot.com/

And please visit her ETSY shop while you are there! Thank you Tashai for passing along the blog award to me, I really appreciate that! :)

FAVORITE CHRISTMAS MEMORIES - WHAT'S YOURS?

Living in California makes it a bit difficult for me to get into the Christmas spirit every year (especially since its been over 80 degrees all month!) but I am enjoying the lovely lights that are being put up all over lately and that has been getting me in the mood.

I was thinking back when I was in High School, my Dad and I decided to make our own ornaments. We went to the lumber yard and picked out some thick wood, brought it home and I drew my little stars, angels, reindeer and trees on the wood and he cut them out in the basement in our little workshop!

We put holes at the top of each ornament and then put some string thru each one. They came out so great and I still have them. My dad has been gone for almost 15 years but I am so glad I have that memory of him. We both shared a Christmas birthday together (yep, we were both born on Christmas) and that was always another fond memory of blowing out the candles on our cake together.

What is your favorite Christmas memory? I'd love to hear! :)

ART SHOW SUCCESS

I'm back from the depths of art show mania. So happy to be back here, I missed you guys! How is everyone, whats new? I had a booth at an art show this weekend at a metaphysical store in Costa Mesa, CA, where I sell some of my work and it was wonderful. I had such lovely people commenting on how much they loved my art. I so needed that day!

One woman actually looked like "Emerald Enchantment" (the little green fairy) http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11475497

It was amazing! So of course she needed to go home with a print! :) I think hearing those kinds of comments and getting such positive feedback are what keeps us going as artists, dont you think? To hear someone tell you that your work makes them feel happy or that it inspires them is like getting a hug isnt it? I so love that, I am STILL flying high from all of the nice words from Sunday.

And thank you, James, my wonderful friend for all of your hard work and support. I found the chocolate bar you bought me when I got home Sunday night and ate it with some chunky peanut butter in my pink jammies under my electric blanket!! :)))

Hope everyone is having a creative week!

Michelle :)

FAERIE MAGAZINE GIVEAWAY

I wanted to let everyone know that I am appearing on 2 pages in the Autumn issue of Faerie Magazine, now available at Barnes and Noble.

"Snowy Forest Fairy" Hand-Embellished Limited Edition Print is on page 13, the giveaway page. She will be given away in December to a lucky winner. So please get your copy and enter to win! It is a beautiful issue.

I also have an ad on the Artists Corner page (page 82). More on the art show tomorrow!

Have a creative day,

Michelle :)

FAVORITE ART BOOKS

I was lucky enough to have some time off from petsitting today (although I am being stared at by Nicholas the yellow lab right now :) so I was looking around at different illustrator blogs. Wow, talk about being inspired. I could spend all day looking at other people's work. I love illustration, especially childrens book illustration.

I found a Beatrix Potter illustration site. I remember when I was little my mother always used to by me her books, the tiny ones that were so wonderfully illustrated. I always loved her biography and so loved the movie, "Miss Potter" that came out last year with Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor (sp?).

I still have alot of my books and a huge bookshelf of art books. Most of them are fairy tale books, my absolute favorites. I love pulling one off the shelf now and then and looking at the illustrations and being reminded of where I was when I bought it, or who gave it to me or what I loved about it and still do. If it was up to me I'd have a big library full of art books with all my favorite illustrators with a big section of fairy artists :)

What are your favorite books? I'd love to hear!

Michelle :)

FUN THOUGHTS FROM CHILDHOOD

I was out dogwalking at the crack of dawn the other day when it was so nice and quiet and still, a time when you can think! I dont know why but I started thinking about when I was little and loved to play "store" in my room at home. I had a white bookshelf that was long and low to the ground so it looked like store bookshelves. I would empty it, drag it into my closet and put things on it to sell to my brothers (they mostly just harrassed me :)) or my friends in the neighborhood.

I loved that feeling of selling my things, getting paid and giving back money (monopoly money). I guess that's why I love my Etsy shop and doing art shows. I can decorate my booth any way I want and its my little store. Its just so much fun.

I was also thinking how much fun it would be to have my own store (a real store). To be able to decorate it with twinkling fairy lites and all of my artwork and lots of other merchandise with my art on it. I would have a big "fairy" tree in the middle of the store that I could decorate from season to season. I would love to have a corner for milk and cookies and hot chocolate and another for art classes for little girls to learn how to draw fairies! I would always play fun and inspirational music that makes you feel good and the whole store would be filled with enchantment!

What is your childhood dream? What did you like doing when you were a kid? Are you doing it now? Hope so :)

Michelle

HOLLY THE CHRISTMAS FRIENDSHIP FAIRY

Here is "Holly, The Christmas Friendship Fairy". I think I like that name and as you can see I've totally changed all the colors. I have been agonizing over them all week (but in a good way:)

Hope you like her, still have some tweaking to do but she's almost there. Will post her when she's finished!

Michelle :)

A "PEACE" OF THE XMAS FAIRY

I couldnt wait until my little Xmas Fairy was finished so I thought I would share just a "peace" of her. I am so excited about this one (as I am with all of them:))

Should have her finished by tomorrow :)

SNEAK PEAK

Here is a small peek at my "Tropical Rhapsody" mermaid. I just posted her on my Etsy shop, available as an 8 x 10 art print!

Please visit and see all of her, I think she's lovely, how about you? :)

http://michelleperkett.etsy.com

ANGEL OF HOPE

Hope you all had a fun Halloween. I so enjoyed seeing all of the kids in their cute costumes. My fav's were Tinkerbell, Jasmine and all the little ninja's! So cute!

I just posted "Angel of Hope" on my etsy shop. Available now as an 8 x 10 print! Let me know what you think!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Michelle :)