THE GIFT OF SERENITY

Dear Friends,

I hope you all are enjoying your summer and are making time for your creative souls.

I have another month for my knee to be on the mend so I decided to shut the tv off yesterday and put on my lovely "fairy music" (spa channel on sirius radio) and went to my bookshelf to visit some old friends. My wonderful art books.

I looked at all of them, touched their bindings, and as I did I felt like I was almost back in time. I remembered where I bought each one or who gave them to me. It was really a wonderful and special feeling.

I picked out a paperback of AA Milne's (author of christopher robin and house at pooh corner) wonderful poetry about Christopher Robin with the lovely charming little inked illustrations of Shephard's. What an enchanting book! If I read it correctly, Christopher Robin was Milne's son. He wrote a little intro that was really cute and also added that Pooh had gone walking thru the book looking for his friend, Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages! How cute is that?!?

After my time with this book, I felt so peaceful and had such a nice feeling that I havent felt before. I took the time to do a beautiful thing for myself and this morning I woke up and drew all kinds of lovely little things in my sketchbook! I need to give myself a gift of serenity more often!

Do you guys give yourself gifts like this? I would love to hear!

Michelle :)

CHRISTMAS IN JULY THANK YOU GIVEAWAY!

Dear Friends,

First let me say how lucky I feel everyday to have you all visit with me and how grateful I am for all of your well wishes for me and my little knee injury. Its feeling better because of your lovely words and I want to thank you all somehow.

I wish I could do more but what I am going to do is to give away my newly finished "Sweetie - The Peppermint Christmas Sprite" print to one of you as a thank you.

She has been unfinished for months now and I finally finished her this weekend just in time for Christmas in July and for one of you to win! I havent even listed her on my Etsy shop yet so the winner will be the very first to own her as a print!

All I ask is that you copy and paste her somewhere on your blog along with a link to my blog and come back to this post and let me know that you've placed her little face on your blog.

I will be announcing the winner on August 1st. Good Luck everyone and have a wonderful week full of creativity and joy!

Michelle :)

FRIENDSHIP SKETCH

I have been so inspired lately by all of you and all of your kind words about my art and your healing wishes for my poor knee!

So this morning I did a sketch in honor of the love and friendship that you all bring to my blog and to my heart everyday.

This is for you guys, a really big hug for all of your!

Have a beautiful day!

Michelle :)

RUBBER STAMP DESIGNS

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July and saw some great fireworks last night.

I have been drawing and inking some new designs that will hopefully become rubber stamps. I am working with a company that has shown interest in my work so hopefully they will like my little "Wishing Star" Fairy and my new little happy sun!

What have you been creating lately?

Michelle :)

ARMCHAIR TRAVELER

Princess Oceana and I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Summer! I hope you all have wonderful plans to travel all over the country (or hopefully the world!)

I was supposed to fly to Atlanta tomorrow and go to the Red Sox Atlanta game on Saturday with my brother and sister-in-law, but cant fly due to my knee injury. SO......

I would LOVE to hear what YOU guys are doing for your summer vacations. Please share, I would so love to hear all of your adventures!

And for me, I am going to be an armchair traveller going to Venice, Florence, Rome, New Zealand, Montana, Boston and of course to Fenway Park and have wonderful adventures in my sketchbook! :)

Have fun!

Michelle :)

ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR CREATIVE HEART, EVEN WHEN IT HURTS!

We have all heard, "Follow your heart" many times and as artists we hear it in our inner creative self even more than most people.

This week I had a bad fall on one of my dogwalks, right on my knee (with a knee fracture) and am now currently on crutches, (with a huge knee brace!) but will be fine.

I keep asking myself, why this happened now, after 10 years of petsitting and dogwalking with never any accidents. I have been asking myself all week what is the positive to this, because there always is.

I know that one great positive is that I have spent every day with my Mom, who I am so grateful for, and who is helping me with my dogwalks. We have been laughing and enjoying the doggies together and for that I am so grateful, laughter is of course the best medicine as you all know!

I also have been thinking that I have been complaining lately about not having enough art/creative time and well, now I have that! But more importantly, I think the reason this happened is that I have not been following my creative heart as I should be over the last few months.

So this week, I have come in contact with someone who would like me to illustrate a fairy book and has connections at 2 publishers. I also have a possible licensing opportunity. And I have been doing some rubber stamp designs (follow your heart illustration above).

I also made a list of my creative dreams which I plan to post where I can see them. Here are a few of mine, I would LOVE to hear yours, please share!

1. Rubber stamp designer

2. To license my art for figurines

3. To design a line of greeting cards for Papayrus

4. To license my art to Hallmark licensing and Department 56

5. To illustrate a book that I enjoy working on

Just a few of my creative dreams, what are yours?

Michelle :)

GOALS TO GREATNESS AND THINKING BIGGER!

Oh, the power of a great night sleep. I received 10, yes, 10 hours of bliss last night and creativity has exploded into my journals and sketchbooks today.

I have been feeling so whiny lately about my artistic goals and when I get that way, I find the best thing is to write 5 pages of what I am grateful for, so I did. And I could have written more!

I also wrote in my journal and asked for help with my artistic goals and for guidance with my art career and life in general. I began by making a list of what it is I really want in life and what my strenghts are.

The words, "Goals to Greatness" came to me and I began writing about what my greatness is and what goals I would like to achieve, telling myself that the sky is the limit and to Think Bigger than I usually do.

One dream of mine is to be a licensed artist with Papyrus. I love their cards and designs and pretended that my card line was in Target and in beautiful card stores all over the country. (I was also on Oprah and on Good Morning America!)

I drew this birthday card sketch as well, I hope you like it! And remember to Dream Bigger than you think you can imagine, it is so much fun!

Have a wonderful enchanting week everyone!

Michelle :)

NOBLESSE BLOG AWARD

My dear friend Heather at Witch Hollow Primitives has given me this wonderful award and I hope that I have lived up to it. Sometimes I think I let my followers down by not keeping up my end of the bargain here. When I started blogging my main goal was to number one, have something to say and to inspire my readers with my inspirational stories and my artwork. I have been terrible at the artwork portion, I'm afraid, but have re-written my art goals and am going to try harder to create more finished art even when I'm swamped with my petsitting business. So I hope you will all forgive me if I let you down in that aspect of my blogging. But I keep reading these words below and they inspire ME to be a better blogger, artist, writer, storyteller, motivator and friend to all of my lovely followers. Thank you all for hanging in there with me and if it wasnt for you, and your friendship and support, I certainly wouldnt be doing this! I am grateful for every comment and I consider you all my good friends. Here is a nice big happy fairy hug for all of you!


Details of Noblesse Award:

The recipient of this award is recognized for the following:-

The Blogger manifests exemplary attitude, respecting the nuances that pervadeamongst different cultures and beliefs.-

Their Blog contents inspire; strives to encourage, and offers solutions-

There is a clear purpose at the Blog; one that fosters a better understandingon Social, Political, Economic, the Arts, Cultures, Sciences and Beliefs-

The Blog is refreshing and creative-

The Blogger promotes friendship and positive thinkingThe Blogger who receives this award will need to perform the following:-

Create a post with a mention and link to the person who presented the NoblesseOblige Award-

Thank you so much, Heather, for thinking of me and I want all of you to visit Heather's blog and see her magical place called, Witch Hollow Primitives!

http://witchhollowprimitives.blogspot.com/

WISDOM WALKS

I have been busy with petsitting this week and will be till Monday but I have enjoyed one walk in particular for the last 2 weeks. I posted "Forest Fairy" today because I have been walking thru a forest of enchantment lately!

My little black lab friend, Julie and her sister, Lilly Beth the little white doggie with one eye, and I have had early morning walks together and there is something very special happening when I walk with them.

The morning is so quiet and their neighborhood is so green and peaceful and I feel so calm with my two girlfriends. they dont walk very fast so its nice to walk with them.

I am drowning in the scent of jasmine on the first part of our walks, it is everywhere. Pine trees and ivy line the street and walkway of the second half of our walks and by the time I reach this area I have beautiful thoughts of great wisdom that have been coming to me and have answered alot of questions about my art and my life in the past 2 weeks. I feel blissful and peaceful after our walks and thank Julie and Lilly Beth for sharing them with me. I have had more creativity than ever and have been sketching like crazy as well (Lilly the pink buttercream cupcake fairy came to life in my sketchbook this morning!)

I dont really know why, but everytime I take care of julie and lilly I have this magical time with them. I cant wait for August when their mom goes away again!

Michelle :)

INSPIRE ME THURSDAY

Just found this cool site. This weeks topic is "petal" so I thought "Posie" would be a good piece to submit for this week.
Have you guys been on there? Looks like fun, I am so in need of inspiration, it really helped!


http://www.inspiremethursday.com/