Thank you so much to Sarah at Harmless Color for including one of my paintings, Be Free As A Bird, in her Etsy treasury - http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4d464a1aa6228eefc18dd1f7/lets-paint-the-forest-red. She also has a wonderful blog at http://harmlesscolor.blogspot.com/ where she showcases some of her handmade gift items and delicious recipes that make me want to get in the kitchen and bake! What a wonderful way to begin the day!

I was playing around today with Adobe Photoshop and created a new collage to post online. It was made using a digital scrapbook collection I designed a few years ago called Springtime Poppies. I was in the bookstore the other day (my favorite place in the world!) and noticed that poppies were featured on the cover of the January issue of Somerset Magazine. There was also a wonderful inside article on designing mixed-media artwork featuring this beautiful springtime flower. I couldn't resist the urge to explore and create!

I just listed a new painting on Etsy called "True Love". The painting celebrates the true love of a young mother for her child as they enjoy nature among budding dogwoods and sweet robins. I thought I would share the progressive development of this mixed media collage painting from sketch to the finished painting. As you can see, I changed things along the way, but painting is a journey and you just go where it takes you. I just realized that I started my sketch off with the baby holding a stuffed animal - a rabbit. I didn't even think about 2011 being the Year of the Rabbit! Maybe I should have left the painting the way that it was. Oh well, I'll just have to paint another one. Anyway, I hope you like this version! The painting is listed in my Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/listing/66923562/true-love-original-mixed-media-painting?ref=pr_shop if you'd like to take a peek:)

These photo collages were a Christmas surprise for some of the kids in my family. They had asked me if I would do a collage for each of them when they saw the fairy photo collages I had done earlier in the year. The boys are avid sports enthusiasts and are very involved in team sports at their school, so I pictured them as bobbleheads for their school football team. And of course a little girl is always happy to be turned into a princess!

I created some new collage paintings over the holidays as Christmas gifts for my family. I thought I would post them here since I have been so bad about keeping up with this blog. My New Year's resolution is to start blogging and work on being a full-time artist. Thank you to my two followers:) and also thank you to the people who posted nice comments from several months ago that I just noticed today! I hope you all have a very Happy and Prosperous New Year:)