Our Summer Vacation

We took a fabulous family yurt-camping vacation at the Oregon Coast for the Fourth of July. Here are some selected photos of our adventures! Above is the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. We took the tour and climbed to the top!

Julius celebrated his 13th birthday on our first night there. We picked up a chocolate cake and he enjoyed it with his squirrel collection. So, now I can say, "I have two teenagers."

Camp breakfasts are the best with Chuck around!

Our friends Chad and Anna (Chad being the bass player for Dartgun) came down and camped for two nights with their two cute little puppies. Here's Julius petting them:

And here's Chadwick:
We walked a lot - there are lovely trails in the woods all around the campground, and long walks through the dunes to get to the beach.









Our favorite spot was this bench that sits on top of a hill overlooking the park:









On the Glorious Fourth, we hung out with some of Chuck's old friends from high school, one of whom lives in a private beach community just down the road from the campground. We also watched fireworks on the beach that night.



These pictures are from the private beach. It was a very misty, moisty day.

Our friend Mark and his son Traver, after reeling in the kite:

View from Chris's beach house:

Chris and Mark barbecuing while Chuck grins insanely:



I hope people in the neighborhood liked our groovy car!











We had a wonderful time!

Check out my pictures from last year's summer yurt adventure if you like - click here.

Mixing Colors - Part Three: CORAL

For Part Three of my amazing color mixing series, I give you Coral!

Mmm, don't those multi-layered globs of paint look yummy? I mixed this color using (roughly) equal parts of Permanent Rose (Winsor & Newton) with "Bittersweet Orange" and "Pretty Pink" (Ceramcoat brand craft paints).

I think I forgot to mention this in my previous posts - each piece needs to be painted with two coats before the design goes on.



After painting the design:



And that's pretty much the story of the coral bowl (which I am calling Coral Reef - you can find it in my Etsy shop here).

Mixing Colors - Part Two: BLUE

For my next installment in the story of my Summer 2009 Mandala Record Bowls, I give you my take on Pantone's "Scuba Blue."
To mix this color, I used (again, roughly!) two parts Cerulean (Liquitex Basics) to 1.5 parts Titanium White (Liquitex) and 1 part Cobalt Blue (Winsor & Newton).





The color on the far left (above) was my final solution.

I painted the design on, freehand, with Golden Fluids in Carbon Black.




Look, a record bowl on a record player!

My blue bowl is now available for sale in my Etsy shop - please click here to check it out. Thanks!

Mixing Colors - Part One: PINK

As I often do, I turned to the Pantone website for color inspiration when I needed to come up with some new pieces to take to the recent Recycled Arts Festival.

I was hoping to find some good bright colors for summer, and I was thrilled to discover the Independent-ism palette. "With its tart, bold and gregarious colors, Independent-ism is geared toward creative artisans who are unafraid of true originality." Perfect!

So I decided to share the process by which I come up with my own creative version of these colors. It is by no means scientific. It is probably weird. What can I say, I am totally self-taught, and I can only use the materials I have at hand. With a mixture of good quality acrylic paints plus a bunch of inexpensive craft paints, I've been able to duplicate these colors pretty well, I think, although I don't know what Payne's gray is for and have never learned the correct way to mix colors. And I am by no means claiming that these colors are the equivalent of the Pantone system! Heavens no. This is just my personal take inspired by this fresh and fabulous palette. So, if you are interested in my DIY approach, I am planning to share it in a series of posts documenting the creation of the eight new Mandala Record Bowl designs I've made for Summer 2009.

Starting with...Pink!

Here is my finished product:

Well, it's not really all that complicated. To make this shade of pink, I used (roughly!) 3 parts Permanent Rose (Winsor & Newton) to one part each Titanium White (Liquitex), Medium Magenta (Golden), Quinacridone Red (Golden), and "Pretty Pink" (a fairly obnoxious Ceramcoat brand craft paint).

I printed the Pantone color palette out on my inkjet. The colors come out much truer on glossy paper, and the only glossy stock I had was some CD Labels (hence the random printing):

I basically started mixing colors and lining them up against the chart until I was satisfied. I started at the right side of the square and worked toward the left - so the color you see on the far left was my final mix.

And so I painted my record!





And that is the story of Pink.

The Carnation Pink Mandala Record Bowl is now available in my Etsy shop - please click here to check it out.

In the Press

Just wanted to share some recent mentions of Eye Pop Art in the blogosphere. Above, Creepy Queen Magazine featured my Big Top Circus Clock for Psychedelic Wednesdays! Very cool, I think.

And, cuteable put my Rockabilly Record Bowl up for Recycled Finds:
HomeWorkshop.com included my Lavender Feng Shui Mirror in a post about handmade mirrors:
And I discovered while looking at web stats for Trillium Artisans that the French website madmoiZelle included my Antique Record Clock in this "Selection graphique":

It's super fun to get featured in the online press, and I really appreciate it. But, to put things in perspective, here's a passage from the book I am reading right now, Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut:

She asked me what had been the most pleasing thing about my professional life when I was a full-time painter - having my first one-man show, getting a lot of money for a picture, the comradeship with fellow painters, being praised by a critic, or what?

"We used to talk a lot about that in the old days, " I said. "There was general agreement that if we were put into individual capsules iwth our art materials, and fired out into different parts of outer space, we would still have everything we loved about painting, which was the opportunity to lay on paint."

This really got me thinking about how much I love to paint, and how I wish I could just be shot into space in a capsule full of art materials. That would be really nice.

Recycled Arts Festival 2009

Here are some pictures from the Recycled Arts Festival, which happened on June 28 and 29 at Esther Short Park in Vancouver, Washington. It was a really great event, and I am happy to say that many Eye Pop products have found new and loving homes. The weekend weather was gorgeous and it was an all-around great time!

Here are some shots of my booth. You can also check out pictures from 2007 and 2008 if you want (I did it in 2006 too, but that was before I had a blog!).





And look who showed up - Michael Cordova! My old, old friend from high school who lives in San Francisco and was in town for the weekend. It was so sweet of him to come up to the 'Couv just to visit me.

It was actually a great weekend for seeing friends. I also saw another old high school friend, Aaron Nelson. My old friend Stephanie came by and we had lunch together at the Farmers Market - she and I used to share an office at the Kinko's regional training center, and we did a big sales training project together back in...I think 2001?

"Miss Megan" and "Miss Chantelle" also showed up - we were all SUN School teachers together at Lynch Wood Elementary a couple years ago, and we also worked together at OCAC summer camp.

And, Brenda Gunderson and her family showed up too! Brenda and I had kids in the same class at Duniway and she was one of my earliest supporters when I started Eye Pop Art - she gave me a ton of records, and was one of my first customers, buying several of my Mandala Record Bowls which she uses as candle holders at her beach house.

Not to mention that I met some very cool people who have a consignment shop in Seattle where I will soon be selling my work. It's called the Green Chair Project and I am going there on the 18th when the band goes up for our big punk rock show at the Bit Saloon.

Another fun thing about the Recycled Arts Festival is getting to chat with the other vendors, some of whom are fellow members of Trillium Artisans. Here is Anitra Cameron of Coffee Pot People:

I had to take several pictures of her wonderful China Blossoms, so bright and colorful and funky!



And here is Liz Dickey. I truly love her amazing bike clocks. She shared the booth with April from Rosewebs.

Here's Julia Garretson with her jewelry made from bicycle tires:


Anitra was sweet enought to take this picture of me in my booth:
It was a fantastic show!

Oh - and also! My stuff was in the newspaper! The Columbian is the major paper for Vancouver and Clark County, and they published an article about the event in their Sustainable Lifestyles section on the Thursday before the event. I was interviewed for it, but didn't really expect that they would use not one, but two, images of my work! It was so exciting!