Emptying the Nest

My daughter has recovered from her tonsilectomy...finally! She had a tough couple of weeks, but she is now ready for her next big adventure! She will be moving back to college this weekend! We've done this before (moving her to college) but this one seems to be even more of a big ordeal...getting ready, getting furniture, getting her necessites (that she seems to think are the decorating items). She wants me to paint some large paintings for her living room, so that could be interesting. If it turns out I will post a picture. I will be glad when the move is behind us, but I will miss her, and her Papillion, at home. So my nest will be half empty again. In a year or so, the nest will be empty (probably temporarily so) but it will happen eventually.

Etsy Trade

Last week I mentioned that a lady from Canada contacted me about my Clay Tiles that I list in my Etsy shop. She mentioned that she would like one with her dogs and asked me if I would want to trade. Apparently, there are many artists on Etsy that regularly trade with other artists. So I looked in her shop and liked this painting. Anyway, we agreed to trade, I created the Custom Dog tile that I posted here and sent it off in the mail. I received this painting in the mail yesterday and I am very pleased to get it! I love the painting. I think it is very creative and it is proudly hanging in my home now.

Because of this trade, I also added a listing to my shop for custom orders. So far I haven't had any orders, but I'm just going to try different products and see how it works out.

On a personal note, my daughter had her tonsils out last week, so I have been busy nursing her back to health and getting her ready to move back to college next month. So I will not get much accomplished until after the move. My daughter wants me to paint some things to decorated her walls, but I don't know when that will happen!

Tour of France - West Central

Tours, France
After our visit to the chateau at Versailles, we traveled to Tours, France. Our hotel was more of a traditional old style hotel in France. It had been renovated and updated so although it was very old, it was clean and comfortable, with the exception of the size of our bathroom. In the lobby, the one elevator was the old kind that you have to open the door on the outside and the inside and there was room for only 2 to 3 adults (or one person with several suitcases)!

Dinner in the Village
After we got settled in the hotel, we walked to dinner in the Old part of downtown Tours. In these pictures, you can see the old charming achitecture that is full of cafes, creperies, and shops. Our dinner was at a little restaurant called L'Auberge de Savoie. Its decor looked like a ski lodge. After dinner we walked through the old town looking at the sights...and stopping for ice cream. I don't speak French, but I did manage to order 'Un bule orange' or one scoop of orange sherbet. It helps when you are traveling with a French teacher!

Tour of Versailles

On the 5th day we boarded the bus to travel to Versailles.

It was a cool and cloudy morning when we arrived at the Palace of Versailles. The palace is very large and we were only able to tour a small part of it. It was the home of Louis XIV, so it is very grand with lots of gold and elaborate ornamentation and large paintings. I couldn't begin to give a brief version of the summary of this historically rich place. There is a massive amount of information about this Chateau if you follow this link (if you are interested).

This is the back of the main part of the Palace of Versailles.

And the view from here is towards the gardens and the Grand Canal.

After we left Versailles, we were back on the bus to head towards our next destination of Tours, France, a very charming French town, where we were to stay 2 nights. Next I will post some pictures from there and the next Chateaus that we visited.

Up Next: Tours, France

Musee Dorsay Visit

Trip to France...continued...

I have no new finished artwork of mine to show, so I will post a few more pictures from my trip to France. After Becky and I took our time looking around the Musee Dorsay, we came out at our planned meeting time, to find the rest of our group! Lively bunch huh!

Next we left Paris to go visit the northern part of France. I will post some of those pictures later.

Links to my previous posts from our trip to France:
Musee De'larmee
First Full Day in Paris 
Notre Dame Cathedral and The Louvre
The Eiffel Tower
The Arc de Triomphe

We visited some very large chateaus and the highlight of the rest of my trip was our trip to the Normandy Beaches. So I hope you will come back and visit if you are interested in those sites.

Custom Tile for Canadian

Here is a picture of the custom tile that I created for a lady in Canada. She wanted a tile and asked if I wanted to trade something from her shop, so I agreed. There was a painting in her shop that I liked, so she sent me photo of her 2 dogs. They were standing up on the railings of the porch of her house. She didn't give me any other instructions, so this is what I came up with. I have to say that I really enjoyed creating it, so now I listed in my Etsy store custom tiles. So maybe some others will order some custom tiles from me. I'm going to work on some other sample tiles to sell soon. It does take a couple of weeks for them to be finished. They have to dry slowly, get fired, then get glazed and fired again. So the whole process can take up to 2 to 3 weeks, depending how busy I am.

Learning About Etsy

I have been busy working on some drawings this week but I do not have anything to show. I have also been doing a lot of research about selling on Etsy. I think I mentioned earlier that I recently opened a shop on Etsy.

So much to Learn
I've been doing a lot of reading about how to promote my shop so it doesn't get lost in crowd. There are so many artists with shops on Etsy that are very successful, but you have to learn how to be found. From what I have read, that doesn't just happen without alot of effort! I did have my first sale about a week ago (YAY!) to a lady in Greece! So my Pink Flamingo ACEO drawing (in the photo) should be in Greece by now. I guess that means I've gone International. I have also been working on a custom tile as a trade with an artist in Canada. I fired it in the kiln today, so hopefully, I will be able to photograph it tomorrow and post it here. I hope that she likes it!

On the Drawing Board
Some other things that I am currently working on are ideas for future pieces that will be put in my shop, a larger colored pencil drawing for an upcoming CPSA Chapter Art Show, and I'm also getting ready to paint a mural at my church soon. So I've got a lot to do, but my summer break will be over in one month! So I have to get busy! Oh, and life has a way of cutting into that art time too! Oh well, I guess I would rather be busy than bored! Bored? I really don't know what that word means!