Who believes in Valentine's Day?

Valentine's Day is right around the corner. What do you have planned? Can you expect to give or receive flowers? Do you make dinner reservations or cook a romantic meal and stay in? Do you ignore the holiday all together? I've always been indifferent when it comes to Valentine's day - for example: this year I booked my monthly massage on Valentine's day at 5:30pm because it's the only day and time that my massage therapist had available! I will not be bringing her flowers or chocolates, but I might add a couple bucks to her tip just to be nice.

Ian's outlook is pretty simple: "Since I got you two bouquets of flowers recently when you were sick, we can count one of them towards your Valentine's day flowers." Works for me and I like you're style! There are those out there who really love this romantic holiday and make big plans and buy big teddy bears and excessively large boxes of chocolate. Good for them....go nuts!

And for the extra romantic out there, I have a couple of wine glass sets just for you. Check out my latest set which is extra mushy:

How darling and romantic, huh? This set is titled "Love Bugs". How fitting. I painted "Valentine's Day 2012" at the base of each glass (as you can see above). You have no idea how close I was to painting 2011. I'm obviously not mentally adjusted to the new year as of yet.

Next blog - vacation ideas! I'm ready to go somewhere special!

Love is in the air

Or at least I'm trying to shove it down people's throats in regards to painted glassware! Sorry - that sounded a bit negative and violent. I think Valentine's Day is quite special...it would be even better if I could get some sales from it too! I'm a little late to the game, but I'm scrambling to get some lovey dovey items listed on my shop in time for the big day. Right now, I only have two listings and I'd like to get more available to my customers.

My goal is to create designs that can be used for Valentine gifts, but aren't pigeon-holed for that specific holiday. For example, here is a recent set I just listed:

They are my notorious mum flowers, but I used shades of pink and white for the fillers. It's an explosive flower and I hope someone buys them soon! There's nothing more depressing than getting excited over a new design and then have no one pay attention to it.

Kinda looks like a wound up rope....fantastic. Oh well, I love em!

My next idea is going to be titled "love bugs". I don't want to spoil the surprise, but it will be adorable. Stay tuned.

New Design Time!

I whipped up new design this week and even though my camera is performing better, these pictures still don't do the glasses justice. I think I'm going to go bold this year and flood my shop with COLOR! More ideas came to me while I was trying to fall asleep last night and I'm excited to get started on next. Here's a listing I just posted. Bright yellow and green leaves are sure to make anyone's drinking experience more pleasurable.

New Year - New Furniture

Just wanted to create a quick post in honor of our new World Market furniture. This isn't supposed to be a cheap plug for that store, but good heavens....I just love that place! Our living room before wasn't exactly the ideal place to have guests....it was a place to watch television. One large couch facing a large TV and a fight over who gets the seat with the ottoman. Sexy....

But now....we have CHAIRS! If people come over to visit, we don't have to sit at the dining room table, we can all sit in the living room and they can sit on our new CHAIRS! I acknowledge that it's a bit weird to get this excited over furniture. However, I like to think that I'm getting excited over a new 2012 lifestyle. Hoorah!

Penny really likes it too. Well....I may have put her on the chair specifically for a picture, but she still looks darling!

2012 - The year for new designs!

It's official - 2012 is here and I'm ready to face it head on! I've kicked off the new year with a couple of new wine glass designs and I'd like to keep the momentum going and crank out more and more. A good family friend has a gift shop in West Virginia where I have a couple of sets of wine glasses sitting on her shelves. Next time I go up, I'm going to bring a whole slew of my glassware up there to try and sell. I'll switch over those listings from "ready to ship" to "made to order" and it will clear out some space in my studio for some new designs!

Now, my mum design is not exactly new, but I wanted to try it with just black and white. Here are a couple of photos:

Not sure if you can tell -  but some of the flowers are painted in - black outline with white filler and vise versa. Unfortunately, to my chagrin, the photos don't do them justice. The design really pops and hopefully this set will get more appreciation at the gift shop where people can look at them in person!

Next are my dogwood blossom glasses. I've done these before, but not for a while. Check em out:

With the white background in my lightbox, it's hard to get a good feel of the flowers. They have beautiful petals with a light pink shimmer over top of the white paint. So lovely!

My goal this week - create two more listings.......and do a bit of yoga....and get some more sleep. I'm tellin' ya - I'm gonna shake it up in 2012. It's time to get my grown up pants on!