Tiffany's Art Journal
March 7th, 2010
All that talk about last year's garden yesterday got me thinking, and I ended up not working and instead spent the afternoon planting seeds. It's okay, it's a weekend. I deserve a day off too once in a while. So far this year I have:
- Purple Alyssum
- Catnip
- Cupid's Dart
- Lavender
- Rosemary
- Chives
- Lettuce Leaf Basil
- Sweet Basil
- Genovese Basil (basil is really good, stop looking at me like that!)
- Sunflowers
- Oregano
- Impatiens
- Hollyhock
- Grandpa Ott Morning Glory (it's supposed to be dark purple with red stars in the center)
- Sweet Pea
- Delphinium
- Columbine
- Johnny Jump Up
- Lupine
- Foxglove Digitalis/mixed
- Dame's Rocket
And that's just what I planted yesterday! In a month or so I'm going to start tracking down some other plants that are hardy even here in Montana. I want some New Dawn Roses, Daffodils, Bleeding Hearts, Forget-Me-Nots, Stinking Billy/William, Bachelor's Buttons, Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, love-lies-bleeding, love-in-a-mist or devil-in-a-bush, bridalwreath and possibly peonies, although I'm not sure I'm patient enough for those. I don't think I can wait a few years for them to mature. I'm already obsessively checking my seeds to see if by some miracle they germinated overnight and are sprouting.
At some point I'll have to figure out what vegetables I want to grow this year and find some more herbs. I might be a bit of an ambitious gardener but I justify it by my yard currently being a mess. It's alright, the house came that way, but I'm determined to improve it. We've actually been toying with the idea of doing a rooftop garden since our house has a flat roof and it gets very hot in the summer time. The plants would add insulation, but we don't know if our house would be able to handle the moisture load.
Well, that's enough plant babble for one, er, two days. I'm off to plant yet more seeds! Woohoo!
March 6th, 2010
I don't know about you, but I am getting really impatient for spring to hurry up and get here already. To be fair, the snow is melting at an incredibly rapid rate and the days are very nice. Occasionally it rains but that only helps to melt the snow even faster. Mostly I miss gardening. I have a green thumb and I get very antsy during the winter to start exercising it again. I have a lot of houseplants, our house is almost like a jungle now, and will probably only get worse, but I still miss digging in the dirt and the hot sun on my back. I found some photos of my homemade greenhouse from last April that made me miss my garden that much more. I miss the taste of June's first strawberries and all the vibrant shades of columbines in bloom. Home Depot seems to be taunting me, they've had their seeds and sprouting kits out for a month now and every time I go and buy another houseplant it's nearly torture to resist splurging on one of every pack of seeds.
Oh well, I have a busy day ahead of me again, and not enough time to sit here reminiscing about last year's garden. Here are a few of my favorite photos from last spring. I hope you enjoy them!
March 2nd, 2010
As I was typing the date in I just realized that it has been 11 years since I had my back surgery. It's kind of a big deal to me I suppose, in a way it's sort of a birthday, a birthday for my not-so-new-anymore titanium spine-reinforcement...thingy. It's probably covered in bone by now, a friend told me that bone really likes titanium and will grow over it. But it's true, I don't have a steel backbone, I've got a titanium one. ;)
I think it's important as an artist to at least have a steel backbone. You have to be ready to be stubborn and stick with it if you're going to make a career out of it. There are a lot of times when I have wanted to give up but I never have and now I am in a much improved place with my career. I have this little scrap of paper up on my wall. It came in a pouch I was given by a medicine woman several years ago now, and it says "Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that held its ground".
I can't tell you how true this saying is for artists, or how much this simple little scrap of paper helps me through my day, the jobs that I don't want to do and the headaches of running a business. It's just taped up above my whiteboard calendar, it's old and wrinkled and pretty beat up, but it is my motto. A lot of the time as an artist you will look like a nut, a lot of people won't believe in you, they don't think your work will ever be good enough, or that your business ideas will ever pan out. If you give up you always look like a nut. If you keep going and ignore the criticism and doubts, you'll become that mighty oak.
Anyway, it's almost 11 AM and I haven't had breakfast yet, I have a lot of business e-mails to catch up on, and quite a few commissions to finish, a calendar to design, a newsletter to send, and a number of other things that have gotten pushed aside while I've been feeling a little under the weather. It's just another one of those days when I wish I had a secretary (and could afford to pay one).
February 10th, 2010
Just before a show it is always insanely chaotic around here. Today isn't any exception, although I don't think I've had enough coffee yet because my brain isn't seeming to understand the amount of stuff still left to do. I keep re-realizing I have yet to cut mats or print prints... and then I wonder why I am updating the site journal. Eek!
I have started the last painting for the calendar. I'm really excited to have my first REAL calendar, done by a professional printer and shrink-wrapped and everything! It's really incredible. I've wanted to do it for years but this is the first year that I feel like there's really a demand for that many calendars. I hope I sell them all!
The pre-ordering for the calendars should start around March 1st, and I'd like to have the calendars in my hands by April 1st. I won't know for sure until I find out just how long it will take to print them, but I really hope it isn't very long.
And in case you didn't notice, RadCon is this weekend, and my itinerary has been posted on the front page of the site! I'm only on a couple panels this year but next year I hope to be on lots more. I love helping and attending the local cons. I'm not really a big fan of most con-stuff but I do like to help people and share what I've learned, and I've found that's the best place for it. Otherwise, I wouldn't go, and then I'd probably never get out of the house.
I'm going to go bake some goodies for our trip, make another cup of coffee, and hopefully get all those mats cut... sheesh!
February 4th, 2010
I feel like I have been working on this painting forever! Okay it's only been 5 months but that has to be a record for me. I usually can't stand it after a week or two and hurry up and finish it so I can stop looking at it. That's kind of been the case the last couple of days. I think I finally hit that point where I am so sick of looking at this unfinished and I just want to see it donedonedone. I can't seem to find the motivation to paint anymore stupid little potion bottles, candles or books though, and I still have a lot of those to go before this can be done...
I also have a couple commissions to finish (yes still plugging away on them, argh! I NEVER take this long!) so my work on this wizard is often interrupted with bouts of guilt and some quick work on the waiting commissions. I'd like to finish them all tomorrow, or at least finish the wizard and one commission and get something decent done on the last commission, but my belly dance class is having a hafla on Saturday (basically a big belly dancing party) and I still need to cut out and sew up my black velvet choli top. I don't know how long that will take, since my "simple" harem pants took me most of 2 days to figure out. Yeah, I'm not much of a seamstress.
Okay okay, you want to see this painting? Well you can't yet because I don't want to ruin the surprise since it is thisclosetobeingdone! But I will show you a little bit, because I'm not totally cruel.
Cross your fingers I am able to finish it tomorrow...
February 1st, 2010
I'm really glad to have the site back up at last and I hope that you all like the new layout! I love it! I'm really excited to finally have all of my new artwork posted up here instead of only having it all over at deviantART.
I've been able to make some really big updates to how the site works so it should make shipping and processing orders a lot easier for me. Now all orders will go through 2CheckOut unless you select PayPal. I now accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Diner's Club, JCB and PayPal.
I'm still offering $5 worldwide shipping. Orders shipped to addresses within the United States will ship via USPS Priority Mail, while orders shipped to addresses in all other countries will ship via USPS First Class Mail.
Alright, I better get back to work. I still have a lot of coding and updating to do before the site is actually ready to go live again. Maybe the next time I update I'll have some new art...
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