Inspired Art, from Ellen's studio

Jewelry

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:06:00 +0000

I have a fairly large collection of pins, necklaces and other handpainted and beaded items. These few are my favorites (well, today anyways). Most peices are very colorful, and look great with a wide variety of outfits- let me know if you are looking for a particular color range.

I love this necklace! I goes with so many different colors, and it's unique asymetrical design is a real attention getter. It's a great addition to your wardrobe and will complete so many outfits- priced at $35.00, it is 26" long.

A handpainted and embellished pin about 2" square, in dusty colors on a dreamy background- perfect with dusty pastel fall colors, on a creamy colored sweater, or soft dusty green suit. Just $20.00

A pin in cooler colors, purples, blues and teals, but with a spark of pure orange for excitement. would be wonderful on navy, raisin or deep aubergine as a wonderful accent. About 1.75 by 1.25 in size, it is just $20.00.

If you are local to me and want to see the whole collection (it's pretty extensive) just contact me, or ask me to send you a few e-mail photos to select from.

Finished Painting!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:44:00 +0000

The Landscape with Fairies painting I have been working on was completed last week, and installed this afternoon, so I thought a picture or two might be a good idea:
I love the way this looks in the small space- and it really does what we were hoping it would do- visually expand the room so that it seems a lot bigger than it is.

This is the companion piece- a handpainted mirror in a small office- really a nifty idea for a windowless office.
What do you think? Comments are welcome. Want to see more of my work? Click here to go to my web site.

Fall Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:52:00 +0000

I've started work on a fall line of jewelry! The above picture is actually the beginnings of the process- a painted collage of colors and techniques that will be cut up and painted on more motifs added and metallics, wrapped with fiber, embellished with beads and wire and made into a pin or necklace. It's a lengthy process, I create a bunch of them at a time, but expect to have some completed in the next couple of weeks and ready for sale.

Work in Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:57:00 +0000

The client's mirror, handpainted with a scene to her specifications, including some pretty little butterflies and flowers representing family birthdays.
Below are some WIP shots of a companion painting for her- no where near completed, I thought it might be fun to show the process as it unfolds.

Below are some updated progress photos, posted September 10.

Making changes

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:10:00 +0000

I've been hard at work lately- not in my studio, but in my office, completely revamping my web site, one of my other blogs- Inspiration, and adding some different links in to this blog, In the Garden and Bea and Byrdie my dog's blog. I'd love it if you could take a look at the web site, and let me know what you think- good or bad. I've added a few things, changed it A LOT, hopefully made it easier to navigate, friendlier, and lighter. I've added a guest book for comments and contact information too, so let me know you visited!
And now I'll get back to the studio- there's ATC notecards to be made, a new painting, a Fall line of jewelry to begin- the list goes on and on!

Small collages

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:40:00 +0000

These were fun to create! Below are just a couple as an example of the series of 5 collages.

"Hope"

"Happiness"

Each is 8 inches by 10 inches, created on artists canvas board using my handpainted papers, photography from my garden, and my favorite quotes to create an inpirational work of art. They are shipped unframed, for you to frame to coordinate with your interiors (8 x 10 is an easy size to find in stock)

Look who I found!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:17:00 +0000

You have to check this artist out! It's Lori Andrews and she is sooooo talented! I'm in the process of trading blog links with her- so check out her blog: Watercolors by Lori Andrews it's amazing- not only are her watercolors exceptional with such saturated colors and wonderful contrasts, but she has links to her You Tube demonstrations of how they were done. Beautiful work and gorgeous photography of it as well. I'm going to go visit again and again, whenever I need to see something wonderful and colorful in my life. There are links to find out where to buy her art too as well as some other interesting things in the sidebar. Kudos, Lori!

New Artwork for the Women's Retreat

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:02:00 +0000

I've been hard at work this week getting ready for a Women's Conference tomorrow at my church. It's a full day of Inspiration and Spiritual Renewal, just for women. There will be well over a hundred women in attendance from several area churches, including me, and I am so happy to be a part of it! This is the fifth year for the Day, and it seems to get better every year. I will have a display table in the dining room full of my one of a kind jewelry, handmade notecards and other works of art for sale, plus some photographs and samples of custom work for everyone to see. It'll be a great opportunity to make some new conections and sell a few things too, so I'm really looking forward to it! Below are a couple of pictures of the Inspirational Artwork I've created, and a few of the notecards I made.

Interview with an Artist

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:01:00 +0000

This week in my artist's blogging group, we're doing something a bit different and answering a series of questions, same ones for everyone. I've read a couple of blogs already, and I'm starting to think we may be all peas in the same pod! Here then, are the questions and my answers:

1. What's your day job? This is my day job! I'm a full time artist- 24/7- always coming up with new things to work on, fun things to create and sell, whether it's a huge full room mural, or a tiny handpainted pin.
2. How do you define Creativity? How does it look in your life? It looks pretty messy! I generally have several different things I am working on simultaneously- ATC's, collages, paintings, seedlings for the garden, computer projects, beaded jewelry, hand painted and colored fabrics, stuff to build, furniture to paint, gardening to do. I'm not happy unless I'm covered either in paint or garden soil. The house cleans up pretty well though, when I get to it.
3. What allows you to be the most creative? Give me a problem and I just gotta solve it, find a way to make it work. I suppose thats the engineer in me (thanks, Dad) that needs to come out.
4. When did you start blogging? What prompted you to start? I started blogging in November of 2005 as a way to practice html as well as a way to display some of my more recent artwork and designs outside of my web site. Now I enjoy the challenge of finding new bloggers to communicate with, and getting more readers to come visit my blog. I've discovered I just love to write, and this lets me publish the things I write about.
5. Who/what are your major influences and inspirations in your blogging? I try to maintain a positive outlook in all my blogs- no-one wants to read about someone's problems and see a bunch of whining, so you won't see any of that here. I am inspired by the world around me and by God's creation.
6. How does blogging reflect (and/or feed) your creativity? I have several blogs, for all of my different interests and creative outlets, and I love to visit other's blogs, looking for new things to add, links to make, and how others are inspired. There are links to all of them in the sidebar.

Being Resourceful

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:26:00 +0000

I belong to an artist's message board that has a weekly blogging topic to help keep us bloggers writing new posts and thinking about new projects. So far, I think I'm keeping up with everyone else and blogging on the topic every week, but don't always post on the same blog every week. It seems like different topics fit better on different blogs.
This week's topic is Resourceful. I've always liked that word- it's something I try to be a lot of the time, using my resources well and not wastefully. I save a lot of stuff, thinking- "I like this (insert item here), I think I can use it for another purpose someday, I don't know what right now, but someday it'll come in handy" OK, that's probably the same thing every pack rat tells themselves while they are saving the twist ties off the bread wrappers, but seriously, I do reuse things a lot!
Being an artist and crafter, I save pretty little bits of this and that, things that are just too pretty to throw away, or perhaps useful to incorporate into some art form. In fact, the jewelry I am selling right now in my Etsy Store is made mostly from things I already had in my studio- watercolor canvas, small amounts of paints, scraps of fabric and yarns, random beads, and some polymer clay. The ACEO cards are made using some faux finish samples I didn't need- I just layered more paints and designs on top of them and created tiny works of art.
I am particularly resourceful in my garden- I save the fourpacks from the annuals I buy every spring, and use them to start my own varieties every spring, and just this afternoon, I potted up 6 flats of impatiens and annual phlox using seeds I saved last fall. I keep them on some old shelving I set up to grow plants on- you can read about how I did that in my gardening blog In the Garden. Especially in gardening it pays to be resourceful- finding interesting containers for planting, repurposing tools for garden ornaments or structures, recycling gallon jugs into water carriers, or as frost protection in the spring, beat up chairs into porch decor by adding a coat or two of pretty paint. I even took a chair that I decided I was never going to get around to re-upholstering, stripped off it's remaining cushioning, covered it with chicken wire (saved from another purpose it had the year before) and filled it with a variety of plants. Since I paid $5.00 for it at a garage sale, it at least had a use as a decorative planter instead of taking up space in my garage. It's starting to fall apart now- it's joints can't take another year of moisture, but I have my eye on an old 3 speed bicycle out in the garage to repurpose into a yard ornament to take it's place- add a couple of baskets lashed to it's handlebars and back wheel, and I think it'll look really cute! I may even save that chicken wire for yet another purpose.
Being resourceful can save a lot of money too, re-using things until they have nothing left to give, cooking with leftovers in mind to make some other dish another night, taking old clothes and giving them a new life by combining them in new ways, adding different accessories, changing the hemline, maybe even making something completely different witrh them, just because you love the fabric! There's a dress I found at a resale shop- beautiful floral rose pattern, but horribly out of style (for now at least) - I have visions of the fabric being incorporated into a new sylish jacket, perhaps in a crazy quilt design with a couple of other patterns, along with some bits of old jeans. The fabric is just too pretty to give away, or toss out even if I just can't wear that out of style dress any more.
Time is a resource too- and it's good to use that wisely as well- multitasking! Do the laundry while working on the computer, while waiting for the paint to dry, so the baby plants can be potted up, then back to the next step in the artwork, hop over to the jewelry table to string more beads on some necklaces before dinner!
Gotta go! I hear the timer on the dryer!
Ellen Leigh

Passion

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:12:00 +0000

It's this week's topic on a message board I belong to, and it's one of my favorites. I've read a couple of the other entries by my fellow artists, and so I'm inspired to write my own.
Just what am I passionate about, what floats my boat? I'd have to say creativity in all it's aspects drives my life- whether it's painting, making jewelry, designing and planting a lovely garden, writing, making a video, working on my blogs, sewing, quilting, cooking, baking....... well the list could get a bit longer, believe me. Those things are all tied up in creativity, imagination if you will- the ability to see something in the mind and then take the steps to make it take shape- that's what I am passionate about. I just have to be making something or thinking of making something every waking hour and generally I'm working on several different things simultaneously, as I wait for the seeds to sprout, the hand painted paper to dry, the finish to cure on a painting, inspiration to hit for a new article or story, the weather to warm up, glaze to dry, orders to come in, etc.
This passion, this creativity, is my gift from God, and I thank Him for it each and every day. Everything I have, and everything I do- everything I create, comes from this gift, and I thank God that I was given the ability to use it to make a living, to give it to others, to use it in His service, to inspire others, and to show others the Glory of His Creation.
I do hope you take the time to think about what I've written, and also take a look at a couple of my other blogs Inspiration and In the Garden if you have the time.
Thanks for looking in!

This image is one I created completely on the computer and is available on items in my Cafe Press Store. click on the image to see it larger.

Citrus Garden I and II

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 23:21:00 +0000

These two pieces, entitled 'Citrus Garden I and II' are in the collage painting style and are done in some beautiful greens, yellows, tangerines, and corals, using a variety of painting techniques, embedded photographs of my garden flowers and gold leaf. The size on each is 16 x 20, on artist's canvas board- a size that will be easy to find in stock frame sizes in your local craft store and easy to frame yourself. They are now offered exclusively here at $50.00 each, plus shipping if necessary.

I'm on You Tube!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 01:03:00 +0000

Here is a video I made featuring some of my work that includes animals, and people's pets. check it out!

Finished Necklaces

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:22:00 +0000

Ta-Da! I finished up some necklaces this morning, and all have now been listed in my etsy store . They all feature a miniature handpainted pendant embellished with fibers, gold wire and beads, finished back is signed and dated. Hung on a goldbeading wire with coordinating beads. Necklace length is about 18 to 20 inches. I like to use a variety of coordinating colors to make a lovely accent for several different color tops in your wardrobe. These would make a wonderful gift for Mother's Day, a birthday, or any occasion. Priced at $30.00 each (plus shipping if needed for my non-local friends.)
I'll be finishing more soon- right now, the sun is shining, and my garden is calling out to me!

Etsy Video on You Tube!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:03:00 +0000

Cute! It explains etsy in a pretty humourous way- very fun to watch!

Dogs leave pawprints...

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:02:00 +0000

Here is a painting I made for a very dear friend- using photos of her precious dogs, and various painting techniques to create a lovely collage style work. I think she picked just the perfect frame for it too!

Sheltie Pins

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:09:00 +0000

These are avaible by contacting me through this blog. Don't see what you want? Visit my etsy store, there's more there!

Still don't see what you want? Contact Me!

Art Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:32:00 +0000

This set sold already- made up into note cards.

One of the message forums I belong to is having an Art Card exchange, and it sounded really fun to me to make a whole bunch of these little works of art and exchange them with my fellow artists. Each one is 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches in size, so they really are small! I kind of got a little carried away and made more than I needed, so I think whatever I don't send will be made into something else, greeting cards, a larger piece of art, refrigerator magnets, whatever. Look for them soon here and on etsy.

Each one has been created using textured paper, painted with glazes, stencilling, and metallics. The photographs are of my own garden flowers, and feature some of my favorite quotes and sentiments. I'm going to have a hard time letting go of any of them.
PS- I made one set of these cards into note cards and sold them already! I'll finish up the other set the same way they'll be available soon!

New pendants!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:34:00 +0000

These are the pendants I finished up yesterday, still thinking about how to suspend them. What are your thoughts? A strand of mixed beads? A pretty satin cord? Other ideas?

New designs coming!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:05:00 +0000

This week I've been hard at work designing and finishing up some pendants for necklaces. I still haven't decided whether to hang them on a strand of mixed beads, or a lovely cord, maybe I'll do some of each! I finished up several pendants today, and will look into the necklace part perhaps tomorrow, so check back, I may even have some photos!

Sheltie Art

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 21:22:00 +0000

I just got back from the Detroit Kennel Club Dog show! I had a blast seeing all the dogs there, and especially all the beautiful Shelties! All of the breeders were really nice that I met, and I gave several of them my business card- perhaps they will drop in here for a visit and see what else I have available.
The above two pins are available in my Etsy Store right now! I also will do custom pins, or pendants, small or large paintings and portraits. Below are some samples of paintings I did that actually feature my own dogs- Shelties of course!

Waiting By the Lake- 24 x 36 acrylic painting

A detail view of my girls Bea and Byrdie in the above painting.
Bea and Byrdie have their own blog that you can visit.
It's something I created just for fun, because I love my dogs enjoy spending time with them and taking pictures. It's worth a visit every now and then, just for fun!

Bonnie in the Garden- Bonnie has since passed on, but she was a beautiful girl, a daughter of Gorgeous George.

Contact me if you are interested in custom artwork, I will be glad to discuss your ideas and give you a price.

New Pins in the Etsy Store

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:01:00 +0000

I've been busy creating again! And today I posted 15 new pins in my ETSY Store . The above are just three of the new pins, and the last is packaging they are sent in. I feel that the idea for these sweet little works of art was a gift from God, they deserve to be packaged up and sent to you as a little gift to you!

ETSY on CBS!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:58:00 +0000

Here is a link to video on CBS news about how ETSY got it's start: http://wcbstv.com/cbs2crew Very interesting, and even tells how ETSY got it's name. Definitely worth checking out! The video is in the upper right corner.
Also, today there is a story in Newsday about ETSY that is worth a read: http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-c5102588feb22,0,6951501.story How cool is that?

New pins!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:13:00 +0000

Here are more completed pins, ready for sale, listed only here on this blog. Contact Me directly if you are interested in any of them.

Sable Sheltie Love this one is for my Sheltie loving friends. $20.00 (currently sold out, but more will be made soon and in other sheltie colors, too- plus some multiples and color combos including the covetted split faced blue merle- LOL!!!)

Abstract Blue- Shades of blue, purples, turquoise, gold wiring and bead ribbon embellishments. $20.00 Sold!!!

Daisy on blue- ribbons, beads, gold wires, fibers and a gold heart charm. $20.00

Pink rose and lilacs - fibers, gold wire and beads $20.00

Red rose 2 - A red rose on a pastel background, twisted fibers, gold colored wire and pretty beads. This item is listed on ETSY for $20.00

Yellow daisy on blue - a yellow daisy or sunflower on a pretty blue background, with colorful beads, twisted fiber, gold colored wire. This item is listed on ETSY for $20.00

More pretty pins!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Leigh) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:11:00 +0000

Here are a few more pins that are available on ETSY:
Red Tulip on soft yellow for $20.00 on ETSY Sold!!!
Red Abstract Laugh available for $20.00 on ETSY

"Fleurs" pin available for $20.00 on ETSY

Green abstract pin available for $20.00 on ETSY

Peach Rose on Teal pin available for $20.00 on ETSY

This one isn't on ETSY yet- there's one very similar to it already in my store, but this one is also available for $20.00.