New Dogs!!

It should be so hard to get dogs done, but it always seems to take for ever :) I do have a couple of new ones since the last time I was in here.

I now have a Pit Bull (which I hope to have variations of very soon), and a West Highland White Terrier.

I am smack dab in the middle of the busy season, and will write more once the 18th comes and goes.

******CYBER MONDAY BOGO SALE*******

One day only! The only public BOGO sale I'll have this year.

Buy one print between 9:00am and 12:00am on Dec. 1st, 2008, and receive a print of your choice of equal or lesser value. Put your BOGO choice(s) in the Message to seller. Purchase only the prints you want to pay for.

I'll honor the BOGO on up to 4 purchased prints. Offer not available on non-print items. Sale ends Dec. 2, 2008 at 12:01am.

Home stretch 2008!

Been super busy these last months! Launching a supply store has taken up what little free time I had, but I am grateful that the shop has been well-received. Now if I can just shorten the turn-around time for orders. Thanks to all who have been patient with me on that front. I'm still doing both stores all by my self, which I don't recommend unless your shipping system is well-established but adaptable.

It has been very educational running a different type of store on Etsy. I spend a lot more time on communications in the supply store than I do in the art store. The supply products tend to generate more questions for potential buyers than does the art. And supplies take longer to package. But in most aspects, running both stores is pretty similar.

Good things are happening art-wise. Several new catalog opportunities are brewing, so it ought to become easier for more folks to buy framed reproductions of some of my work soon.

Looking forward to Thanksgiving, as it might give me time to try to get a few more dogs ready in time for the Holidays.

Hope you all have a nice holiday!! Don't overdo it.

Welcome to Etsy - Wardomatic!

I am very excited to see that a buddy of mine has his Etsy shop up and running. I have always loved his work, and really like what he has available. Soon, we will also be able to enjoy and buy his wife's photography on Etsy as well.

Check out Wardomatic.

Cool giveaway!!

Momsbyheart.blogspot.com is sponsoring a giveaway of 3 prints of the winner's choice from my Woodland Critters Series.

Rules on how to enter are here.

Fabribot Invasion!!!

After letting this big pile of printed fabric sit around for the better part of 4 months, I finally got down to business with Fabribots, cloth versions of my Quelstar Tin Toy Robot Series.

I was a bit rusty at sewing, but after the first few, I was able to pick up a little speed, and have used almost all of the fabric I had on hand. Got 5 more to sew (including Electroman and the x-9) and I'll be done with this batch. Just ordered fabric for another 36 robots, so I hope to have more for the Holidays.

These are not really intended for children under 6.

Land of Nod...

We love Land of Nod in our house, so I was pretty excited when they contacted me about carrying a few of my prints.

They chose 3 images from my Quelstar Tin Toys series, and it's nice to finally be able to share this news with everyone.

These are available at the Land of Nod website, and as they tend to do, they have created a nice room with available bedding and such, a room of which these prints can be a part.

UV Resin Tutorial...

Another tutorial, this one on UV Resin! UV Resin is much easier to apply than 2-part resin, as you don't mix anything. It starts to cure once exposed UV light, so you can cure it in sunlight as an inexpensive solution, or using a UV lamp for more consistent results.

Has a nice window of workability in which you can deal with bubbles and such prior to exposing it. It sets very quickly though once exposed, so it is important to minimize bubbles and such as much as possible prior to exposure.

One of the best things about it is that the quick "setting" of the resin lets you see which pieces aren't coming out well, and the resin can often be popped out of your finding before it sets completely, giving you a do-over of sorts.

A new leaf, and all that...

So I am about to take the littlest one to preschool, and when I get back, my wife and I are going to start a walking program. And by walking program, I mean we are going to walk around the block at least once. Maybe on Wednesday we will go twice.

Over the last two years we haven't had a lot of exercise, so we're trying to get active again. I had started walking/running this summer, after I returned from a week at summer camp in the mountains. I started that week with a swim test that I thought would kill me. I had to jump into some pretty cold lake water which was over my head, swim 200 yards, any stroke, and then backstroke 50 yards, and then tread water for 30 seconds. 100 yards in, I thought I was gonna die. I had thought that my arms would tire, and that is what would get me, but it was the breathing that was the culprit.

I made it to the end, and got out of the water, equal stunned that I had made it, and that it had been so hard. It took 2 hours before I felt back to normal after that.

Then there were the hills. And shinsplints. But towards the end of the week, I started to crave the burn. And when I got back to the flat ground of the coast, I couldn't walk fast enough to get that same level of exertion, and I'm not quite ready to full-on run just yet. So that, along with a low-level of fitness, and my general lack of dedication to physical activity led me to stop walking in the mornings.

But now we are resolving to eat smaller portions, walk 3 times a week, and get more sleep. So new leaf, consider yourself turned. For now.

New Digital Art Demo

This new video has been waiting on deck for me to do the voice over, and it's finally done. It's probably an intermediate level demo, in that it might make more sense to you if you have a little Photoshop™ experience, but I like to think you can just watch it just to see the process I go through as I create my digital art.

My latest tutorial...DG3 Art Glaze

New Dog: Shih Tzu

How about that? Only a little over a month between posts! I have to do better...again.

Finally finished a Shih Tzu. Available at Etsy.

New Dogs...

I finally had a chance to do some new dogs, a German Shepherd and a Doberman. On the way to those breeds, I ended up with the beginnings of about 7 other breeds. Got lots more breeds to get done before the holidays.

You can find them on Etsy.

Back to Normal

Everything is back to normal, following Hanna. We are keeping those in the path of Ike in our prayers.

Had a pretty cool thing happen recently, that I have been meaning to post about.

One of my customers in England sent me this photo of something he happened upon whilst shopping in a John Lewis store.

Yup. Those are some of my dogs, all framed up and available without shipping charges. I'm pretty excited to be getting my work in front of new viewers and to be included in such a high-quality store.

Now just trying to catch-up from a half-day on Friday.

Pretty Quiet Night

There was some wind, but very little rain as Hanna passed through.

We lost power at some point, but it was back on by 4:30am or so.

Headed out soon to check the studio, gallery, etc.

It's moved again

The 11pm advisory has Hanna going 30-45 mins to our west. It has been extremely quiet, with little rain or wind. Last I heard, landfall was going to be around 3am.

Not staying up for that.

Ho hum...

Still pretty much just rain. 8pm advisory seems to say same projected track.

Battening down... or not.

The much mentioned trip to storage finally happened. Saw one store that was shuttered, a grocery store.

Did not see any other dwelling or structure with any hurricane prep. My house included. So I would say many folks here aren't expecting much damage, IMO.

Annnndddd...She's back

That did not take long. The 5pm advisory shows Hanna's projected path heading right over top of us again.

It's actually a little sunny out, and I can tell it rained a little. I fell asleep on the couch watching the Weather Channel. Told you the wait was exciting. :)

Still have not gone to storage, so that's gotta happen soon. It will be interesting to see what folks have done to get ready.

I am not Hurricane/Tropical Storm Obsessive enough

Can't believe that I let a whole 20 minutes go by before I realized that the 2:00pm advisory was up. :)

So Hanna's a bit stronger, close to hurricane strength, and it is picking up forward speed, and the path seems pretty much unchanged since 11am. We had the first rain bands come through about 45 mins ago, and they were pretty heavy for outer bands.

Gotta head to storage units to secure some things there.

A little bit of wind...

We are getting ready by grabbing all the loose outdoor stuff and securing what we can. The 11am advisory has the storm passing further to our west, so for at least the next hour or so we are no longer directly in the path. But we are still awfully close. Looks like it may move through a little later than thought in previous forecasts.

We are starting to feel the wind pick up and a few raindrops now and then. Going to run out in a little while to secure things in our storage units.

Here comes Hanna!!

Welllll...Looks like Tropical Storm Hanna is headed our way, and she may be a hurricane by the time she gets here. It's a bit of a scramble today, to get as many orders out as possible, so they won't get stranded in the Post Office here if things get dicey.

We are hoping that the storm will stay a lower level hurricane, which is what is forecasted.

Should give some time to blog though. I blogged about Hurricane Ophelia as it passed through 3 years ago, and I like to say I think I really captured the mind-numbing level of boredom that a wait for a hurricane to strike can achieve.

It's supposed to start raining tomorrow, so at some point I need to stop and get everything off the floor here in the studio (possible flooding) and cover everything with plastic. Many years ago, the building that the gallery is housed in had a collapse of a facade on to the roof of the building. It took out 3 floors on the way down.

I'm next door to that building, in a building just as old (1850s).

Hopefully we will not face anything worse than power loss.

Handmade Kids Contest

It has been a busy summer, and once again, I barely blogged about it. So I will have to do it in retrospect.

First bit of news is that I am a finalist in the art category of Etsy's Handmade Kids contest. Yay! You can go over and vote for all kinds of cool handmade kids stuff here. And, of course, if you want to include me in your votes, that's much appreciated. My "No Monsters Allowed" print was chosen. Voting enters you for prizes. Mmmmmm...prizes...

Got more news about spreading my art across the world, but I'll save that for another post.

Golden Supply Co. is off and running. I have begun to set up a page for Golden Supply Co. on johnwgolden.com for those of you that are not Etsy members. I've got lots of new findings coming in, and I am excited to get those up and available.

What a couple of weeks...

Well...the drawing dogs in the back of a van as it drives across half the country was an ill-fated idea. Much too bumpy :)

The trip was good, and the subsequent week in the woods at summer camp was nothing short of transformative, if that's a word. Walking up and down hills all week went from "this is killing me" to "my body is starting to crave this".

Back now, in the studio, filling orders. My wife and I have opened another Etsy store, this time to meet the rising demand for the ring blanks that I use in my resin tutorial. We will also be offering the pendant plates I use as well. So many folks were having trouble finding the rings, and now they can get them using Paypal.

The new store is called Golden Supply Co.

More on my week in the woods later...

19 hours each way...

End of this week, I will embark on a long and arduous journey. My son and I, and my sister, my uncle and my folks are all piling into a vehicle and drving halfway across the country to our annual family reunion. Sure...flying would be faster, but I'm looking forward to the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my son (in addition to the full week we are going to be spending at Scout Summer Camp later this month) before he goes off to become a middle-schooler. And I am looking forward to the time with my extended family.

It has become harder and harder to find large blocks of time to work on creating new art, and the list of requested breeds for my dog series has gotten long. So, I'm thinking as I cruise through North Carolina, Tennessee, and parts beyond, that I could get a little art done. and maybe shoot a few photos on the way. And maybe eat an indigenous sandwich or two. I have this dream to one day rent an RV and travel the country eating the sandwiches that originated in the various parts of the country. I have a feeling that this will be a $5 footlong version of that dream, at various Subways along the way.

If I can get Wi-fi access, I'll post each day's progress.

For now though, I've got a lot of prints to get out before I leave. Got new rings and pendants underway, working on glass pendants, and thanks to Spoonflower (some fellow North Carolinians, I might add), I'm getting closer to seeing my robots in a form you can pick up and hold. I wanted to create something using my Quelstar Tin Toys series, in keeping with the era that inspired that artwork. So, introducing the Fabribot, a retro-styled stuffed fabric robot in 6 or 7 models. These will probably be sold with a small print of the box art for that robot design.

These are hand-sewn by me, using fabric that Spoonflower has printed for me. Yes, I sew. It was a requirement that I be able to sew and do my own laundry before being allowed to leave home for college.

It will probably be a few weeks before I can get these in the shop, due to my upcoming road trip and a week at summer camp shortly thereafter, but maybe I can get a few in there late next week.