Poppytalk!

I have been accepted into Poppytalk Handmade and I am really excited about it! I have loved this site for ages and finally took the plunge and applied (thanks to Michele for convincing me to do it!) so now you can find my books and a few of my paintings there.

Mother's Day was great, but busy! I went back home to my parents (although didn't get to spend a lot of time with them, sorry mom and dad!) and went to a friend's college graduation party. We have been friends since preschool (we met on the bus on the first day) and she is very dear to me. Her mother and my mother are also best friends :)

I made her this for graduation:


And here is a picture of us in ballet together when we were 6 (I'm the one with the ringlets):



I also gave my mom this exquisite necklace from The Peach Tree for Mother's Day (she loved it, Amy!)
When I came home on Sunday, my husband had a beautiful bouquet of handpicked flowers for me, and had bought me a vacuum (a symbol of domesticity, I know, but I really wanted one!) The best part of Mother's Day, though was the road trip with my daughter, and singing goofy songs together. Yes, I love being a mom.

New

"Swinger" 2009
"Daphne" 2009
"Selena and the Rubber Plant" 2009

"Blue" 2009

Give it away now

Hey all, I was having a hard time thinking of something to blog about. So I thought I would do a give away. You know I never thought I would be the type to blog, or twitter or do any sort of "social networking" stuff. Heck I used to sneer at cell phones. Well, technology and the internets slowly seeped into my life and now I depend on it to make a living. I like it though, I have made some great friends, and I love the fact that everyday I see others create beautiful things. Well I digress. As I said I thought I would have a give away on my blog and since I now "twitter" I asked some of my "followers" if anyone would be willing to share their pretties with my readers. And luckily for you teamzvonik was gracious enough to offer her cute S.W.A.K. magnets made of recycled paper pulp!



Here is how you could be the lucky winner:

1. Go to teamzvonik's shop, and take a look around.

2. Come back here and leave a comment on my blog telling me which item is your favorite in her shop.

3. Extra entry if you either blog or twitter about my give away.

Thats it!

New paper designs

I have been deciding more and more to design my own paper. I have a degree in graphic design, I would hate for it to go to waste :) Here are a few examples.

"Bunnies" designed for my rabbit obsessed daughter

"Coral"

images copyright 2009 Susan Schaffer and may not be reproduced without permission from the author.

Love Notes

Love Notes

Little Love Notes

Oh happy day! My new printer arrived in the mail today, and yes it works! My old printer died at a most inconvenient time (aka right before the Craftacular) and so I sent it in to Epson, and the nice people at Epson sent me a new one. I repeat "oh happy day!" Now the oodles of custom guest books that I have orders for can be completed and sent out.

In other news I am featured in a blog post by 622 press. You can read it here:
http://622press.wordpress.com, Kristin, (aka 622 press) is also from Madison WI and her letterpress cards are absolutely exquisite.

I have been very bad at keeping in touch with everyone, and I apologize. I am reading your blogs, daily, and will promise to post more here as well. I have been working on new books, some especially for Valentine's Day and have been painting as well. I have a new shop for my paintings if you haven't checked it out http://susanschaffer.etsy.com stop in and say hi.

Change is good?

I have taken the plunge and opened up a new shop on Etsy to showcase my fine art. I have kept my journals at Art Kitten, but thought I would make it look cohesive by leaving the artwork out. So you can now find it at Susan Schaffer Fine Art. There is of course positives and negatives about this, the negative being that you can't see any of my sold paintings and prints on the new shop, so it looks like I am new to selling my art on Etsy. We will see how it goes...

Please tell me what you think of the new shop!

Halloween, craft fairs and a new painting

Hello all, sorry it as been awhile since I rapped at ya (I sound like Jim Anchower from The Onion, for those familiar) I have been super busy getting books and paintings ready for the upcoming craft fair that I am going to be in. It is my first and I am super excited! This past summer I blogged about the Summer Craftacular where I posted some images of local Etsy artist's ware (read about it here). Well now I get to be a part of it!!! I have been waiting since I heard about the fair to be a vendor and if it goes well I am going to start to apply to summer craft fairs.

Anyway here is the link to the fair, and if you live in the area I would love it if you stopped by and said howdy or aloha or ni hao or maybe just hi :)

I also wanted to post some pictures of Maya from Halloween. I was pretty proud of how well her costume came out. It was my first time sewing an outfit on my machine and now I am definitely addicted! She decided to be a princess this year (really she wanted to be a Pikachu but I could not find her that costume, so she went with her second choice) and she picked out the fabric and I got to work. In the end there were a few mistakes but all in all I was pretty happy.






Doesn't she look lovely?


And here is a new painting that sold as a print in my shop :)

Prints!

So after much research into printers, I finally found one that offers the quality that I am looking for in the price range that I had. I now am able to offer prints of my work in my shop. And so without further ado, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I am having a contest to celebrate! In order to enter this contest, you must comment in this post about an Etsy artist you really like. I will put all the entries in a bowl, and have my lovely assistant, Maya choose the winner. The winning print is an ACEO of "Gretchen". Good luck, my wonderful readers!