Watering the Lawn
I've got a number of newly completed works of art to share, most of them abstract watercolors, so I figured I'd start with, what else, an abstract watercolor. I called it "Watering the Lawn" because to me it combines abstract drops of water, blades of grass, sunshine, the idea of breezes, etc.
The painting is shown with a gold frame above, but both framed and unframed prints are available - click here for more information. The original is 14"x10" on Aquarelle Arches hot press 140 lb. watercolor block paper.
Thanks for looking, and stay tuned for more art. :-)
Whew! Finally Sent Out A Shop Newsletter!
I know I should really be more consistent with my shop newsletters, but at least I get them out PERIODICALLY - LOL. You can click here to read the full shop newsletter, but the new parts I want to share here as well I'll post below (copied directly from the newsletter so it's that really excited 'newsletter' speak - *grin*)...
InfiniStitch™ Embroidered Hats, Shirts & Jackets: Thanks to the development of a new kind of Embroidery called InfiniStitch™, Art of FoxVox can now offer many of our Celtic designs embroidered onto special products including a cap, black collared polo shirts, roomy buttoned denim shirts, and cool performance jackets! (The embroidered products are also a terrific alternative for when one of our Celtic t-shirts or sweatshirts is just a bit TOO casual.)
You can find our embroidered Celtic products by browsing our Celtic Designs #1 and Celtic Designs #2 - most of our round/circle knotwork and spiral designs are available on the new items!
Celtic Knotwork Ceramic Dog & Cat Bowls:Made out of a heavy, durable ceramic, these large and small Celtic pet bowls are great for both cats and dogs (and other furry friends too!) and will add a touch of class to their dinnertime.
Pet bowls are white ceramic and available with Celtic knotwork in blue, green, orange, pink, purple, red, turquoise, or gold. Click to browse all Celtic pet bowls.
Okay - end the newsletter bits. Actually the pet bowls would be fantastic as snack bowls for humans too - you can fill them with M&Ms, trail mix, chex mix, whatever, and there are no marks on the bottom that say it's for pets at all. ;-)
The Inexpensive Eyeglasses Saga
About a month ago, my friend Tom came over sporting new glasses. When I complimented him on them, he told me that he'd gotten them online for about $10. *shock* At first I thought he meant that they were like those reading glasses you can pick up in a drug store, but no, they were his prescription. When I asked how this was possible, having had glasses since I was a teenager and knowing how expensive they were, he pointed me to Glassy Eyes. (I won't summarize anything here - just go to the site and start clicking and reading.)
Needless to say, I was intrigued! Glasses with my prescription for under the usual hundreds of dollars? (I was probably even MORE intrigued since I don't have insurance to cover the expense of eyeglasses and don't have tons of money laying around at the moment.)
Since it had long been past time to get a new eyeglass prescription, I went to a local optometrist and for a $100 office visit I got a new prescription. Then I came back home and got online. Glassy Eyes links to a number of inexpensive eyeglass manufacturers, and after a bit of surfing, I decided to go with Zenni Optical for a few reasons. 1. They seemed to have a wide selection of frames. 2. I liked how they gave all the measurements for the frames (most of them do, really, but I liked their setup) including frame width and lens width and height and bridge width. 3. They seemed to have a good selection of the cheaper frames as well and 4. Zenni Optical was what my friend Tom had used with success for his own glasses.
Now, Tom's got a very weak prescription, so he didn't need any of the higher index lenses or anything fancy, which was why they only cost him about $10 plus shipping. I knew I'd need at least one higher level of index, which on their site is $19.99 extra. But I didn't need the X-tra strength prescription or bifocals either, so I didn't have to pay the extra charges for those either.
On their site, there are little question mark links next to technical parts that nicely explained the details in laymen's terms, and a page about frame sizing as well. The one thing I couldn't do, of course, was TRY ON any of the frames to see how they fit or how I looked in them. (True of anything you order off the internet, but I'd never done it with glasses before!) I measured the frame width of my current frames and compared it to the dimensions given and was able to figure out what was similar. I chose two frames, one full-rim in silver and a half-rim in gold, thinking that the gold would be my primary and the silver my backup. (I'd never had the option of having a second/backup pair before either, due to the expense!).
So I selected my frames, typed in my prescription (including my slight astigmatism) and pupillary distance, upgraded to a higher-index lens for $19.99 more, and the order came to $56.90 plus $4.95 shipping (for any number of glasses) for a grand total of $61.85.
They gave a delivery time of at least two weeks, and in two weeks plus one day (yesterday) they had arrived at our mailbox! They were in a padded envelope, and each pair of glasses was contained in a hard plastic case:
Each pair of glasses was wrapped in a soft lens cleaner cloth, tucked in a plastic eyeglass-size ziploc bag, and enclosed in the plastic case. After I tried on both glasses numerous times, let my eyes adjust to the new prescription, and checked myself out in the mirror a few times, I can say that I'm VERY happy with my purchasing decision! And here are the glasses - the silver full-rim ones first:
And the gold half-rim ones:
Now, the major CON to all of this is the not being able to try them on part. Both glasses I got fit nicely even though the frames were different sizes by a few millimeters, which I did on purpose to play the odds. They both look decent on me too, although the silver ones, being smaller and slightly narrower, don't tend to compliment my round, full face as nicely as the gold ones do (which are wider), but I was mostly planning them as a backup anyway. But you know what? For $30, I was willing to take that risk in the first place, which I never would have done if they'd cost hundreds of dollars. They also make sunglasses, which I've never really been able to have before either!
So, to sum up, this was a great experience for me and I'd definitely order again online. If you need new glasses, I highly recommend giving this a go. If it doesn't work out for whatever reason, you've lost very little money, and if it DOES work out, you get new glasses, maybe multiple pairs, and get to keep a lot more of your money in the process! John's planning on trying it now too!
Our Dog Pepper
Last week we had to say goodbye to our wonderful black labrador retriever, Pepper. When she was about four years old, we adopted her from a local family that was moving, and we've had the pleasure of her ridiculously happy energy for over nine years. We miss you Pepper!
Dragon Tattoo!
I'm not really a tattoo artist, but I have designed a few tattoos by special request. Semi-recently I had a request from someone to use one of my existing designs as a tattoo - my Celtic Knotwork Dragons piece. At first I thought they just wanted to use part of it since I figured that was WAY too big for a tattoo if you wanted to keep the detail, but they said they wanted to do the complete tattoo! And luckily he sent me a photo of the finished work! The original is up at the right there, and here's the photo of the tattoo:
WOWEE!!! It sort of blows my mind that someone liked my art (not even personalized!) enough to wear it forever - hope it ends up being a good luck charm for him. (Sorry about the copyright notice on the image - I didn't want this guy's photo to be hijacked into a tattoo gallery!)
Broken Vistas
THIS Broken Vistas has nothing to do with Microsoft however - HAH. It's a triptych of photographs that I took during the rainy season here in Central California.
There was just such a nice contrast of the fresh green grass, the blue sky, and the cross section of tan land where the sides of hills had given away over time. These photos are actually taken along Panoche Road in Paicines, in the same vicinity of Pinnacles National Monument, if you've heard of it.
(You can click the image to get a framed or unframed print in my Imagekind Gallery.)
Celtic Clockwork
Recently I tried out something a little different with my Celtic artwork. A sort of abstract black and white piece with all different kinds of spirals. I called it Celtic Clockwork because it reminded me of all the gears inside a clock. You can see the slightly different versions that I put on t-shirts, versus greeting cards, etc.:
I also have framed and unframed prints available through my gallery at Imagekind:
