I am not ignoring art and writing this week, I am just super busy. After school I am going straight to the Florence Event Center to paint faces for the Holly Jolly Follies play. Opening night is tomorrow night. Dan is playing sax in the pit. Tonight we were done by nine thirty, but last night we were there till eleven. Tomorrow will be really fun. I have art and writing club in the afternoon and we are giving the students their loom kits, and then opening night. Busy but good. I did a terrible thing today at school. I was trying to announce my presence to Mark. He was vacuuming and I didn't want to startle him, so I stamped my foot to get his attention. Yes, the one that I just got out of a leg brace. Ow.

I will be at the casino tomorrow glittering, face painting, and peddling books. I can't wait to do fairy makeovers. The kids get so excited when we paint their faces and braid their hair. 

See the little tutu that we made for my friends dog. It doesn't have any material under him so he can't trip and it connects to his collar so it doesn't turn. Tonight I am making more tutu's for Sunday's sale. I am working in a very glittery material. My carpet shines. Sunday I will be at the casino helping raise money for one of the schools teams and raising money for Christmas. I will be painting faces, doing body art, and selling crafts including tutu's. 

I am spending the evening making little tutus for the event next Sunday, and so that I can take pictures of the process for the magazine.

Are you aware of www.illustrationfriday.com? They send out a new illustration idea each Friday, and have interesting illustrator interviews and news. I am interested in trying it soon. I almost wish it was illustration Monday though, because Friday's are so hectic. I know that they just give the prompts on Friday and then you are supposed to have a week to do them, but it would be cool to do them on the day the prompts came out. Is anyone trying their site?

Working on the design for the craft pages in the new magazine. I was very proud of my students Friday, we extended our contest until the 7th, but when you have 2nd graders turning in 22 pages of written material and older students turning in larger projects it is pretty impressive.

Today, I am home for a few hours with a sick child. I am doing my blog now because I have a busy night -dinner with a friend, and a girl scout meeting. Today, in between snuggling Jessy and monitoring Topher's classes, I am designing the layout for face painting pages in the magazine.

Friday is when the elementary schools art and writing club meets next. I have little metals and other prizes ready for the students. I am going to make little covers for them with the novel writing information and the year on them. It is fun to reward the students for pages written.

Today, I was very excited to hear from several of the students in my art and writing club. They have been working on their stories for NANOWRIMO and are excited to share on Friday. I have been buying prizes, so I am excited to see how much they have written.

I have a rare day home, and between Dr. Appointments. Today was the last official meetings with the surgeon who is monitoring my leg. His friend actually fixed it and now he is monitoring the mend. I have had x-rays and meetings.  I am allowed to walk at home without the boot now and transition into walking without it. I won't have any more appointments about my leg unless something goes wrong.

Because I am not teaching today, I am going to work on the magazine. We have decided to try to publish for the new year. Because it is a magazine the date seems pretty important to me. Publishing with 2013 on it will make it timely longer, I hope.

 I changed one of the inside projects last night and will spend the next few days creating it. Today I am laying out the hair braiding and face painting pages and posting the videos on youtube so the links will connect when the magazine is done.I thnk it is coming together really nicely and the next one will follow closely behind it, since it is being designed at the same time.

I was finally feeling creative about my boot, and illustrated on it tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we spent with friends eating and enjoying being together. I will work more on the magazine tomorrow. I hope you are all well fed, and happy tonight. If not come by and we will feed you leftovers.

My husband, shown here with one of his bands, and I had a date yesterday and that is why I didn't blog. We celebrated an anniversary of sorts, that is carefully prepared for each year. For 20 years we have been celebrating yesterdays date. We went to dinner and a rare movie. It was wonderful and romantic, and as we held hands over dinner like two teenagers we had to laugh. Neither one of us can remember what we are celebrating, what the anniversary is for. We tried to remember, we discussed our past in fine detail. But it eludes us. I think it may be the date of our first kiss??? What is even funnier is that neither of us stopped to remove it from the calender, even after realizing we didn't know what we are celebrating. We will continue to celebrate being together on November 20th for years and years to come.

Tonight I am finishing the pages in the magazine about the Florence Old Town Market. It is mostly pictures. Learning how to lay out picture pages is an interesting problem. Part of me wants to do it like scrap book pages and part of me wants to lay it out like a normal magazine. You'll have to wait and see what I decide.

Several years ago, I worked on this picture for a writing/illustrating retreat with SCBWI. I need a new retreat. This summer I attended a SCBWI conference and learned quite a few things that I have been doing wrong in my pictures. The littlest and biggest problem is a easy fix but something I just didn't know. Pictures read left to right just like the words. I had never thought about it. Do you see how all the faces are looking left? They should look right, to help with the turning of the page. Pictures are supposed to help with the movement through the book. If characters look right towards the next page, and or have their movement going that direction it helps flow and the reader will naturally turn the page. After finishing that particular class I went back and looked at my portfolio. Every one of my pictures moves left. I either need to move to a country where books move right to left, or I need to start over. Sigh! Why didn't someone mention this earlier? Do you think it is because I am left handed? Anyway, I want all of you, illustrators, out there to know: pictures need to move left to right. The characters need to look to the right and move that direction. Cars should drive towards the page turn. There are of course exceptions to every rule. But you need to have a better reason for it than mine, I just didn't know.

This is my mothers stocking stuffer from last year. Because people celebrate the Day of the Dead the first week of November it is late. But I just found the picture and I still think it was the greatest gift for her ever. 
     You have to understand, Christmas at Mom's house is a little strange. My mother has a Christmas House collection. Not just any collection, it is packed in at least five large trunks. It takes all day to take it out of the boxes and set it up all around her house, and at least that long to put it away the day after Christmas. People have been sending her beautiful houses for years, so of course her adoring children have been trying to fix it for years.
     We have been competing for as long as I can remember to see who can give my mother the worst thing to add to the Christmas village. If you walk into my mothers house during the holidays at first glance it is a winter wonderland, and then you step a little closer. Something is just a little off, but you can't really tell what. So you side up to the bookcases with the Christmas houses all in a row, and that's when you start to notice the problems: Santa face down in the snow with chalk lines around him, The drunk in front of the church, garbage trucks, whore houses, a town dump, a haunted house, trash and debris (carefully crafted in porcelain and clay), rats, a car accident, a dog pound. I haven't begun to tell you the issues with her Christmas Collection.
     We try to hide it amongst the Christmas finery so she doesn't notice until we have been home a few days. Last year, I tried and tried to find a men in black figure.(this is one of her favorite movies) I was going to make a a huge monster coming off the wall onto her church steeple for the figure to be blasting at. I would have won.
      I could not find one anywhere, so instead I made her, her, own skeleton doll sticking out of her stocking Christmas morning. If family hadn't stayed up nights helping me glue in his individual hair plugs he never would have gotten done on time.
      He didn't get to be in the Christmas houses, but he did end up moving all around the house. She decided she liked him, a told us he was the favorite. So, like all jealous siblings we pretended to get rid of him. She spent the rest of the holiday "saving him". Of course we made sure she would catch us in the act so he would be okay, wink.We put him: in a pot on the stove, under her front tire, in the dryer, at the top of the stairs. We even taunted the dog with him. She took him to work and now her students have to wonder why there is a skeleton on her filing cabinet.
     What this has to do with writing and illustrating I don't know, but I did illustrate on him??? I am working on several of the pages in my Magazine today. Hope to have the articles on fairy hair braiding done this afternoon.

I got my issue of the SCBWI Bulletin last night in the mail. (It may have got here sooner but I haven't looked at the pile in a little while.)For those of you that don't know SCBWI is the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. I have read many books and articles about writing for children, and most of them refer to this organization as a resource. It is a National organization, but we have branches in Oregon. I love the conferences, and they used to do a fall retreat in silver falls that was to die for. (I hear that they may be bringing it back.) I am very impressed with some of the new changes with SCBWI. They have updated their website and are connecting writers/illustrators and editors/publishers in new ways. You can check it out at www.scbwi.org (And yes, I am going to update my gallery page- I know the pictures are ancient and I have gotten better,sigh.)

I love poring over the Bulletin, but I have always loved reading about writing and illustrating. In fact, I started my first critique group because of my habit of reading about writing. The librarian at the local library, in Sheridan when I lived there, approached me because she noticed how many writing and illustrating books I was checking out. She mentioned that she was looking to start a group but she didn't want to be in charge. I wasn't sure I wanted to be in charge either so we co-started a group together. I love you Penny! I have always read more about writing than I have actually written. I am quite the authority on things I have never tried, but want to.  That critique group got me through the producing of both of my children's books. I hope that I am able to build a good group in this area. It is really hard to write, without friends giving you feedback and support.

This is a picture of the basket that I am making in Indian Ed class at the elementary. We had about ten students working on this project yesterday with three adults. Today several of the students brought their baskets to show me. They are all further along, but I was helping untangle yarn and getting several of them over areas where they were stuck. (The materials for this project were also part of the Lowe's Grant that we received.) More students will be doing this project, we just introduced it to the older students who will then help us to teach the younger grades. Over a hundred students will learn this craft before we are done.

Just as a side note our Elementary school also received money specifically for writing and illustrating from Target. We had money for books on writing and children's books,  materials, and money towards publishing the children's books. There are resources out there and it is going to be really fun to see what the students are doing with them. The first batch of books will be available at the Florence Folk Festival in January. They are beautiful. Come meet the authors and get your signed copy. The students are really thrilled.

This is a picture of my daughter, Jessy, helping to cut the 100 loom kits we are putting together for the Elementary School. Thanks to a Lowe's Tool Box For Learning grant. We are almost a fourth of the way done getting them ready. The goal is to have 60 of them in students hands before the winter break and then the rest will be available for students to check out. I can't wait to see what is created.

P.S. This is not the only project the grant is paying for. Students are doing: carving, pottery, printmaking,silk screening, basket weaving, loom weaving, and several other really neat activities.

I got to paint a cast a few weeks ago. Can you see the coi fish and flowers? I love to draw henna designs on lots of strange things. During the week of Halloween I was using it on pumpkins. I think one of the best art classes I ever took, the one that influenced my illustrating the most, was the henna paining class I took in Portland with Karylynn about ...five years ago. We took it at a place called Silk & Stone. http://silknstone.com .  I have always loved working with patterns, and now I am much more aware of them. If you want to take a fun class I highly recommend theirs. Tell them I said hi!-Kassy

I am really tying to use the technology we have to advertise products and art that I do. While I am still working on the new magazine project I have also been updating my blog, helping my husband to create the Web page he is building, and working on facebook and etsy accounts that have been neglected. I even talked to my sister about hiring, or trading with, her to help with some of the tech stuff. I would rather spend the time being creative instead of on the computer, but the business side of things is important too. It is hard to know how to juggle it all. I do think people are more aware of projects when I post daily. I also think talking about what I am doing gets people interested. I have been keeping a list of people who want the magazine once it is out.

I am still working on my magazine today. I am trying to decide if I should release it in 2012 or wait until July so that it will have a 2013 date on it. It is a matter of getting it out before Christmas by Thanksgiving. Or holding it so it keeps it's current date longer. What do you think?

I have decided to go pink for our fairies edition. Pink is not my favorite color, but this is definitely targeting the moms who bring their girls for my fairy makeovers. Fairies are a huge part of my business, so I wanted the first edition to be something I really know. In addition 90% of the little girls I see ask for pink. I am liking how it works with my cover models skin.  This sample cover is not the final product. I haven't even let my editor look at it yet.

So yesterday was the first day back to working on my projects since I shattered my ankle. I drew the layouts for the new website for my husband. I am really excited to finally get that project going. I also laid out the cover for the new magazine and planned the layout for the inside. Basically story boarded what would be on each page. I had this basically laid out, before the accident, in my head with all the pictures taken and video recorded. Now I am laying out what goes where. Video? Yes, each project in the magazine also has a online video connection, so readers can watch the artisans at work.  The magazine is a really fun project for me. It is going to span all my favorite subjects: teaching, writing, illustrating,crafting, face/body painting, and street vending. Did you know that all those things go together? They do when you call the magazine 'Vending Magazine". It is basically a craft magazine where I get to feature different vendors and artisans who are selling their wares in all kinds of venues.  We show readers how we make it, create it, or publish it. It is also the only magazine in the U.S. that will have face painting and body painting instructions.(at least that I have found) I am constantly asked questions about how I do that. I'm going to show people how. The first edition revolves around Florence, OR and Fairies. I will show how to make tutu's, fairy hair braids, and paint fairy faces. There is also interviews with the youngest vendor and an article on a group of College students who have created a company to help pay for college expenses, by painting drum sticks. You will be really impressed with the job, "Voodoo Stx" is doing. The hardest part for me is finishing what I begin, so I'd better get back to work.

Side note-remember that it is National Novel Writing Month! I would recommend going to www.nanowrimo.org and signing up to track your writing. I have over 50 students taking the challenge to write this month. Join us!

Wow! It has been over a year since my last post.( I feel like this is confession, from movies I have seen. ) I have had a very busy year and I am terrible with keeping up on technology. I need to get better. I attended the SCBWI, conference in Portland recently and I have to say almost every speaker discussed how keeping up with technology has helped them with book sales and promotion.

 I have not published anything of my own in the last year. I have been working with children and have helped several children publish books. They will be at the Florence Folk Festival in January signing books. If you are in Florence, OR come see what the students have done. As a teacher I love seeing their excitement when they finish a project.

I have been doing a lot of illustrating on crafts and have started several writing projects. One project that I am really excited about is a new Vending Magazine. I had hoped to have volume one out already, but an accident has delayed its publication. Apparently I don't know how to walk and I shattered my ankle in September. I broke it in three places. It will now set of alarms where ever I go. I am recovering well but today is the first day back to being creative, or getting on my computer at home. Wish me luck! I have tons of catching up to do.