On the Workbench: Craftstravaganzaa

It's t-minus 9 days till Athens, Craftstravaganzaa and I'm working like a crazy lady to make lots of goodies for the event!  It'll be my first indie craft fair so I'm curious to see how it goes and also what the holiday market crowd is like.  Things have been slow this year, so I'm hoping for an uptick all around!

Here's a peek at the current batch of butterfly themed jewelry I'm working on:

Here we have earrings, necklace pendants, and a finished set!
The big butterfly at the bottom is to be a hair brooch held on
with a hair stick.

I've been able to shoot video of some of my painting process, which I hope to share soon as a time lapse! It's interesting to step back from yourself and see what actually goes into the work process. You never know how meticulous you are till you see it from the outside!

I've also been trying out a new painting process using Golden's Interference Acrylics.  I ended up buying the fluid acrylic versions in the bottles, which are slightly cheaper, but seem to work all the same!  I'm amazed at this fantastic new paint technology that works slightly different than the usual metallic paints you can buy. While metallic paints are shiny, interference paints have an opalescence to them that is affected by the colors underneath them.  They become more brilliant over lighter colors and richer over darker colors. It's really hard to describe without seeing them in person!  They are more translucent than regular metallic paints, but the interplay of light is much more brilliant.  

If you're looking to add iridescent effects to your paintings or crafts, these paints are perfect!  I would save up or use a coupon from one of your favorite art stores, as they're very expensive ($8 for just one tiny bottle!).  The Michaels here has a couple of the basic interference colors in the Liquitex brands, which I suspect work just the same as the Golden (which I purchased at a discount from Utretch here in ATL.)  I'd be curious to know how interference paints scan in 2D work, if anyone has any examples to share?  Here are some of mine painted on leather!  Photos just don't do the brilliance justice, however:

The opalescence works perfectly to get the dusted shine of butterfly wings.
On the left is the Interference Blue. On the right is the Interference Gold.
The interference colors were painted on top of normal craft quality acrylics.

In other news, I'm having a Black Friday Sale at my Etsy shop, so go check it out!  Get 25% OFF everything, including custom items, until Cyber Monday (Nov 28th)!  Just enter the code BLKFRI during checkout.

Expect my shop to explode after Crafstravaganzaa with tons of new offerings, including (but not limited to), butterfly hair brooches, new types of earrings, and this year's new Christmas series image.

And now back to work!  So much to craft, so little time!