Satisfaction

Can you tell that I really like cupcakes and fruit? And cupcakes with fruit are the best. This little dragon seems to agree since he seems to have finished off his cupcake pretty quick and is saving the cherry to have just as soon as he doesn't feel so very full.
Until I started to look for what I wanted to post about this week, I didn't realize how often food seemed to be featured in my work. Tiny dragons and fairy cats with berries and cupcakes or a nice hot tea. I will confess that the fruit is more common for me to paint in the warm months when we are finding such beautiful berries and such in the grocery stores or growing wild on the the side of the road. And hot tea? My favorite winter treat.
Okay the apricots in the kitchen are calling..... At least I don't have cupcakes in the house to be tempting me late at night.

Witch's Vanity

Witch's Vanity is a painting I did imaging what would clutter the table tops in a witch's cottage for the cat to explore. And qkd has a new stamp based on this particularly curious kitty.

Tea Time

Today I am sharing another card from the idea gallery at QKD. I love the colors on this one and of course the sparkles. I am a sucker for sparkles.

Sea Dragon's Treasure

Sea Dragon's Treasure is my latest stamp design being offered by Queen Kat Designs. I originally painted this cute little fellow as a book mark design. Hence his most prized possession is a book.

Along came a Spider is whimsical steam punk piece I did for the Enchanted Visions Project. I enjoyed making Little Miss Muffet into a grown woman who can take care of herself, even if she has an irrational fear of spiders. I suspect the aether gun might be overkill for the little brass spider though. And the stamp featuring this design was very recently released at QKD.

Lazy Dragon

My newest stamp with QKD came from an Artist Trading Card ink drawing that I did on tinted paper. My favorite thing about this drawing is how the tree becomes the frame and the little dragon's tail wraps around it. I think this is the first piece I did that with, but it has become something I have done in several of my drawings and paintings since. I like the formal framing and then having the subject blend, interact and flow beyond the frame.

Party Time

This weekend I am in Dallas for the big anime party they hold here each year called A-kon. I have been having a crazy wonderful time surrounded by lots of pretty costumes and folks enjoying themselves. So keeping with all the bring colors that have been part of my life this weekend, I am sharing one of the cards I made with my QKD stamps.
I used my little fairy cat with the cupcake and the swirls and circle background stamps on this. I even decorated the envie and colored in the circles to match the paper I used on the card. And I used the swirl green on green card stock to fancy up the plain card stock.

Kiss The Cook

Here is another lovely card design using one of the stamps inspired by my dragon art.

Got Coffee?

Here we have another fun design from the gallery at Queen Kat Designs. I love the colors and patterns on this one. The kitty has stripes and spots and the paper has stripes and spots.

Pop Dragon Card

I love this card by Kimme from the gallery at QKD. It is such a happy card with the pinks and greens. And I love how she reinforced the bubble design with the circle pattern paper.

Happy May Day

Here is a cute little dragon picking flowers for May Day. This is another fun card that can be found in the Royal Gallery over at QKD. The gallery is a seriously good place to get ideas on fun things to do with your stamps. They have a wonderful selection of designers putting their heads together to make really cool stamping projects.

Happy Easter!

Well for a change of pace, I am showing some of my favorite card designs from the Design Team for the next few weeks.
This one uses the Curious Kitty stamps set. I found it the cool idea Gallery at Queen Kat Designs.
With the pretty pastels, scallops, bow and pearls it just called out to be shown on Easter. A darling little card like this would have been perfect for an Easter Basket, or maybe a cute little basket of may day flowers.
To be honest, this is my most used stamp set. That little kitty and dragonfly go on a lot of packages when I have time to dress up my mail.

Chat Avec Le Chapeau

The stamp is called Chat Avec Le Chapeau Which translates as Cat with Hat. After I did the inking, but before I sat down to design the borders and paint it, I came up with this crazy idea for a steam punk sort of world. In this alternative history the Cherokee manage to hang onto their land and advance scientifically while the rest of the U.S. is embroiled in the civil war. Hence the words "KawMaMa, your choice for dependable Cherokee Engineering." KawMaMa meaning "butterfly" for this beautiful emergence that I imagined. And making a steam punk fairy cat as an engineering marvel being shown with nifty designed steam punk hat (that must hold some cool mechanical magic of it's own), amused me.
And yes, my mind works in very strange ways. But then I paint cats with wings for a living, which should have been a clue that I might not be normal. But normal is boring. Fairy cats are fun.

Fairy Cat with Books

This little fairy cat was one of my earliest little winged kitties. I love how his wings look like stained glass. He is painted in bright jewel tones, perfect for a fantasy cat.

Little Miss Muffet

I usually show off the paintings that have been made into cool stamps by QKD. But my computer isn't talking to my external hard drive and my live in computer support system has taken the day off to spend with our daughter. Since my entire week has been focused on this one painting I thought I would share it instead.
This painting is called Along Came A Spider. I decided to interpret Miss Muffet as a strong female character who decides to blow the spider away instead of being scared off.

Fancy wings

Fancy Wings is one of my little fairy cats. I had fun playing with bright contrasting colors with this one. I enjoy drawing this back view of the wings with the fur all fluffed up around where they sprout from the shoulders.

Wings of Wishes

On the Wings of Wishes is the painting that inspired one of the new QKD stamps this month. As a little girl I always like making wishes on dandelion fluff, although the adults would get very cross about spreading those seeds. In this painting I imagined each of those little seeds turning into butterflies and carrying the wishes away on pretty wings to find just the right place to plant the seed wish for it to come true.
This seems like the perfect painting for today, because I am celebrating the 12th anniversary of my favorite wish coming true. And true to our geeky ways we are celebrating 12 crazy years of marriage at a convention surrounded by art, books and geekdom.
May all your wishes have wings too.

End Of The Rainbow

This fellow was the result of a contest I ran on my facebook fanpage. The queen herself won with the craziest idea for a dragon painting. Our wonderful queen liked it so much he was released as a stamp before I had a chance to put a single drop of paint on him. He is an punk Irish dragon. Can you see his upside down shamrock medallion? He guards that legendary pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And he is here just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

Mrs. Dashwood

Mrs. Dashwood - she was painted for a charity project I took on to support a local pet orphanage. Each of the paintings in the series was one of these folk art cats with either a collaged background or an abstract painted background. Each one was named for a cultural or literary figure. Mrs. Dashwood came from a Jane Austin novel. The background is scrapbooking paper, tissue paper and I think some of my hand made paper. Some of the others also included paper I had marbled for a college project many many years ago.

I am at ConDFW in Dallas this weekend showing off my stamps and artwork. So instead of the usual, here is some eye candy that I have been working on at the convention. Be back next week and I promise to be more chatty and to show you some art that inspired some cool queen kat stamps.