SWEET 101

Recently I've been thinking about my past life as a cookie decorator. I'm not sure there's anything I haven't drawn on a cookie. From armadillos to zebras, and everything you could possibly imagine in between. Treadmills, speedboats, flowers of all kinds, clowns, baby cookies, balloons and birthday cakes, people's pets, bucketloads of custom designs, holiday cookies, logos, etc. Sock hop theme? Sure. Want something special to help you tell your husband he's going to be a dad? You got it. You name it, we'd do it. But the most popular thing we sold was plain iced cookies. Because they were relatively inexpensive, and they were GOOD. I mean, people would drive for miles for these cookies. For a lot of families, they were a yearly holiday/birthday tradition. They'd send them to their kids in college, take them on airplanes to friends.

It's those cookies that have inspired this pattern, SWEET 101. First, you draw the cookie- a circle. Then, you add the icing- a wavy line within the circle, which is as parallel to the lines of the circle as a wavy line can be.

When I played with filling in the negative space, interesting things began to happen. 

I also added a single aura to pull it all together. 

Here's Sweet 101 as a simple border/string pattern:

This pattern is dedicated to Linda, who was my boss for those fourteen years. 

She's been a good friend to me over the years and is now a fellow CZT. 

Here's to the next chapter of our lives! *clink* 

-Sandra Marie

sunny on the inside

Back in December, I was inspired by some painted ceramic suns hanging in a local Mexican restaurant, so I got a few photos so I could play with the idea later on. At that point, I hadn't taken Sandhya's Zentangle class and didn't really know what it was. I just knew I had a thing for color and really intricately detailed ink doodlin'. I also hadn't started playing around with watercolor yet, but Santa knew I wanted to try it. :oD Santa knows everything! Especially if Santa is either your husband or a friend (formerly your boss) who has been around you nearly every day for about a third of your life. Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, Linda!

 A few weeks later - Arches cold press watercolor paper, a technical pen, and soot black india ink :o)

I didn't realize it was going to take me a week to finish this... it was a pretty ambitious project for my second painting ever. I learned a valuable lesson here: Just because you think your watercolor paper is dry does NOT mean the color's not going to bleed like gangbusters, even if the paper is just a TEENY bit damp. If freshly-painted watercolor paper feels cool to the touch, it's not dry yet. If you're as impatient as I am, save yourself the agony and use a hairdryer on it. For an hour.

For a while, I actually thought about leaving this black and white. I don't know what I was thinking. The color is just so happy. This thing matches every jordan almond* in the box ;o) I framed it today with a pristine white mat but since there is a micron pen in the vicinity I doubt very much that it's going to stay white for very long.

There is now a sky-blue (well, okay, according to Winsor & Newton it's cerulean) background with a little of the color lifted off with a damp sponge for an (accidentally) awesome cloud effect. I thought I had a finished picture of it, but since I'm an obsessive deleter, I'm pretty sure I know what happened to that.

*speaking of, if you ever stop at Buc-ees, go get a bag of their 'no sugar added' jordan almonds. All the yummy and half the sweet. (and thanks to my sister-in-law for cluing me in.)