Yes, you read that right—calendarS with an S! I have TWO for you to choose between!

(A caveat: I literally just put the finishing touches on these, so I don't have my samples yet—the images in the listing are just mockups. So if you prefer to wait until I have physical examples in my hands to show you, I totally get it! I will also have a folding calendar option, which is better for appointment keeping, but the mockup images didn't look like a folding calendar, for some reason, so I'm waiting until I have the samples in hand and can add more accurate images. So stay tuned for those!)

All right, let's talk story a bit, shall we!?

My creative theme this year has been island/ocean heavy. I mean, we've been living in Hawaii now for over two years, so it probably should be, right?

I started out in January by jumping in with both feet for my very first Artist Residency program on our sister island of Molokai, where for three incredible weeks, I focused on soaking up all the inspiration I could stand and filtered it through my own creative lens to produce paintings, handspun yarn, a set of handspun and crocheted tapestries, and, of course, a couple crochet patterns. There were also literally hundreds of photos!

You can read more about my Molokai Residency on my website, as well as about the Ocean themed Virtual Art Residency that followed just a couple months later.

And HERE is some of the artwork that has come out of those two experiences!

The Island Abstracts Collection will include one of my new calendars, as well as some greeting cards, coming soon.

AND, my focus for this coming year is to get as many of my ocean and island inspired crochet patterns published as I can! You'll find a few of them available as Pattern Previews on Patreon, but they deserve to become pretty pdfs, too, don't you think?

In the meantime, if you're loving this selection of paintings, please grab one of my calendars on Etsy!

It was a lifelong dream, seeing my artwork on a calendar for the first time two years ago, and I love that I have been able to continue painting for new calendars each year since then. It makes my little inner childhood artist girl so so happy!! (It's also excellent inspiration for new crochet designs.)

The second collection for next year was completely unplanned and began with a spur-of-the-moment decision to participate in the Bloomtober challenge last month, hosted by Peggy Dean of the Pigeon Letters. I had a lot of fun painting these Toxic Florals and I was only one prompt away from enough paintings for a calendar, so... I decided, why not!?

And so here she is:

Ta da!

SO tickled with my TWO calendars!!

I'll probably offer cards with this second set of paintings as well, if there's interest, but probably not until after the first of the year. And I might be contemplating some crochet design ideas to add to this collection.

Got any requests? Hit reply and let me know your thoughts!

In the meantime, I'm trying to finish preparing for my first craft market in ages. My focus will be on my blank greeting cards, because they're a low dollar item and easy to display. I might bring some of my handspun yarn, as well, but I don't have much hope in selling that.

In my limited experience with craft fairs and similar such shows, people just aren't there to spend a lot of money—and slow crafts like spinning and crocheting don't usually result in low ticket items! I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to make a billion of the same anything. But ain't nobody cruising a craft bazaar gonna drop several hundred dollars on a handmade scarf! 😆

Or maybe they would in Hawaii? Or maybe especially NOT in Hawaii because who needs a scarf when the weather is always in the 80s!? Who knows. I guess we'll see what things look like this weekend!

Wish me luck.

I got burnt out trying to do craft fairs a long long time ago. And I didn't ever think I'd do another one. But... well, we'll see how it goes!

Here's my cute little card stand:

I had to add the chains to keep the cards from tipping right out with any little jiggle. It was really annoying to buy something made especially for displaying cards just to have it fail almost immediately! But I figured out a solution that I don't hate, so I'm rolling with it. (That's planter hanging chain from Home Depot, by the way, ha ha.)

Also, I'll be taking a few of my sets of 12 cards (Desert Musings and Unscripted Florals), which I hope will sell well, so if anyone wants me to reserve a set for them, please shout!

These are $48 each, which includes shipping, and although the Desert Musings set you can grab on Etsy right now, I only just got the new cards for the Unscripted Florals collection, so those won't go up on Etsy until after the craft fair.

I got smart and put thumbnails of all 12 paintings on the back of the new cards, so I can just flip the top card over and you get a peek at everything inside!

All right, I better get back to it. If you're an eager explorer, you may have noticed that my webpages for the two new collections still need some more work, lol. I was running out of time before school pickup, though!

Ah, the juggle of balancing all the life things, eh?

Cheers!

-Connie

P.S. Here's a cute sleepy baby chicken for you!