2020 Gift Giving Season

I have several notecard sets available on Etsy, and they have proved even more popular than usual this year, from alphabet stationery to my colorful Great Lakes designs! I assume everyone being stuck at home during the pandemic and being unable to visit family and friends may have something to do with a sudden interest in stationery and sending snail mail... One customer bought an entire alphabet's worth of cards and told me she planned to send one notecard a week to her friend, listing inside affirmations and positive adjectives their friend embodied that started with that letter. What a wonderful idea - a great way to keep in touch, and lift someone's spirits during what has been for many a very trying year.

(You can find all these notecards for sale in my Etsy shop here.)

These notecards will continue to be for sale during the upcoming holiday gift giving season - but there may be slight delays I have to deal with, so please give me plenty of time to accommodate your request if you are planning to order notecards from me this holiday season. For one thing, there continue to be frequent shipping delays with the post office, as there has been all year. For another... I have some exciting news to share - we're moving!

It's definitely bittersweet, since we fully intended for our house in Rochester Hills, Michigan to be our forever house and we made lots of updates to it, thinking we'd be here for many more years to come. I think of all the memories we have from living here the last 8 years and can't help tear up a little - bringing our puppy home five and a half years ago and watching her cower under the storage unit in our breakfast nook, installing custom shelves in several closets, picking out several paint colors, having board game nights with friends, hosting Passover seders and Thanksgiving and Easter and Christmas dinners, bringing our newborn daughter home ten months ago, and all the days and nights nursing her and rocking her to sleep, playing with her, watching her learn how to roll and sit on her own and crawl... But our new house is amazing, and I'm also excited to move into it and turn it into our home. It's in a wonderful neighborhood in Ann Arbor, and I love picturing our daughter growing up in our new house and neighborhood.

That being said - it's a HUGE job packing up a house full of stuff and moving it to a new house; that job is even more daunting when you factor in the baby and the pandemic this country is still in the middle of. (I will save all the details for another post - after we've (hopefully) successfully navigated the whole process and I have time to reflect back on it.) And that process unfortunately includes packing up all my art supplies, and then unpacking and reorganizing them in the new house, making it difficult to produce much art for several weeks; similarly, it requires packing up and transporting my computer and printer, and all my notecard paper, making it difficult to print and ship out my popular notecard sets. 

As of the writing of this post (which is a few weeks in advance of it going live), we don't yet know our exact timeline for moving, though we do plan on having some overlap between getting the keys to our new place and fully moving out of, let alone selling, our current home. I will do my best to print out any notecard orders I receive in a timely manner, and will let you know when you place the order how soon to expect your order to be available to be shipped. 

But in the meantime, this also means fewer blog posts - probably for the next few months at least, while we pack everything, make any changes to our new house that may be necessary before moving in, transporting all our stuff (and ourselves!) to our new place, unpacking and reorganizing everything, and getting our current house ready to list for sale... all while also juggling the holiday season and an almost-one-year-old! 

Custom Name Painting (Omeed)

I recently completed a watercolor painting for a friend who'd just given birth to a baby boy named Omeed.

First, I traced the name onto watercolor paper, and selected the tubes of watercolor paint I would use. Then, I taped the paper down - to keep it flat while the paper was wet.

Because I have to do these types of paintings quickly, while the paint is still wet, I'm unable to stop and take "in progress" photos. But here is the painting once I was finished, but while the paint hadn't yet fully dried. You can see the shiny areas where the paint is still wet.

Once everything was dry, I untaped the paper and framed it.

These simple paintings make great minimalistic gifts for newly married couples and parents of new babies! You can order your own custom painting like this in my Etsy store.

Custom Name Painting - Meredith

As I mentioned in my last post, I had two cousins recently give birth to a baby girl this year. I made them each a custom watercolor painting with their baby's name. This second painting was created for baby girl Meredith.

I chose a different font for this painting than the last, but used a similar color scheme (though with a bit more red mixed into the pink and purple).

The first photo is the painting with just the letters traced on the paper, before I started painting.

Here is the painting after I carefully went around the letters to build up layers of color. You can see which parts are still wettest by how shiny they look in the light.

Once the painting was dry, I measured how much I would have to trim off to get it to fit into a gray 8x10 frame, marking where I planned to crop it with pencil. Then I cut out the painting and framed it.

Here's the finished, framed piece:

Want a similar painting? I have a listing on my Etsy page for a custom 8x10 name painting just like this. You can pick the font, style, and color(s), and I'll make a painting with the name of your choice! Click here to order one. :)

Custom Name Painting - Angela

I had two cousins recently give birth this year, both to baby girls. I made each of them a watercolor painting with their new baby's name, framed it, and sent it to them as a gift. Here's the first one - a pink and purple painting for baby Angela!

First, I picked a font I liked and traced it onto a piece of watercolor paper. Then I taped the paper down while I painted, to help keep the paper flat.

I carefully painted around the letters with a few different shades of pink and purple watercolor. Once it started to dry, I also flicked some larger paint splotches onto the paper to give it a "paint splatter" look.

In the below photos you can see which parts are still wet by how they look shiny at an angle.

Here is the finished painting once everything was dry:

I cut it to fit into a 8x10 white frame, and voila!

Want a similar painting? I have a listing on my Etsy page for a custom 8x10 name painting just like this. You can pick the font, style, and color(s), and I'll make a painting with the name of your choice! Click here to order one. :)

2019 Gift Giving Season

It's that time of year again - time for holiday shopping! If you're like me, you've probably already started; if you're not like me - fear not! There's still plenty of time... and my Etsy shop has lots of great gift ideas!

Below are some of the products I have available that have proven popular during past holiday seasons.

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Michigan-Themed Notecards

Michiganders (and residents from other states bordering our Great Lakes) love to show pride in their geographic area. I have several Great Lakes notecards to choose from, all of which are high-quality scans of original watercolors I created. You can choose which color (or colors) you'd like, and build your own notecard pack. These designs are especially popular at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts Holiday Art Market in downtown Rochester, MI, where I have several notecards available for purchase. 

Click here to see my Great Lakes notecards on Etsy.

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Pattern Notecards

What if you know little about the person other than maybe their favorite color? Abstract art is the perfect option! I have lots of patterns to choose from, which range from fancier and almost lace-like designs to funkier, modern prints. Each pattern was designed digitally, traced onto watercolor paper, painted, and then re-scanned back into the computer and printed on blank notecard paper. Because I use high-quality scans, you can often still easily see the texture of the watercolor paper and paint, as if it were the original piece of artwork.

Click here to see my Sunrise Sunset notecards on Etsy.

Click here to see my Nighttime Desert notecards on Etsy.

The two sets pictured above are two of my more popular abstract designs, but I have lots of other colors to choose from, too! (Sunrise Sunset is the 6-pack, and Nighttime Desert is the name of the 4-pack.)

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Initial Notecards

These weren't available for sale last holiday season, because they are scans of more recent artwork - but they've proven popular at both the Paint Creek Center for the Arts and in my Etsy shop since I made them available. I have two design options - floral letters and rainbow/paint splatter letters. All 26 letters of the alphabet are available in each design. You can select the first or last initial of the person you're buying a gift for, and present them with a unique, thoughtful blank notecard set just for them - available in a 4-pack, 6-pack, or 10-pack.

Click here to see my Floral Alphabet notecards on Etsy.

Click here to see my Rainbow Alphabet notecards on Etsy.

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Floral Notecards

I have several flower-themed notecards available as well, which come from scans of my original floral watercolors and colored pencil drawings. There are close-up details of larger artworks, where the colorful flowers fill the entire printable area, as well as notecards that capture my entire original drawing or painting. 

Newer sets that have been selling well are my "Religious Bouquet" and "Gender Bouquet" sets, which feature close-up details of my larger colored pencil drawings "Religious Bouquet (Stronger Together)" and "Gender Bouquet (Stronger Together)." I particularly love the red, purple, yellow, and white color scheme I used in the "Religious Bouquet" drawing - I think that's what other people are drawn to as well. Meanwhile, the "Gender Bouquet" features a nice gradient between blue and pink flowers, with plenty of purple in between.

Click here to see my Religious Bouquet notecards on Etsy.

Click here to see my Gender Bouquet notecards on Etsy.

The details of my larger "30 Days" colored pencil drawing, featuring thirty roses, is also a popular set. And my "Vertical Flower" four-pack - one of my original notecard sets, which features scans of several 5"x7" drawings I created back in 2014 and 2015, remains well-liked as well.

Click here to see my Rose notecards on Etsy.

Click here to see my Vertical Flower notecards on Etsy.

As I already mentioned, many of my notecard designs are also available at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts Holiday Art Market in downtown Rochester, MI. And new this year I also have a few limited designs for sale at "My Sister's Stuff," an antiques and collectibles booth in Genesee County, MI!

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Framed watercolor sets

Besides notecards (which are a great gift that looks thoughtful but costs very little money), I also have my original paintings and drawings for sale on Etsy, as well. I have a particularly extensive collection of already framed, ready-to-hang abstract watercolor sets, which feature two, three, or four small patterned watercolor paintings that can be hung vertically or horizontally. It's fun, easy, unique home decor - and I have them available in SO MANY color options.

Click here to see my framed patterned watercolor sets on Etsy.

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Custom Artwork

Of course, I can also make you a custom watercolor or colored pencil drawing - personalized pieces always make great gifts! These do take a little longer, but there's still time to get something done if you order soon. (And given my impending due date of late December 2019/early January 2020, I would appreciate getting any potential holiday gift orders in sooner rather than later.)

My most purchased custom artworks are custom 8"x10" watercolor bouquet paintings, and 8"x10" watercolor name paintings. The bouquet paintings make great keepsakes to capture the look of someone special's wedding bouquet, and are also purchased as birthday and anniversary gifts throughout the year. And the name paintings make great wedding and new-baby gifts - I often paint these and give them as gifts myself to friends and family who get married or have new babies.

Click here to see my custom bouquet watercolor listing on Etsy.
Click here to see my custom name watercolor listing on Etsy.

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If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me (my email is afrownfe@gmail.com)! I love helping people find the perfect gift for their loved one to bring a smile to their face.

The Great Lakes in Blue-Green and Brown

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently painted one my "Great Lakes" watercolors as a gift for my sister-in-law, who just moved to Michigan. She likes earth tones and neutral colors, so I used colors similar to what I used for my recent "River Pebbles" patterned paintings - Olive Green, Cerulean Blue, and Orange-Brown.

Because I also planned to paint another "Great Lakes" painting (the Blue-Black piece I featured in my last post), I traced the outline of the Great Lakes onto two pieces of watercolor paper, and taped them both down at the same time.

In the photo below, you can see the three tubes of watercolor paint I used, as well as the still-wet, recently finished painting.

Once it was dry enough, I untapped it from the table, signed it, and took it upstairs to photograph.

I purchased a two-tone white and wood frame, cut the painting to size so it would fit, and then gifted it to my sister-in-law. I love how this frame looks like it has a wooden mat around it between the white paper and the white frame.