An Interview and a New Piece

I'm tickled pink to share with you that I've done my first guest interview!!!

I was contacted by Alyice Edrich (aka The Dabbling Mum) to do an email interview, and I was just floored.  Alyice found me through CreatingtheHive.com, a blogging community that provides a venue for artists and crafters to share their blogs with others of similar interests more directly than a site like Stumbleupon can do...  My blog is automatically reposted to CreatingtheHive, and shared with an audience that is focused and narrowed toward fields like my own.  Alyice found my blog, and asked me to do the interview!

Frankly, I had never done anything like that before...  I taught for years at the university level in front of hundreds and hundreds of students, rambling on and on, droning them into hypnotic states of drowsiness--I was a little worried that my interview skills would... well...  suck.  I was happy that not only was Alyice an expert editor, she provided me with questions that demonstrated she had an informed perspective on what I actually did for a living!!  Her questions were juicy and open-ended and simply easy to answer...  I was able to complete the interview in one evening without much thought to what I was doing--it just rolled out of me!  Angst free!

Whether the interview is ultimately any good, I'll leave to you the reader.  But I think it's informative, and she edited my rambling beautifully.  It was a fun opportunity to put back on my "teaching hat" after a couple years.

Alyice does interviews and columns for EmptyEasel.com, which is a great resource website for both professional and aspiring artists.  Not only do they have dozens of interviews with artists in a plethora of different disciplines, their major focus is helping artists help themselves develop their own work, ultimately to sell online.  They have tutorials as well as resources on how to set up your own art website, and they offer links to various sites artists would find helpful.  I highly encourage you to explore them--they're worth it!!

You can find the interview here:
http://emptyeasel.com/2011/11/10/an-interview-with-costume-designer-and-wearable-art-creator-corey-johnston/

The second thing that I want to share with you today is my next neck lace piece!!  I posted images of the black and brass piece from yesterday's post on my personal Facebook page, and one of my former students bought it as a gift!  So it's gone.  Woosh!  I had to post another as soon as I could, and cranked out a bunch more last night that need finishing as soon as I can get to them.

But this piece is using the new lace, too, and I added a polymer clay centerpiece I made a long time ago.  A couple glass beads, some antique brass chain, and a beautiful heart charm (and a bow!) finish off the piece.  I'm happy with it--the navy blue and deep purple accent the brass fabric paint in a way that's much more subtle than other pieces I've done...  I've been playing with gradations in the fabric paint application, and seeing the results once it's all pleated up is exciting to me.

Anyway, it's on my Etsy and Artfire sites, so if you need it for your own collection it's there for ya!

Until next time, Live Life with Relish!