Moth to Flame Studios

:: Martha, Martha, Martha!

2008-03-01T07:58:00.000-08:00

On Friday 2.29.2008 Etsy Creator and President Rob Kalin appeared on the Martha Stewart Show and did a great job showing off a few of our great shops. I was able to catch the 6 minute clip and post it on my site for all to see here:

:: Etsy on Martha ::

Congratulations to the featured artists and to Rob, Matt and all of the other wonderful people that have created Etsy and continue to make it a place we can be proud to be a part of.

:: Digital Diversions

2008-01-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

So I'm in another funk and I haven't done a bleach painting since AUGUST! Sad, so sad.

I'm trying to make myself feel like painting by focusing on some of my computer based art, like you see above.

I'm finding that the digital diversion is really helping me. First, the color is so fun for me. The bleaches do get a little redundant when that is all you see. And using the Wacom tablet to 'paint' at least keeps my hand doing the same motion and gives the brain an outlet for what little creativity is in there right now.

I've also used many of my photographs as the basis for these half paintings, half manipulations and that makes me feel like I'm beginning to tie all of my creative outlets together. Now if I can just get the bleach back into the mix we'll be golden, literally. Get it? That's the color the bleach turns the paper . . . nevermind. ;-)

Leave a comment if your blocked too. Artistically that is. Misery loves company! heehee.

To see these pieces in their entirety and zoom in on the details go here:
:: Digital Diversions ::

I also listed a couple in my 2nd Etsy shop:
:: Moth to Flame Studios ::

:: Is that a bandwagon? Slow down, I'm jumpin' on...

2007-11-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

The very secret experiment I've been conducting for several months is almost complete. Just a few little things to work out and I'm ready to start making pendants and other small hanging art plaques out of my originals and prints.

After many trials, and some major errors, I've decided to skip the gold and silver bails and make my own. I was watching a Tim Burton movie the other night and it finally came to me . . . oddly twisted BLACK wire! It goes with any chain you want to hang it on and I think it really fits with the bleached pieces.

I'm very excited to start producing them for my shop. This first one is MINE.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

:: How would you open these cards?

2007-10-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Would you peel it open like a traditional card, or would you see the brad and spin it open?

I designed these to spin open but I've now given them to 3 people and they ALL tried to pry them apart. I'm not sure whether to laugh...or scream in frustration.

My husband said I should put arrows pointing to each side to indicate they should spin or rotate. My response to that . . ."On the front? In the middle of my beautiful designs? No. Don't be an idiot . . . honey."

Oh well, I like them and I'm happy that I finally perfected using my circle cutter. I'll be designing a bunch for the holidays because they are just so fun to make!

:: see them in my Etsy shop ::

:: bah . . . hmmmbug. Christmas Already?

2007-10-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's time to start thinking about Christmas again and I haven't even decided what to make the kids for Halloween.

This is my first Holiday card of the season and I've already filled 12 local orders and 2 online. I love people who plan ahead!

This blend of beauty and humor shows a single, lonely sheep put out on a cold moonlit night. He welcomes your company and greets you with a friendly "Bah". Inside, a tiny creature of the night, the cricket. But this one does not chirp. Instead, he has outfitted himself with a holiday bell on one antenna and offers a simple, melodic humming to warm the evening.

The message is subtle, Bah...hmmmbug.
Happy (EARLY) Holidays!

:: visit my Etsy card shop for ordering info ::

©1999-2007 Moth to Flame Studios™. All Rights Reserved.

Illustrations, images, card text & "Bah-hmmmbug" concept are the exclusive property of Moth to Flame Studios™ and Deborah Gwinn.

:: Celebrating one year on Etsy . . .

2007-09-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

. . . and I've grown so much.

When I opened my shop it was all cards and paper products because I didn't have the nerve to offer my art.

Well, after a couple months, and little interest, I decided to put up a print of one of my bleaches. Within hours I had more convoes and e-mails than I had ever gotten about my cards.

Etsy, and the community of artists and craftspeople who also call it home, gave me the confidence to start painting again and actually let others see it! I'm now being asked to show my work locally and in several other states and the shop is full of new originals.

Thank you to everyone on Etsy who has encouraged me along the way and given me a soft place to land when I'm unsure of myself.

I couldn't have done it without you.

Sooooo, to celebrate I'm going to give away one of my little original trees. (The one pictured has already sold but I will do a new one for the winner)

Just leave a comment with your name and e-mail or other contact info. On the 24th of this month I will put all the names into a bowl and let the kids pick one out. I'll bleach your tree and send it to you still smelling like Lemon Scent Clorox! And if your not into ACEO sized art I will do it in a 3.5" square format.

Congratulations to BreeLeeD ! Her name was picked by my 2 year old from the bowl.

Thank you to everyone for your entries and kind words. :D

:: Test Doodle Runs a Fowl

2007-08-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

Don't' you love when something, that you though was nothing, turns out to be something after all?

Off to the side of all of my pieces I have an area that I test the strength of my bleach and try new techniques. Occasionally these little "doodles" begin to look like something and cry out for attention. This was one of those needy little things.

Once just a splotch of bleach dots and layers of testing, it is now a real painting. The addition of limbs made of circles and dots and weird skeletal wings and feet has become . . .

. . . "Runs a Fowl"

I hope you like him.

:: chase the bird on Etsy ::

:: Dive into my Coral Reef and explore . . .

2007-08-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

This is my newest original bleach painting created using only chlorine bleach and water on black matte board. It's so fresh it still smells like my lemon scented Clorox!

Coral Reef is part of the "Oceanic" series of paintings I've been working for the last month. It's inspired by a trip to the Seattle Aquarium and the hundreds of photos I took while there. I think the colors created by the bleach discharging the dye gives a beautiful and warm representation of a world that is usually seen in cooler tones of blues and greens.

I've also been experimenting with different ways to make texture. The reef in the foreground is a new method I tried for the first time here. I think it really gives a wonderful abstract view that allows the imagination to see whatever it wants in the overlapping darks and lights.

Explore and enjoy!

Painting size is 5" x 7" (12.7 x 17.8cm)

:: learn more about my bleach process ::

:: see close-ups of the piece in my Etsy shop ::

:: I designed myself a calendar.

2007-08-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

I designed my new event calendar to focus on the most important part of life, the weekend!

I was so tired of bulky calendars with the mass of used pages piling up above them and still only able to display one month at a time. I wanted something that was clean, simple and compact that would allow me to put up as many months as I needed. I also wanted to have Saturday and Sunday together at the weeks-end where they belong so I can see my plans in one place rather than both sides of the calendar.

This unique calendar features conveniently sized, 4.25" x 11", individual pages that can be posted by a desk, pinned to a bulletin board, mounted with magnets to the refrigerator or in any other place you need a compact calendar. Mount 2, 3 or all 12 months side-by-side to easily see upcoming appointments and events. Weekend days are together in one unit and highlighted in grey so your fun activities get the attention they deserve.

August Garden is a collection of photographs I've taken over the summer at different family events and in our family gardens. I don't profess to be a photographer, and these are not show flowers, but I think they turned out nicely. I will also be offering a calendar with full color photos, graphics and my artwork.

:: view all 12 calendar photos ::

:: see the calendar in my Etsy shop ::

:: The secret is circular.

2007-08-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

Oceanic continues . . .

I was trying to come up with a new way to create surface texture, not just for this series but for my bleach work in general, and I think I've stumbled on to something. The secret is . . . circles!

I've always scribbled and doodled creatures and weird plant life constructed of circles with pen and pencil. There are stacks of sketchbook pages in my portfolios and flat files, not to mention the poor phonebook and just about every other available surface. But I think I've finally found a way to make it really work with the bleach.

After making the circles and leaving some of them open loops for the black to show in the middle I filled in the spaces around them to lighten it and make it a solid mass. It made it feel like sculpting in a way. It's a great way to lighten large areas, even if it did take almost an hour just to do this small piece!

It's a tedious process but I really like the possibilities . . .

:: Oceanic Experiment...success or failure. You decide.

2007-08-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new world of "Oceanic".

After a trip to the Seattle Aquarium I came home with more than 200 photos. As I was going through them I thought maybe I should have taken more pictures of my children enjoying themselves on their first visit. It seems I took a lot of close-ups and weird angles of the creatures in the tanks and almost completely forgot the kids. Oopsie.

So I thought I should make something of it while I was feeling inspired. I started a huge lion fish and realized that I needed a little warm-up before tackling him any further. So I started to doodle the shapes that I usually do when I'm sketching with pen and pencil. I was shocked to see that the swirly lines actually worked very well in bleach so I just kept doodling. After several hours I had an area about 12" x 14" that was a mass of what looked like seaweed, coral and bubbles. Not all of it was brilliant so I cut it down into this piece and several smaller ones.

The series will continue for many years I'm sure.

:: Aquarium photos on Flickr ::

:: Do You Knead Eraser Therapy?

2007-07-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

O.K. so I'm a little high strung. I know it. So when I'm supposed to be drawing thumbnails of new pieces and doing something creative with my time I get nervous.

About 11 years ago I discovered . . . the kneaded eraser! I think sometimes I spend more time pulling and stretching and sculpting with that thing than I do sketching and concentrating on what I am supposed to be doing.

I took these photos on Sunday afternoon. Both of these 'masterpieces' of eraser art were created, and squished, in about 10 minutes so you can imagine how many of these silly things I've made in the last 11 years . . . it must be in the thousands!

Did I miss my calling as a sculptor . . . I think not.

Tell me I'm not alone! I want to hear from the "Eraser People"!

:: The Torn Wing Dragonfly, born 7.7.07

2007-07-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

I have discovered yet another new species! This new member of the Odonata (dragonfly and damselfly) family was born on July 7, 2007.

I really do think he has been a lucky charm, maybe because of his birth date, maybe because I want him to be, either way my painfully long artistic dry spell seems to have come to an end. I've finished 4 other pieces and sketched out another 3 just since I finished him.

He is my favorite painting to date and I am tempted to keep him but I think that passing him on to another is the right thing to do. Perhaps he will lift the spirits and bring change to their lives to.

:: Visit my Torn Wing Dragonfly on Etsy ::
:: learn more about my bleach process ::

:: A Bleached Bloom

2007-06-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

This is a piece I had partly finished...until today. What gave me the push to finish you ask? I reserved my very first showcase spot on Etsy for July 27th and was hoping to break out of my creative slump and breathe some life into my poor, stale little shop. But, at about 1pm today I realized that I had accidentally reserved my spot for JUNE 27th. I now had 8 hours before I was to be featured.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I went through my stack of partially finished works. When I pulled out this flower I had an epiphany. I had stopped working on it when I couldn't decide whether to make this a square piece or a standard 7" x 5". What I realized was that it should be left up to the buyer to decide. In a way, whoever decides to adopt this little wildflower, will be finishing the piece themselves.

:: Visit the Wild Flower in my Etsy field ::
:: learn more about my bleach process ::

:: A small stone appeared and is speaking to me.

2007-06-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

The oddest thing just happened. I went to the grocery store and when I was taking everything out of the bags at home I found this little stone that's just over an inch wide. I have no idea how it got in there. They don't sell anything like this at the store and the bags that they used were brand new and folded completely flat in a stack.

So where did you come from little stone and why have you entered my life right at this moment? And WHAT am I to 'become'? It's such a strong statement for such a small stone to make.

I've been in a terrible creative slump and haven't been motivated to paint in over a month so something about this seems serendipitous. I feel the need to comply with the stone but I really hate being told what to do!

Tell me what YOU think it wants from me?
What would you do if you were told to 'become'?

:: Groovy 2" Square Etsy Business Card Templates

2007-06-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to make myself some business cards that are specifically for promoting Etsy and here is what I came up with.

I'm not too hip on the standard size business card and I love squares...square art, square windows, square shelving, square food, especially cake, preferably tiramisu or that layered truffle type...well, you get the idea.

Aaaaanyway, after recreating the Etsy logo I made a 2" square Photoshop template so I can drop whatever art or photo behind the logo that I want. Then I made the info side very simple with black and beige text listing my 2 Etsy stores and what they contain. At the bottom I also included the name of the piece of art or what the photo on the front was. And there you go!

Oh yeah...I made a batch with rounded corners too. They kind of remind me of nice paint swatches and I think they'll hold up better because the corners won't get broken or bent.
I'm really happy with them!

I'm waiting for a batch of Moo cards too so I'll have plenty of promo stuff. Now it's just a matter of which format I like better, long and narrow or square...that is the question...

:: Download the Photoshop Templates ::

this is a zip file containing:
:: 1 - Photoshop file with 2" square card for home printing
:: 1 - Photoshop file with bleed for professional printing
:: 1 - 8.5" x 11" Photoshop file with guides to print 20 cards

Don't worry, the files have been scanned and are virus free.

:: Find out more about Moo cards ::

:: 3 birds with one stone ....

2007-06-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

It's been such a long time since I posted in my blog, listed anything in either of my Etsy stores, or made ANYTHING new for that matter.

I've made a set of my gallery style cards with details of one of my bleach paintings, "Skeletal Moth". It's something that I have been trying to work out for a while now. I wanted to do these cards with tiny prints of entire paintings but they were so small that the detail was completely lost. So heck, why not JUST do the details!

There will eventually be a set from my "Mosaic Dragonfly" and two other moth paintings.

So why the 3 birds reference? Well, you just read a new post on my blog, and the cards will be listed in both of my etsy shops as a crossover product! Ta-da!

:: Visit my Etsy shop for bleach paintings ::

:: Visit my Etsy paper playground ::

:: Happy Accidents with Bleach!

2007-05-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well I tried something a little different with this one. I was trying to get the tiny skeleton of the wings to remain black while lightening the inside cells. I could tell fairly quickly that the results were not going to be what I had intended but it was definitely exciting.

From there I decided to embrace the mosaic effect that I had started on the wings and give the body a jeweled treatment.

It may not have been what I was going for but I was thrilled with the outcome. So was my mom who quickly requested the original for Mothers Day!

You may still purchase archival prints in both a full size 10" x 8" or an ACEO size of 3.5" x 2.5". Both will be limited edition runs of 25 available in my Etsy shop.

:: Visit my Mosaic Dragonfly on Etsy ::
:: Learn more about my bleach process ::

:: I've Opened a Paper Playground & Card Shop!

2007-05-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

I am so happy to announce the opening of my second shop on Etsy.com. Moth to Flame Studios will be my paper playground full of cards, invitations and announcements in surprising and interactive forms.

Locally I specialize in custom designs and specialty cards to make any occasion a one of a kind event. I will be offering several of these past designs as well as new ones that will be offered exclusively on Etsy.

:: Interact with a 12" Sunflower! ::
:: Visit the Paper Playground ::

:: My Etsy Treasuries

2007-04-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

Above is a brief slideshow of several of my past Etsy treasuries. I have only been saving certain lists since December 2006 so this is a very small representation of the 25 or so that I have done. It is an addictive activity!

:: Click here to view larger images on Flickr ::

Thanks to all of the wonderful artists and craftspeople within these groupings, 4 of the lists were chosen to be featured on the Etsy.com home page.

It is such an honor to be able to feature some of my favorite items, and sellers from the community we share.

:: Visit the current Etsy treasuries ::

:: Laced Wing Moth , Bleach Painting

2007-04-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

This is the most recent addition to my bleached paintings. He was an attempt to copy a previous work for the client that owns my original "Virgin Tiger Moth".

It is indeed almost identical except for the upper set of wings which are more veined and laced inspiring his name.

The original 7" x 5" piece sold on 4.4.2007.

A limited edition run of prints in both 7" x 5" and 3.5" x 2.5" ACEO are available in my Etsy shop.

:: view close-ups in my Etsy shop ::
:: learn more about my bleach process ::

:: Skeletal Moth, Bleach Painting

2007-04-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of winged insects I am currently working on. The series will be pure bleach painting with no other pen or ink additions to the works.

I have named my newly found species of Lepidoptera the Skeletal Moth because of the macabre faces that accidentally appeared in the wings. They are most prominent in the lower set of wings but it is fun to look around and find others as you turn him at different angles.

As I paint I see nothing but black paper with wet areas so it is very difficult to know what shapes are going to be created after the bleach dries and finishes its process. There are also small particles of rust embedded in areas from the metal I used to apply the bleach giving it an aged look.

The original piece is 10" x 8" and was sold on 3.30.2007

It is still available in limited edition runs of 25 in a full sized print

and as an ACEO (3.5" x 2.5")

:: view close-ups in my Etsy shop ::

:: learn more about my bleach process ::