Why everyone should be coloring.

When is the last time you remember coloring? Not drawing, doodling, or painting, but actually coloring in a coloring book. Well I'll cut to the chase...I colored last night and it was AMAZING! Coloring is the most calming and grounding thing for me besides meditating. Speaking of meditating......

I believe coloring is a form of meditation. So for all of you out there who want to meditate but have tried sitting with your eyes closed and felt unsuccessful at clearing your mind, TRY COLORING! You can go as easy as a color by number so you really don't have to think or step it up and get a more detailed coloring book with beautifully detailed images. Just sitting down, relaxing and staring at a page and the colors will definitely put you in a meditative trance. Don't believe me?! Give it a try!

Thursday's are very important days for me. Every week I spend time over at my grandma's house aka gramcrackers. She's my best bud. We normally talk and drink tea together. For the last couple of months I have been working on finishing a large wall mural for her but it got too late for me to work on it so we decided to color. 

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My grandmother LOVES to color. It is something her and my papa use to do when they went down to Gulf Shores Alabama on vacation. They would sit together and color. He used colored pencils and she used markers. She still enjoys this very much even though he has now passed. She has been sick for about a week so she has really been in a coloring frenzy! I took her to a local craft store and helped her STEP UP HER COLOR GAME! We got her fun new markers and some more advanced coloring books. 

(Gramcracker's new marker set for under $15)

(Gramcracker's new coloring books! More advanced than color by number and under $15)

Here are a few great coloring finds I stumbled across on ETSY! Check out these wonderful coloring books! Oh the possibilities are just endless. There are little ones and detailed ones and buying something on Etsy helps support small businesses! 

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Don't know what to color with? Here are also some really great things found on Etsy to color with. You can buy more expensive markers like Copic or use great wooden rustic colored pencils! Check out the links below for the wonderful Etsy products to take your coloring to the next level!

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ANYWAYS! She worked on her color by number and I took one of the more advanced books and tried blending some of the colors together. We stuck on some meditation music and just relaxed into the pages of our books. You don't have to put on meditation music any music will do! If you want to sit in silence you can do that as well but music makes it easier for me to really relax and smile.

Kevin Braheny - Galaxies

Coloring can make you feel free and child-like again and is an easy think for people to do to awaken their creative bones! Even those who consider themselves "can't even draw a stick figure" people, can color. In fact those who do recognize themselves as not-so artistic should really be the ones getting on the crazy coloring train! Free yourself people! 

Until Tomorrow - Dream Away

Samantha Menzo

Cloud Nine Studios

Etsy Featured Item of the Day:

Bracelet from colored pencils by - carbickova

Song of the Day:

Feist - The Water

Color of the Day:

Inner Glow by Benjamin Moore

10 Throwback Arts and Crafts from the 90's

Sit back, relax and prepare to feel all types of artistic nostalgia. 

Here is 10 throwback art and crafts from the 90's. Cool Dude...

1. Magic Spin Art

This is a timeless toy that's pretty fun for kids. I never had one and that was probably because it was the so messy but just seeing it still brings back all the feels. Although this didn't take much skill or thought to it, it did the trick for getting kids interested in art. 

2. The Classic Art Starter Kit

Every kid into art in the 90's should recognize this bad boy. It was the stereotypical art kit that was always given at Christmas or birthdays. It wasn't a bad collection of art supplies although the tips of those markers were a tad on the fuzzy side.

3. Kid Pix

If you had computer class and were at all electronically savvy, your free time was with this lovely program. It helped turn anyone into a regular graphic artist. Plus it made some pretty fun sounds when you tried to undo things or use any on of their funky stamps.

4. Gel Pens

I am not going to lie on this one, I wish I still had some gel pens. Even though you spend half of your time shaking them so they would work, when they did work it really jazzed up your homework or notes to your BFF like nothing else could. 

5. Lisa Frank

I think I had a folder just like this activity book. If you had Lisa Frank you were ahead of the game with style points. Plus if you were bored of listening to your teacher the bright neon colors were great to stare at and zone out. 

6. Glitter Glue

What an fabulously messy and never drying product! Try giving these to a child and telling them to go wild, then don't touch their art for pretty much 3 days or it will smear everywhere and never come off. Nothing like finishing a piece of work and barely breathing and having it smudge the whole thing. Plus the air pockets inside would cause it to burst out in big chunks instead of gracefully. Yet I still kept coming back to them. Fun times! 

7. Magnadoodle

These were some of the smartest art tools a kid could have in the 90's. You could draw your masterpiece and then no messy clean up for the parent!  You couldn't lose the pen because it was always attached by a string which I always dragged it around by (I am sure that's not what it was intended for). Be sure not the step on them though or you'll be stuck with a permanent footprint on all of your art!

8. Crayola Stamp Markers

This seriously makes me smile just looking at these. I was obsessed with these wonderful stamp markers. I would draw a house or a dog and the rest of the 75% of the blank paper would be covered in kisses and hearts. You could use them to color too but you really had to smash them hard and risk losing the shape and that was something I really wasn't willing to gamble on. They were my babies.

9. Stacking Stationary Crayon

     I pretty much made that name up but you all know what it's about. It was a 3 in 1 fine tipped crayon and was super fun for multicolored letters. It even came equipped with a handy cap. Make sure you don't lose any of the pieces though or the whole thing is useless. So tell that to a kid. Don't lose any of it. Other than that this was great!

10. Lite Brite

Oh how I envied my best friend and her Lite Brite. I always thought the possibilities were endless and magical but alas I never was fortunate to had one of my own. I do remember her letting me use it once but she wasn't very thrilled because its not a very two person friendly object. But oh how it glows your work to life!

                   Grand Finale: Watch this and really take it back.....I promise you won't regret it.

Until Tomorrow - Dream Away

Samantha Menzo

Cloud Nine Studios

Thinking about participating in an art fair?

        It's an early night for me tonight as I lay in bed rest for some sleep. I want to make sure I'm really rested to wake up tomorrow and be fully ready for my day ahead, so today might be a shorter blog since I'm feeling the sandman already trying to wisk me away. 

         I have an opportunity at the end of next month to participate in an outdoor art fair that is very DIY friendly, in fact it's encouraged. I have never been apart of an art fair and am apprehensive and motivated at the same time.      

     Being apart of an art fair can be very rewarding if you have a great booth with great products in a great location; so long as it doesn't rain out or have poor attendance. I have always felt that the type of art I produce would sell really well at a fair.

           Any artist thinking about doing a fair needs to take in account that you have to take off work all weekend. So you want to try and make at least as much as you would at your normal job to make it worth it. Also there is normally a booth fee to just be there as an artist and sell work. So if you think your inventory of work can sell more than the time you might take off and to pay off your booth fee then you are off to a great start!

 

Another thing to think about is the networking opportunities that an art fair provides. So maybe you don't make quite enough to break even for the weekend like you thought. The contacts you made with the other artists or people walking in the fair,  might pay off triple that in the long run! That alone makes a strong agreement to why it's always a great idea to do an art fair if possible. 

            I have been to many art fairs and some I've had some money in my pocket I was willing to spend and other times I have had little to nothing,  but I've always seemed to walk away with at least one item. When setting up inventory for an art fair I think it is extremely important to make sure you have a wide variety of different priced items. If you bring all large and high priced pieces you may bomb because the people walking around only have $20 in their pocket and they want to spend it but can take on your pieces because you only brought your best and most expensive work. So think variety in size and price.

         My current inventory is a decent size and when I get home after this week if I decide to go in on  this fair I will really start turning out some work to make sure I have a sizable stock. Anyone have some pointers they can give me that I haven't already covered? Is anyone thinking about doing their first art fair too but don't know where to start?

                                        Until tomorrow - Dream Away 
                                                 Samantha Menzo 
                                               Cloud Nine Studios