By: Julie L. Cleveland
I always have my nose in a book or a magazine. While I don’t buy many magazines that are not somehow related to my trades, like jewelry, polymer or design, I do read magazines like National Geographic or will pick up something while hanging out in Barnes and Noble. I read a lot of novels and non-fiction books, but sometimes, I just want to read something quick and easy. Maybe like a blog post. I have a few minutes to kill, and someone has written something interesting, so I want to read it.
In addition to the blogging daily challenge I am involved with through membership of the WordCount blogathon, I am also involved in a guild that concentrates on blogging, sharing and commenting. The guild is a group of us that decided to use our internal blogs on the handmade site, Artfire, to drive Google traffic to our individual studios on the website. The theory sounded good, but since all but a couple of us blog outside of Artfire on our sites, like Blogger or Wordpress, I am not sure that the original thought still stands. However, it has given us a chance to get to know our co-studio owners better as we learned about their creative process or their travels.
This little guild is filled with some very talented artists and writers with an array of interests that expand out from simply owning a studio on a marketplace.
Catherine and her trusty side-kick, Seamus, run ShadowDogDesigns, where she makes amazing gemstone jewelry. Catherine is a former teacher who loves anything science and sky. Here is her latest post about the full moon. Celestial She always tries to incorporate a bit of history and education within her posts, and she takes a few minutes to plug her fellow artists within her posts.
Debbie of EweniquesEssentials shared her latest trip to the desert. Chihuly in the Desert is a wonderful adventure through the amazing glass art of Chihuly utilizing the backdrop of the Sonoran Desert. She captures both Dale Chihuly’s magnificent glass and the landscape that he drew inspiration from as he created his towering glass work. I have seen his work. He has a display in Seattle, and it is both stunning and colorful. Debbie is a soap maker, and she works in fabric.
Gunilla Wachtel runs KanweieneaKreations on Artfire where she is an artist that works both with pencils and paints. She works primarily with animals, and her blog posts talk about her relationship with her animals and the subjects she paints. In a recent post, she shared a blog post with a video.
Pamela of Pebbles at My Feet runs her studio from high up in the Rocky Mountains where she creates gemstone jewelry. While she blogs about designing and jewelry related articles, she does touch on her life in the mountains, like this post about the changing of the leaves around her home. One of her latest posts, Spring Reorganization, gives those of us with tools all over our work bench a lot of great ideas on how to organize our work station.
There are many others who are part of this group that I will introduce you to in the future, but for now, you can see how diverse we all are. We share the common chord of creativity, and they are equally talented in a range of skills and abilities, which means that creativity is a characteristic that can be used in any number of areas of life. Stop by and visit these artist’s studios and read their blog posts.
Enjoy
Julie and Blu
