I folded up the pieces of paper with the names of entrants on them, tossed them in the air, let them fall on the floor, and picked one up with my eyes closed. And the winner is . . . Lorelei Kingsmore! Congratulations, Lorelei. I hope you enjoy your “Faerie Carnivale” print.

Kelley

To celebrate my silver medal success in the Fire Mountain Gems contest, I’m offering a free 5X7 watercolor print of the cameo artwork titled “Faerie Carnivale.” Why is the fairy wearing a mask, you ask? You tell me in my blog comments, and you will be entered to win. On July 1, 2010, I’ll put all the names of those who have told me their fairy mask stories in the proverbial hat and have a drawing. The person whose name is drawn will win a signed 5X7 print printed with Epson archival inks on Epson watercolor paper. Now, use your imagination and comment away!

Artbeads.com is celebrating ten years of business. Would you like to help them celebrate by taking a chance to win a $1000 shopping spree? Then hurry, because the Artbeads 10^th Anniversary Sweepstakes will be ending Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 11:59pm (PST).

I’m late blogging about this, but last weekend I attended the 2nd Santa Fe Renaissance Fair at El Rancho de las Golondrinas sponsored by Open Hands, a charity dedicated to services that assist elderly and disabled New Mexicans. I had a great time sellling my jewelry there, and I was able to get pictures of some elusive characters, as you can see by my picture with “Merlin” here.

I met “Wishteria,” the Wish Fairy from the “Kingdom of Larkspurshire” (in Colorado), who had an absolutely beautiful costume with wisteria-draped wings. She was gracious enough to allow me to take her picture. It’s difficult to catch fairies on film, you know, but I was successful!

I didn’t get a picture of the king and queen of the fair, and I missed my chance to catch the clumsy traveling scribe, but I did get a shot of the bellydancers, a couple of dragons, and one picture of a very tall peg-legged pirate, who blamed his long legs on an overzealous ship’s carpenter.

All in all, a very enjoyable weekend. Next Ren Fair will be the Dona Ana Arts Council Renaissance ArtsFaire in Las Cruces at Young Park, November 7 and 8, 2009, where I hope to sell lots of jewelry while also taking more fun pictures, like these from a past year:

It seems ages since I’ve posted! I’ve been busy getting some polymer clay wire wrap combo pieces done for a gallery show at Oso Arts Gallery in Capitan August 9. The theme is “Zen,” with dragons and dragonflies abounding–right up my alley. Finished the pieces, delivered them with the help of my daughter, so now I will be one of the artists whose work will be featured in the show. Yay!

And so I’ve been falling behind everywhere else, including my email. But today I was reading the July issue of Ann Kullberg’s online magazine (Ann Kullberg is a fabulous colored pencil artist who also has several books published on her technique), and she provided a link to a fun interactive website called The Color Test. Want to have some fun with the struggle between the right and left brain? The first time I took the test I bombed. And then I read the instructions more closely and did better. Ahem. Did I ever mention I don’t always do so well reading instructions? I seem to remember a certain report card in grade school with the teacher’s comment “Doesn’t follow instructions.” LOL Anyway, have some fun with this test. I did! It’s more difficult than you might think.

This was certainly unexpected! I have an account on Flickr, and a few months ago I posted some photos of Old Town Albuquerque from my digital photography class a couple of semesters ago. For the most part I just wanted to share these photos with any friends who wanted to see them, but yesterday I received an email from an editor at Schmap Guides, an online travel guide, that one of my photos taken in Old Town Albuquerque had been “shortlisted” for possible inclusion in the fifth edition of the Schmap Albuquerque Guide, to be published at the end of July. I had never heard of Schmap, but of course I was flattered that one of my pictures had been chosen to be in their contest. Of course I could decline to have my photo considered, but after checking out the site and verifying its authenticity, I decided to go ahead and allow the photo to be entered. So we’ll see what happens. I’m not a “real” photographer, but I still think it would be fun if my picture were included. Above is the photo the editor shortlisted, and here’s the link to my Flickr photostream where you can see other photos I’ve taken. Most of them are of my jewelry because of the groups I belong to, but there are more Old Town Albuquerque photos as well as photos of other places and things here in the Land of Enchantment–including a photo of the New Mexico state bird, the roadrunner, which I took on the arbor outside my front door. 

 (photo from IMDB.com)

I don’t get to watch many movies when they’re first released (it’s a two-hour drive to the nearest theater), so I watch a lot of movies on pay-per-view, or I get them through Netflix. I just watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, and despite some bad reviews, I thought it was fun, and it had a great message: “Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.”

Something often happens to many of us on the way to adulthood–we lose faith in the powers of imagination we had as children. But somehow the 243-year-old Mr. Magorium (played by Dustin Hoffman in an offbeat role that reminded me of his talent in Tootsie) has escaped that trap, because his store is filled with magical toys, and he spends most of the movie trying to convince his 23-year-old store manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), that she has all the magic she needs to take over his business.

But Molly’s going through what a lot of us go through. She’s “stuck.” She’s lost her “sparkle.” When she was a child she was a music prodigy full of potential and no fear of fulfilling it, but now that she’s an adult she can’t seem to finish the piano concerto she’s been working on. Chopsticks is about all she can manage, so she thinks “It’s time to get serious. It’s time to get practical.” Sound familiar?

“Practicality” has its place in the adult world, but so does “play,” and the joy of this movie is the reminder that the happiest adults are the ones who haven’t forgotten the power they had as children when they believed in their God-given gifts to dream and to create, and when they believed that their life truly was an occasion to celebrate.

If you’re feeling “stuck” or all together too grown up for your own good, I recommend a visit to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.