What's in My Bag.

So I've noticed this making a bit of a comeback on blogs recently. I really like looking at other people's (Evie Kemp's especially) so I decided I'd do it too, even though my bag holds nothing of any great interest. I initially drew it, but scanning is such a chore and i don't use my camera nearly enough so.. here we go.

This is my every day bag (actually it's my only bag that isn't broken.. and it is a bit broken) I found it in a shed when i was 20. It has some sort game club logo on the front which has mostly worn off. I ripped the side seam last year, and just caved and sewed it up myself by hand. The buckle on the strap is also broken, but it's being held in place by a length of stirling silver wire (i was taking a jewellry class at Art School at the time) I very nearly bought a new satchel last week, but decided that actually this bag is great and lovely and still has years of use left in it.


1. Paper! My bag is always full of scraps of paper.

2. My Wallet / Pocketbook. Overflowing with loyalty cards that i never use.

3. My work sketchbook. Fits neatly in my back pocket. Overflowing with receipts and to do lists and photos of wolves.

4. MAC 'Hug Me', the only lipstick I've ever paid more than $5 for. Bought at duty free when leaving L.A

5. Moo minicard case.

6. Sunscreen /moisturizer. Free sample that i was accidentally sent 6 of.

7. House key / Mary keychain. A very old friend gave me this keychain a very long time ago.

8. New soft cover Moleskine.

9. Diary (well, datebook thing)

10. Pencilcase. The handiest best pencilcase ever.

11. Comb! I live in Wellington so carrying a comb is essential. (because fo the wind)

12. Sunglasses and sunglasses case. From Skylark in Auckland (which she gave me for free when i started stocking there)

13. Mp3 player which is actually Wal's, but it has been permanently stolen. Attached to my old rather crappy headphones.

14. Washi tape for emergency fixing.

15. Cell phone, with attached cake slice (Given to me by Zambi while in San Fransisco) and Pichu that i got from a vending machine while on holiday.

ffffashion

I really know pretty much nothing when it comes to fashion. Right now I am wearing an Elvis Tshirt. Is this fashionable? Probably not...

But i do like the things made/designed by Orla Kiely. This is sort of some of them, but the colours and fabrics and things are different because i lost the picture i was looking at to draw from.

I painted this when Sarah and I were staying at Caitlin Shearer's house. It was really nice to meet her in real life, we drank wine and played with cats and tried to make fondue.

Home!

So I'm back! I really did intend to blog while travelling, but Sarah's laptop had a terrible run in with a cup of coffee so we didn't have a computer to take.

It was a pretty amazing adventure, we met so many great people, Mia, Kyle, Danny, Caitlin, Eric, Stephanie, Andrea, Whitney.. who am I forgetting? Everyone was so nice and lots of lovely people let us sleep on their couches.

I have uploaded lots of photos on my flickr here if you are curious. Later i will blog about specific things and talk about all the fun we had.

This is the tattoo i got in Portland from Ryan Mason who is amazing and kind of dreamy.

So close

So we are leaving in 4 days! This is so soon. This week has been terribley stressful with work things and commissions to finish and even the possibility of cancelling everything due to some family troubles. But i am finally starting to get excited about the whole thing.

We are staying with Caitlin Shearer in Sydney and it's going to be an amazing 2 days of drawing and prettiness.

We've started planning more travelling while in the states.. maybe Texas or Vegas or Chicago. I think i am going to run out of money pretty fast.

Anyway, I'd better back to painting so i have everything finished in time.

x

November Show.

In Wellington, i should mention.... I won't be there as I will be adventuring around America, but some of my most favourite work is in this show. Please go along if you get the chance!


I should also mention that the gallery made invites aswell, but as I am unhappy about the title being used I thought I'd just make my own little one, rather than harp on about it.

I added some new sale prints to my shop in the hopes of raising some money for SanFransisco. Some of these are the very last ones I have, and i won't be getting any more reprints!

Adventure time!

Sarah McNeil and I are going to San Francisco for her art show (opening November 5th) next month.

We are arriving on the 27th of October, and we are looking for people to stay with who can show us around and have fun with us! (And even if you don't have space for us to stay and want to maybe make art with us and hang out that would be cool too)

After San Francisco, we are heading up to Portland, so if you live in Portland or along the way and can host two happy artists (or just want to hang out ), please send me or Sarah an email too!

(p.s Sarah drew the lovely pictures of us)

New Stockist

Oh, and I'd also like to add that i have a lovely new Australian stockist. Moose is now carrying a small sample of prints and cards. Everything is in Australian dollars so super handy for any Aussies that want to buy my work.

Framing

ah.. i love getting things professionally framed. It makes work seem so.. finished. This is the biggest drawback to working on paper, people seem to asign a much higher value to art on canvas. I wonder why? It annoys me an awful lot. Any insights? Do people think work on canvas takes more effort?

Anyway, I took about 10 works into a great framers - he is doing everything so cheaply for me! Mostly basic black frames, but a few more ornate black ones, and one amazing over the top gold frame for this little lady(who is not actually little at all):


She is one of my favourite paintings i've ever done, so i'm glad to have her decked out so beautifully. I'm kind of not-so-secretly hoping she doesn't sell, so i can keep her and hang her in my house. Or else gift her to Sarah who I know also fancies her a bit. I wish i had photos of the frames i picked - i might go in and take photos of the samples.. just to show off a bit.

In other news I've fallen really sick this week. I had to skip work today, which i hate doing. My boss is such a sweetheart plus i really do need the money. I've been drinking lots of green tea with jasmine, and berocca. I think i need new teas but i am always scared to try things - what if it is gross and i have a whole box of it?? This place has some amazing teas, I bought a little trial pack from them a while back but made the mistake of getting the 'fruits' sampler, and everything was a bit sweet for me.


Looks so cute though. Everything in little tins... maybe i will try again with green teas. Does anyone know any good teas for making you feel better?

x

Cards and things

I just spent a week in Dunedin visiting my parents.. It was very nice to laze around and be looked after. Somehow i ended up missing half the people i wanted to catch up with, but it was really a family related trip. The dog is now so old that he is going grey and smells of wee a lot of the time. He also has only one tooth and is generally a messy silly looking thing.

It's good to be home though, in my own bed and such. I have a huge backlog of emails and etsy orders to sort out.. which is pretty fun and exciting. I like emails!

I have some new brooches that will be up as soon as i've taken photos, but for the moment, i've added lots of cards to my store.

Cameos

I painted lots of brooches. I put them all on flickr already, but here they are all compiled together! I am working on special commissioned ones at the moment. Send me an email if you would like a special portrait done xx

Sometimes things are hard

And some days i worry about far too many things. Today has been one of those days, for no real reason.

To try and raise some money for SanFrancisco I have added some original paintings to etsy. Some of these I had planned to hold onto forever... The two 'Eating Ghosts' paintings that inspired my Flickr user name, in particular. These paintings are very special to me, and i hope i can find them a great home.

Here & here.

Things to eat

A while ago, my mum gave me a recepe for naan bread. I tried it out the other day, and was very surprised at how well they came out! I'm normally a bit rough with cooking/baking, so anything that requires any sort of precise measuring doesn't work so well.

Here's my dough. In my lovely Mason&Cash mixing bowl.
It was my first time using it, too.

Wal used to work at a pizza place, so i got him to do the
kneading.

After leaving it to rise for a while.

I made them little.. because.

yum yum yum



Anyway they turned out so good so i wanted to show them off. I had them with curried vegetables and tofu omnomnom. I made way too many so now my freezer is full of frozen dough-lumps.

Some new things

I just finished this little brooch -


He is a little larger than my other brooches, and is for sale on etsy now.

I also got around to photographing my new cards.. they aren't for sale yet, I'm waiting for some nice envelopes to arrive to go with them. But here is a sneaky peek at one of them

Sale

Etsy Sale finishes on Wednesday the 25th.

Buy stuff fast before it goes back to full price!

Also I just noticed I'm up to 50 followers on my blog, so thanks to all the new people who are following me xx

Here is a sketch i am working into a painting right now. The blur on the left is my friend's address.. i didn't think she'd want everyone to be able to read it. I think i really need to get an arrow tattoo... maybe when i'm in portland? Maybe even from Ryan Mason if i can get an appointment.

Badges!

I spent most of today making badges.. they are off to far away places in the next few days. I also put some on etsy.I also got some things from Moo.com in the mail today. The mini cards are such neat little things.. even if i didn't really need them. I got some greetingcards from them as well, just as a bit of an experiment, and they are nice too.

Tomorrow is tickets-buying day. We want to stop in exciting places on the way to SanFransisco... does anyone have any suggestions? We will be stopping somewhere in Australia (i think we actually have to, even though we don't mind) but maybe somewhere sunny and exciting?

Free Thing

And the winner of the brooch is.....


R.W Scissors!

I've got your address already, and will post this baby today along with your etsy purchase!

xx

Two things

Thing one: I made a twitter account! DevonAnnaSmith (Anna is my actrual real life middle name..so boring!)

Thing two: Sarah and I made an awesome drawing club.

Also Sarah and I made delcious cheese last night you should go look at photos on her blog

Etsy Sale

My etsy store is re-open and full of things at heavily discounted prices. 20-40% off everything!

Any purchase gets you an extra entry into the brooch giveaway, too, which has a week left.



I've got some new stockists lined up, too, which is pretty nice. A shop in Auckland, and some online places. I need to start saving money for San Fransisco so any sale profits are going towards that.

I dropped my giclee prints designs off at the print shop the other day and they should be ready tomorrow and it's very very very exciting! I will probably take a million photos of them.

Anyway my cat is demanding attention so I'd better go play with her.

x

Brooch Giveaway!

So you may have noticed my etsy store has been down for a little while - this is in preperation for a whole lot of new nice things. New prints (big and small), postcard packs, original paintings, badges, brooches, and super lovely large Giclee prints.

The store will reopen this coming Wednesday, and to celebrate (and advertise) I'm giving away one of my original handpainted brooches. I'll also be having a big sale with 20-40% off everything.

anyway.. here is the little lady who is up for grabs:


She comes in a little handmade Kraft box, with a grey ribbon and red wax seal.

To win this one of a kind brooch all you have to do is reblog/tweet/tumbler/something about this compeition/store relaunch (and let me know via comment here) and you will be entered into the draw, which will take place Sunday the 15th of August.

x

Foxes Shop.

So you can now buy a selection of my goodies over at Foxes


The little hand painted fox pendants are exclusive, so you won't find them anywhere else. There are also prints and postcard packs. You can purchase things here.

There are lots of other great artists selling there too, like Sarah Mcneil and Victoria n' Bird and Evie Kemp, so you can buy lots of things from great people all at once.

Auckland Art and Craft Fair

I am back from Auckland.

It was nice to get away for a week, and the fair was very fun. I'm still pretty tired from staying in a hostel, and my body is pretty beat from eating so much junk food (although it was delicious). Sarah and I found this little bakery/bread shop just up the road from where we were staying, and we ate so many little milk pudding things. So good. I'm glad they don't have them in my city or my butt would be twice it's size.

Anyway, the fair! The night before we made a mock-up table, which was lucky as I doubt my brain was functioning well enough on the actual day to plan it out nicely. The venue was great (although our table suffered a lot of 'bottlenecking' as it was in a funny little corner spot) and the whole fair was insanely busy the entire time.

Here's our table (Sarah made the rad banner):



and some close-ups:
Sarah's side:
All my little brooches and things (some of these are still available) in little boxes Sarah made:


I didn't get a chance to take any photos of other people's stalls, which is a shame. Some people really had amazing displays, but i was (literally) stuck behind our table. I managed to squeeze out once to go to the bathroom and it was so tricky I just stayed behind the table after that. We ate alot of satsumas. Hopefully other people did and there are some on the internet somewhere. I also didn't get a chance to buy anything.. I had planned to at the end of the day but I had a hideous fit of shyness and was too scared to talk to the other stall holders, even though lots of them were lovely and bought things from me. I think i will try and email people whose things I liked and organise trades....

I met lots of neat people, and I do apologise for my lack of social skills.

Hi everyone - You should go vote for my image to be put on an illicit tee. It would be super rad.

My Entry

I would really appreciate it. I'm really pleased with my entry, and think it has a pretty good chance of winning.

Also some guy copied (actually, traced..) a super old drawing of mine and entered it... I've already contacted the site so hopefully it will be taken down soon.

Shopping!

I forgot to mention.. you can now purchse my T-Shirt and Sweatshirt online! Theres a ton of other gorgeous things on the Swonderful website too.

x

Working.

What better place to dream
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

So I decided not to become an accountant... I don't think i could handle going back to University again.

I just added a bunch of new paintings and drawings to my website.. see, i have been working! A couple more are on my flickr, that I didn't like quite enough for my website.

Auckland is fast approaching and I'm getting excited, i signed on to sell things through Foxes which is good for people in NewZealand. It's really not cost effective with etsy..

You can read all about foxes and the upcoming launch at Foxes blog.

x

Whinge

Lately i feel like i can't really make anything halfway decent. Nothing i do is any good and maybe i should just give up.

The best thing I've drawn in months was a stupid scribble of batman. BOO.

At least i did my taxes all by myself. Maybe i should switch careers and become an accountant?

boohoo wah wah whatever.

Paper Works VI

Show at The Artist's Room opening on June 12th... Freeman White, Jenny Dolezel, Marilyn Webb, Sandro Kopp, Sam Foley and many more! oh, and me! Also, they put one of my images on the invite! There are only six so i feel pretty amazing...

Two of my works are beautifully framed and in this show. Go along if you can, I'm sad I'll miss it! It's in Dunedin, and will be open for a little while.

My name.

My website is now the first result when you google search my name! I do this from time to time, because i like to see if my website is actually getting any traffic. Maybe I should get a tracker? Would be neat to see how many people visit it.

Anyway, while looking through the google results (who doesn't do this from time to time?) I came across quite a few little blogs who have mentioned me - very nice. However, I have noticed one thing.. some people think I'm a boy.

Now, granted, I do have a name that is generally given to boys. I would even hazard to say it is a boys name. So I can see where the confusion begins. I guess I just figured my drawings are so blatantly feminine people would guess i was female. It's sort of nice that people haven't assumed that! Boys can draw flowers and birds and pretty frilly things, too.

Just to set the record straight (not that I mind a little gender confusion.. this should stop people making any sort of judgement on me based on my sex) I am of the female persuasion.

I promise promise to post some more pictures soon.. i have photos of my new foxy (in the sense that they have foxes on them) wooden brooches and pendants, and some new drawings, too.

xox

Facebook

Did you know, I have a fan page on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eating-Ghosts/122076918370

I tend to make little posts on it quite often, so it is a good way to find out what i'm up to.

The latest news is that i will be at The Auckland Art and Craft Fair, on July 24th, at The Auckland Art Gallery. It looks like it will pretty amazing, the venue is great, the money system seems like a great idea, and it should be filled with lots of great stuff! I'm Sharing a table with Sarah McNeil who is also designing the special fair money.

I have lots of special treats that will be for sale; more cameos and necklaces, new cards, a new gocco print (plus my other), badges, and fancy new prints of my newest paintings.

Tees and Sweaters

On another note, the lovely clothing label PaperCup has released a Tshirt and a sweatshirt with one of my drawings on it. They came out amazing, and are lovely quality and fit. I've been wearing mine solidly the last few days and the sweater especially is going to become a wardrobe favourite.



If you live in Wellington you can purchase them at Swonderful, but I beleive they are also doing special orders for those who aren't local. http://www.papercup.co.nz/

Cameos

At the sacrifice of my neck and wrist, I have finished two new cameo brooches and a little necklace. I need to take a serious break from these now or I don't think I'll be able to recover. Or i need to finda more ergonomic way to work on them.. I really need to get a photo of me painting one, i'm sure i look very funny all hunched over with my face an inch from the wood.







I have been so tired lately, and all i want to do is paint, but after work all i can do is read or go straight to bed. So I've hardly been painting at all.. I don't know if it's my chronic fatigue getting bad again, or if my iron levels are down, or just being a bit depressed from working an exhausting day job and struggling with money so much. I really don't want to turn back into the sleepy boring mess i was a year or two ago.

I have something fun/cool coming up in July, so i have something good to look forward to. I will just focus on that and try not to fall into a rut.

Etsy Update

So many new things. Cards and postcards and i finally have one of my magical brooches for sale. xx

Back from Easter

Wetas are so great. Expect paintings of them in the near future. Heres a photo of me holding one. Also saw tuataras which were awesome but hate flash photos so i only have blurry nighttime half-tail shots. There were little blue penguins, too, but I've seen so many of them i wasn't so exited.

Cameo

Cameo
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

I love these tiny little wooden frames... I am doing a little set of these. Intended to be worn as a brooch (the little pinback is attached) but would look cute hanging up somewhere.

My issue now is with pricing.. it is an original painting, and was bloody hard to paint so tiny (my hands are misleading.. it is very small. I have the smallest hands in existance) and the little frame is cherrywood. But also i would like them to be very affordable so that people aren't afraid to wear them. It's sealed with varnish so the paint won't run.

So, dear readers, how much do you think is a reasonable price for this?

I will upload pictures of the others as they're finished.

xx

Also i just put a bunch of photos of my show with Sarah McNeil up on my flickr account

Moths and Bats

Moths and Bats
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

Heres the flier for our opening (which is actually a closing). Free wine! corn chips! art! a tiny bar!

New Prints

Feed on blood
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

New prints on etsy. Including this little lady.

Closing party at Bats next wednesday, the 17th! Sarah and i will both be there, as well as free wine, and corn chips! oh, so many corn chips... from a box! that makes it classy.

Gocco

gocco
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

Sarah came over on friday and we played with my brand new Gocco printer. It was lucky she was here because the whole thing scared me a little. But it was fun! and easy! and look, prints! I'll only print 50 of these, and they are up on etsy now for super cheap. The ink is very pretty and grey. Also i just realised i forgot to mention the size on their etsy page.. oh well!
I have a million of these tiny super cute frames for 4x6" prints, so i may sell some framed if people are interested.

Workwork

Sandwiches
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

I have been so busy since i got back from Auckland! I now have a job, well, two jobs. One an ordinary retail job, and one working in the Wellington City Gallery which is great and fun and all that. It means less time for drawing, but having some more regular money coming in is very nice.

Mine and Sarah McNeils show is still running at Bats, we will be having a closing party sometime next week or the week after, which i will post about when a date/time is settled.

Been working on a cover illustration for a lovely magazine.. will also post about that when it is out. It's very exciting and im pleased with the painting so far.

I bought myself a Gocco printer and gosh its so much fun. My first print is just a bit of fun, and in a very small edition, and will be up on etsy soon.

Etsy Update

note books
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

Little hand drawn notebooks, totes and greeting cards!

x

Grar

Details
Originally uploaded by Eating ghosts

I am in Auckland for a wedding, sleeping on a couch. I kind of like this whole living out of a suitcase thing, actually. I've been travellin around a fair bit lately, at least within NewZealand. Next week however is settle-down time, finding a flat, finding a day-to-day job. Yuck. I wish i could live off my artings, but even though everything is going swell right now i'm worried it'll collapse. Also too much time by myself makes me a little crazy.

Sarah McNeil and i are having a show at Bats theatre this month. I think stuff will be up around the 7th, but we are having a fancy opening later on when Sarah and I are both in town. There will be more stuff on the walls then too. Also alcohol and good music. I am excited! making friends with Sarah has been so lovely.

psst i have started a new moleskin which is a psuedo comic diary. perhaps i will upload snippets soon instead of my horrid writing.