"TEAL" Watercolor

My eldest daughter, Kiley has purchased us a space at an upcoming Arts and Crafts fair, The Pumpkin Patch.  It is held the first weekend of November and is a huge event in our little community.  Kiley has been making the most amazing hair bows for the past few months and plans to sell those.  She has asked me to show and sell my customized "baby" watercolors.

For the past few years I have been creating watercolor paintings for new babies and this is my first attempt to market and sell them to the public.  They are extremely time consuming projects with lots of intricate details on top of details.  I generally ask the parent to give me suggestions of things each letter of the alphabet can stand for (A is for Apple..) or give me the color scheme/theme of their nursery.

I paint a colorful background then paint and cut out the additional pieces and attached with foam adhesive so the final painting has lots of dimension.  It takes a ton of time! 

To prepare for the craft show, I decided I'd best gear up and finish some of the gift paintings I needed to complete.  So this week I have been swimming in watercolor working on four gifts at once.  This is the first one I've finished.  It is for a special friend who just had her first child and named her Teal.  This dear friend was once a teen participant in a youth counseling training program I directed and she now coordinates the CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) program for children caught up in the legal system. 

"TEAL" is 8 1/2" x 18 1/2" watercolor & colored pencil piece on 200 lb rough, watercolor paper

 Here is a closeup of some of the details in the finished painting.  Each piece is hand painted, decorated and individually cutout.  Taking orders to make very many of these will be a mixed blessing.  I still haven't decided on a reasonable price for my time and expenses and I don't know exactly how I am going to design a system for the customer to customize their personal painting.  So stay tuned and give me your suggestions.