here it is...

i finally got my tattoo thursday night! it was a very wonderful experience. although it was very, truly, sincerely painful, it was a sort of invigorating pain. as nic said, while he was doing the tattoo, it's a pain that sort of pierces your soul. as it should, i suppose. this was a huge decision and a lot of soul-searching and questioning really went into the whole thing. of course, recognizing that i was truly committing myself to a life as an artist and not harboring any future plans of say, working at the bank. also knowing that certain people, including my mother and father, would definitely not approve and that i would be subject to some certain scrutiny and judgement.

nic and i met several times and discussed design ideas. you may recall my original design idea, which turned out not to be very conducive to a hand tattoo. so we worked together to come up with a new one. i told him i wanted something feather-ish and organic and flow-y and plant-ish. when i got there, he had sketched out 5 different possibilities for me to choose from. this is the one i picked:

the photo is not very great, and my hand is quite swollen, and of course it is much brighter than it will actually be once everything heals and settles in, but i wanted to show it to you anyway. i am so very in love with it. i just can't stop looking at it. nic perfectly captured what i wanted in the design. and the colors! he kept trying to convince me to go bolder and brighter, but i kept telling him to keep it soft and organic. i was a bit of a backseat driver while he did the coloring. what are you doing there? what's the next color? are you going to fade that brown or make it solid? obviously i wanted it to be perfect. it is.

when i showed junebug she said "flying away". so very perceptive, my girls. it was bandaged when i got home thursday night and hazel had been waiting up to see it. i told her she'd have to wait until the morning. she come bursting into my room at 7 a.m. and grabbed my hand and said, "oh, mommy, it is beautiful!"

i was instructed to take a few days off of work to let it begin to heal. it is hard not to be out in the shop, especially since i have so many things i want to get going on, but it is worth it.

in other news, i got an absolutely fabulous shipment of teresa's glass flower cabs yesterday! check these out:

can you even believe how incredible they are? she is absolutely amazing, isn't she? i simply cannot wait to make some things with them!

and, i got accepted to do the moab arts festival!!! yay! so i will be mostly working on pieces for the show from now until the end of may. please don't be alarmed if there is not a lot of action on etsy. i am particularly excited about some silver cairn pieces i am going to do (moab IS in the desert, ya know.) i have applied for 3 other shows this summer as well. i don't want to jinx anything, but i will keep you posted as to whether or not i get in to them.

hope you are all having a terrific weekend! patty's coming over to watch the girls so glenn and i can have one last ski date this afternoon! (i keep saying it's the last ski, don't i?)