After Forever, I Finally Was Able to Play With my Mat Cutter - Connie Seabourn Artwork

I had the usual things on my agenda yesterday - grocery shopping, cooking, and bit of housekeeping. I decided to make some of my baked pork chops because it's easy, tasty and doesn't take up a lot of refrigerator room. My refrigerator room is being taken up with cut-up honeydew and cut-up watermelon. I took the time I had left in the afternoon and worked on the presentation for two small Connie Seaborn pieces. I'm very happy with how they turned out, although I'm still slightly off square on the mat cutter. I'll have to play with that a bit more and see if I can get it 100% square. 

This first piece is titled "Pueblo Dawn". It's 
a lovely small piece with more depth every time I 
look at it. I chose an off-white texture for the 
inner mat, on top of a blue/purple for the outer mat.
 The mat choices are identical for the pair. 

The first piece is called Pueblo Evening. It's in blues and purples on her hand-made watercolor paper. The finished size is 8-1/2 x 11, and I'll try to find a frame tomorrow for it. I know what I want, but would rather not have to order it. 

This is the companion piece - Pueblo Evening. 
Although I'm framing them at the same time and
purchased them together, I doubt they'll be sold as a set.
I think that would be cost prohibitive for most of my
customers. In this piece, you get the sense of
timelessness that I always feel when I'm
visiting the pueblos in New Mexico. 

The second finished mat is for Pueblo Evening. She's pulled out the warmer peach and pink colors, keeping the basic blues and purples, making it a bit softer and more like a moonlit scene. 

I'm using my C&H Signature mat cutter for these. 
I took it completely apart last week and cleaned 
everything. I'm pretty happy with this first attempt 
at a mat, although it's still very slightly out of true 
90 degree cuts. I'll have to work on that a bit more 
tomorrow to try and improve it. When adjusted properly, 
it should give me perfect 90 degree cuts. Adjustments 
are very fussy, however. 

Ideally I would have preferred to frame the two small watercolors as a single piece, but they retail for $125/each unframed, and the combo framed would retail between $375-$450. That's a lot for small pieces, even if they are original watercolors from an established artist. Will I actually get what I'm supposed to when I sell it? Who knows? I know their worth. DH doesn't like her work, so as far as he's concerned, it's money wasted. I actually have quite a lot of her work still to frame - larger pieces, mostly. I thought I'd start small while I'm still fine tuning the equipment. 

Connie Seabourn is a well-known, respected watercolor 
artist based in Oklahoma. I'm not finding tribal identification 
on her website, so she might have married into the tribe. 
I know she was exhibiting at events that required tribal 
identity. Given her area of the country, I would say that 
she's Cherokee or Choctaw, but she doesn't have to be 
full-blood to be Native American and qualify for the shows 
where I first met her and her artwork. 

So, I'm off to the pool for my final swim of the week. We'll possibly have showers, but if there's no thunder or lightning, we'll still be able to swim outdoors. Have a great day and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini.