The Melanie Bear

I recently bought a wonderful Teddy Bear Pattern from my friend Fannie for Melanie.

Melanie just finished her first Melanie bear made out of flannel! Isn't he wonderful!

Here are two more of Melanie's fully jointed mohair and cashmere bears. I just love them!

Look at his shoes!

Melanie makes the most wonderful bears. She has an etsy shop filled with them. Please pop by.

You will love them too!

Fall is on my mind...

Emmitt the taste tester!

Emmitt and I are so happy that our favorite time of year is just right around the corner. We love Fall! The crisp air and the turning leaves are magical to us!

The weather in Colorado has broken and has been beautiful and in the high 70's & low 80's. There is that crispness in the air and my apples are starting to turn red on our tree out front. Yay! All wonderful signs of Autumn after a hot Summer. :)

I am also working on my Pug Notes Fall Newsletter that is so much fun to create. The recipe section will feature (drum roll please)... Turkey Meatloaf!

Emmitt and I made them this weekend and he approves with a 4 paws up!

If you would like a copy of the Quarterly Newsletter to arrive in your inbox in October complete with the Turkey Meatloaf recipe, fun news, and the famous "Meet the Pugs" section featuring puggies from all over the world, please email me with your name and email address. I will sign you up right away. Emmitt and I never share your information with anyone.

Please also feel free to email me anytime if you have a favorite recipe, or pug photos and stories to share for future newsletters.

Emmitt and I love sharing all the connections he makes all over the world. :)

For some more fun, please check out our friends, Rachel and her puggies Winston & Clemmy's blog for a fun contest they are running... Project Dogway.

Emmitt and Moe made a special contribution to this weeks challenge. :)

Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!

Pug Love...

Emmitt and I got some very good advice from a good friend last week.

Roxy reminded us to tell people around us how much we love and appreciate them. It made me realize how much I think about it everyday, but maybe do not take the time to actually express it outloud.

Here is Emmitt singing outloud how much we love and appreciate you.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and visit us today.

Our friends Diana and Roxy both recently gave us awards. Thank you soooooo much! You absolutely made our day!

Each award came with slightly different directions to spread the fun, so I am going to combine the two and give the awards (you get to choose the artwork) to friends who stop by and visit us almost everyday and say hello. Your comments mean the world to us!

linda, manon, roxy, diana, fannie, nancy, leslie, sandy, nichol, nevis, rachel, maggie & mitch, lisa, wendy, anne, jill, rebecca, moira, karine, tere, liz & henri, ruth, clover, jamie, leann, peng peng, marianne, tara, jen and francis.

I also really appreciate everyone else who visits that I do not know about. Please take your favorite award too! Thank you for stopping by! :)

Have a wonderful day everyone!

The Pug Notes conversion is complete!

I am so excited to report that I have successfully completed the Pug Notes conversion over to Expression Web.

I have updated the look a bit and changed the navigation to match the look of Dog Art Studio.

It is cleaner on the front-end screens for the user and so easy for me to manage and update on the back-end. I couldn't be happier with the outcome. I am so glad I pushed through the discomfort of learning a new software program. It was totally worth it!

I also purchase the domain www.pugartstudio.com yesterday and redirected it to Pug Notes.

I feel I have built a brand name with the name Pug Notes, but this will give me the flexibility to change the name one day if I decide to. :)

Enough business talk! :)

It is almost the weekend and Emmitt asked if I would post one of his favorite videos of himself. It was recorded on superfast speed and Emmitt thinks if he could practice to match this in real life, he could win a gold medal in nose licking. :)

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Emmitt in the morning...

Emmitt and I have so much in common.

Morning is our favorite time of the day. You get to eat breakfast, drink coffee and sign on to the computer see what was happening while you were sleeping. :)

Emmitt loves mornings too. He wakes up every morning at 5:30 am singing and dancing for breakfast. I am a morning person, so I am eager to start my day too. After breakfast we go up to the office and Emmitt shows his joy for having a full tummy by licking his nose. He follows me around the house licking his nose, he sits next to me licking his nose and he sits under my desk licking his nose until he poops himself out and takes a nap.

Here is Emmitt in action. :)

Have a wonderful day!

Dog Art Studio is Open, Open, Open!

I am so excited to announce that Dog Art Studio is now open!

I have been working hard learning CSS and Expression Web over the last few months to build a new website featuring all the other breeds I also paint that I call Pug Pals.

They are all the pug friends that Pug Notes has also has available, but that I have not been able to optimize as their own website.

I hope to be able to reach all dog lovers with both websites.

What a fun process learning a new way to create and update both sites. I will now convert Pug Notes over to Expression Web and then when I want to make changes it will take 2 minutes instead of hours. All I need to do to update is to change one page that will filter globally throughout the site instead of opening 100 pages and making each change individually! I am so excited!

If you have time, please visit Dog Art Studio and let me know what you think. Your opinion means so much to me. Please be honest. I will not be able to improve it if I do not get ALL of the feedback. :)

2 Memes from Roxy! Dancing and SPACE...

Our friend Roxy, tagged us for two memes and they are great fun!

The first one is the Dance for Somebody meme!

Here are the rules:

• State who you are dancing for & why.
• Post a video or picture of you dancing, (you don't even have to be dancing you can do a trick if you want).
• It doesn't have to be a new video and
• Tag at least 3 bloggers!

The picture above is Emmitt hooooola dancing for everyone for treats.

I know he will do anything for a crumb!

I tag Ruby, Clover and Mitch and Maggie

The second one is The where you work meme.

This is were I work...




It is a wonderful space about 8'x8' that I fill with everything that inspires me!

I have a small worktable behind my computer where I paint. You can see one of my paintings in process above.

Thanks for the tags Roxy! That was fun!

Have a great Monday everyone!

My Dogs Rule Page... The process.

This is my completed page inside the Dog Rules Book.

Each one is a little different. I created 14 pug painting pages and digitally added a party hat. I collaged collars on each pug and attached a handmade pug charm.

I also tied silk ribbons all along the outside of each page and put pop up baby Emmitts and a personalized breed ATC of each artist's favorite dog on the back.

I really enjoyed each step of this wonderful project!

Dogs Rule! A Collaborative Project

I feel very honored to have been included in a wonderful artist collaboration called Dogs Rule.
Jill Beninto put together a wonderful project and invited 12 other artists to each make 14 book pages with the theme of Dogs Rule to create 14 Fat Books to be bound and received by each artist and a 14th book to be auctioned off on Ebay on November 15th to raise money for Bernie Berlin's A Place to Bark to raise money for her amazing shelter that she runs for all breeds of dogs in TN. Jill also contacted The Bark Magazine and they are going to run a spread on our project in the September 2008 issue!

Each book is slightly different than the next. Many of my pages feature PUGS!

Here are just a few of the wonderful pages that you could own too if you would like to bid on the very special 14th book.

by Jamie Pflughoeft of Cowbelly Photography

by Linda O'Neill of Abby Creek Studios

by Manon Doyle of Hoochie Poochie Studios

by Wendy from 2 Dog Studio

Here are all of the artists websites and blogs.

Manon Doyle of Hoochie Poochie Studios , blog
Jill Beninato of Sit Stay Smile Photography, blog
Jamie Pflughoeft of Cowbelly Photography, blog
Leigh Jackson of Noisy Dog Studio, blog
Moira McLaughlin of Dream Dogs Art, blog
Melissa Langer of Pug Notes, blog
Linda O'Neill of Abby Creek Studios , blog
Rebecca Lansdowne of Art Paw, blog
Nicole Mlakar-Livingston of Nicole Mlakar Photography, blog
Wendy from 2 Dog Studio, blog
Bernie Berlin from A Place To Bark, blog
Anne Leuck Feldhaus of Anne Leuck Feldhaus Studio Ltd., blog
Kathy Weller of Wellerwishes Illustration, blog

I will show you my page and how I made it tomorrow!

Encaustic Wax Class!

I had the best time yesterday in a day long class in Denver learning the art of encaustic wax.

I had no idea what it was, but I had heard so many wonderful things about the medium. It was so much fun! We used beeswax heated at 200 degrees, oil paints and propane torches to create these wonderful paintings. I love what I made, and the best part was that I got to spend the day with my two friends, Linda and Alicia.

Here is the beeswax in the muffin tins waiting to be made colorful by the oil paint blobs on the paper towel.

Here is Linda and our instructor, Pat Aaron, looking at the transfers Linda had created.

Here is Linda with the propane torch! We got to play with hot wax and fire!

We had so much fun!

Here I am with my finished painting!

Linda, Melissa and Alicia

(Ha! I love this picture. I am not standing in a hole, I am just this short. :)

What a great day!

Tomorrow I will show you an amazing collaborative project I was lucky enough to be included in. The final product is truly wonderful!

Fun New Art - A Wonderful Welcome Home!

Emmitt waited patiently for me to come home from camp last week.

He watched the mail person drop off packages everyday.

He knew lots of neat things were arriving and knew something in there might be for him.

He is such a smart pug!

Our friend Tere made Emmitt this special personalized stuffie bone...

and for me, this beautiful art doll!

She even made us a special pug card!

I love everything Tere! Thank you so much!

Then I opened another package and my friend Lisa Griffin made me a special Pug and Posey Pig ATC! WoW!!!!

and my friend Fannie custom made this bear pattern I had made for Melanie!

And... This special wooden cat magnet arrived from my friend Sandy that I got for a friend. It is beautiful!

I am so lucky to have so many wonderful friends! I appreciate all of you and all that you share with me everyday. It makes my world a very happy place!