Strathmore Artist Papers - New Product - Featured Artist ....

I have been keeping a "secret" since early May of this year.  I've just been bursting to share it, but I promised I wouldn't say a word to anyone (except Jim) until it was made public.  Well ... yesterday I saw it advertised at Amazon.com so I figure that is about as public as something can get!

Let's go back to 5/7/2013 when I received an email with the subject line "Zentangle Art for Strathmore".  Well naturally that piqued my curiosity, what artist hasn't heard of or worked on Strathmore paper?!  I opened the email and here is the first part of that message:

"Dear Karen,

My name is S___ S______ and I am with Strathmore Artist Papers (www.strathmoreartist.com).

We are in the process of developing a new product line called “Artist Tiles”, to be used for meditative art, patterning, and “Zentangle” style artwork. As I was doing research, I came some of your artwork and Zentangles. We really love your style and wanted to get in touch with you to see if you’d be interested in having your artwork featured on the packaging of our new product. One of the products we are creating for this line is 4”x4” Artist Tiles in retail packs. The paper used for these tiles would be our 400 Series Watercolor. We thought your style could be a great fit for this product specifically." 

I'll tell you, I was so stunned I nearly fell off my chair ... you could have knocked me over with a hummingbird feather ... Strathmore, contacting me?  Surely this has to be a joke some one is playing on me ... this can't be real, can it?  Well, it sure looked pretty real to me so I thought "OK ... I'll bite ..." and I responded.  They responded back! And with a contract no less!  We came to an agreement, they sent the product for me to work on, I created a piece of Zentangle watercolor artwork, sent it off to Strathmore and sat back a waited.

In the meantime I still kept thinking ... this is the best dream I have EVER had!  The original piece of art was returned and I had been compensated for my time but still it did not seem real, that is until yesterday when I was once again contacted by S.S. at Strathmore.   Then I googled "Strathmore Artist Tiles" and lo and behold .... there it was!  A Strathmore product with my art work on it!

It's NOT a dream, it is real!  Now I can share what I have been keeping a secret for what seems like forever ... the new Strathmore product with the artwork of your's truly on the front!  Ta-da!

And here is the original art piece ....

This day is certainly filled with a LOT of sunshine and Thank You very much Strathmore!

Happy day all!

Big hugs,
Karen Anne aka Ireland Brady