I have been drawing since I was able to hold a pencil. I took every art class throughout high school I could get into. In college, I slowed down a bit and only took a stained glass class, however, in all of my classes my notes were more doodles than words. I graduated from St. Cloud State University with a degree in psychology and no idea what I wanted to do with it. If you had asked me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to be a witch. Instead, I satisfy my bill paying needs by working at a public library as a library assistant and in a funeral home as a funeral director assistant and jack of all trades. 

Artistically, I am a bit of a magpie. I take techniques and styles and mediums and claim them as my own. My first artistic love is drawing, preferably with a mechanical pencil or ballpoint pen. I also have painted with watercolors, acrylics, and recently gouache. I dabbled with ceramics in high school, but wasn't brave enough to try the wheel. That may be a future endeavor. I have, on occasion, used colored pencils, but prefer plain old black and white. 

I enjoy wood burning, and rarely whittling. I have begun playing with polymer clay, most often Sculpey Primo, though I'm not overly faithful to a particular brand. I'm very interested in resin, and trying to find the perfect resin for my art. I've worked with 2-part epoxy, UV curing resin, and I want to explore other, harder curing types of resin. 

I love to embroider, having learned from beginning with cross stitch and being frustrated at the lack of variety and freedom that being stuck with making tiny x's all over the place comes with. I can do anything with embroidery, there are very few restrictions or rules that I need to worry about. 

I learned how to crochet in order to quit smoking (19 years and counting), but switched over to knitting, which I find much more pretty and satisfying, not to mention that I can knit a straight edge instead of a hopelessly wobbly crochet one. 

I grew up hanging out with an uncle who had a stained glass artist girlfriend, who taught me some basics. Then I took a stained glass class as part of my associates degree at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. I made a smaller sun-catcher type window hanging of a birch tree and a chickadee, then a larger window of a winged girl. After that class, I decided that stained glass really wasn't up my alley and donated my glass to a glassblowing cousin. 

Now, I am working on learning the finer aspects of digital art through GIMP, a free open-source program like Photoshop. I'm learning how to do some basic photo manipulation for work, and am starting to create digital art either directly or with scanned in sketches.