In Love with a Palette Knife

Have you ever felt like you need to loosen up? I’ve been chasing precision with my recent needle felted and mixed media landscapes, and felt like it was time to shake things out a bit. I switched gears for a few glorious weeks and had a love affair with my neglected palette knife. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually tried to move paint around this way before but man, it’s so satisfying!

New Palette Knife Landscape Paintings

First, I played around with some abstracted landscapes, mostly minis, just to see what I could come up with and how it felt to not have full control over what the paint was doing on my panels. Keeping the subject matter safe, I did some mountains, fields, and lake scenes and called it a day. It was fun, but it wasn’t quite scratching the itch.

Statement Necklace

Next I moved onto jewelry, revisiting my Studio Graffiti Collection which in the past has always been on clear acrylic, which I paint with random brush strokes from the backside. Changing things up, I used the palette knife and some heavy matte medium to thicken up my paint, and went to town scraping and sliding pigment all over my thin boards. Pleased with the first few test pieces, I got a little carried away and turn this experiment into a whole series, and I don’t regret a thing!

Painted Pendant

Enjoy the new mini paintings and on-of-a-kind jewelry just added to the website. All pieces are painted with my trust palette knife, with acrylic paint on wood, and are one-of-a-kinds.

Painted Earrings

Paint Rings

The Studio Graffiti Collection

I’ve been making a mess in my studio and it’s all for a good cause. The new “Studio Graffiti Collection” is a colorful combination of many materials, techniques and styles I’ve been working in for years, but never quite like this. The modern jewelry collection features hand painted acrylic which is laser cut into bold shapes, and no two pair of earrings or pendants will ever be identical due to the nature of the brushstrokes.

While developing this idea in the last few weeks, I’ve tested out several color palettes and landed on a few favorites to launch the collection. Some of these color combos may come back later if they sell well, and I certainly have ton of new ideas for upcoming colorways, but for now, here’s Night Garden, Carnival, Pool Party, and Urban Sky - all available on the website!

To shortcut your shopping on the website, you can type in “Studio Graffiti” into the search bar to see ALL items in this collection, and you can even search by colorway name if you see a color you like and only want to view jewelry pieces that come in that colorway.

Here’s a peek at my process. Watching painting done as a time-lapse video is kinda magical and you can really see how the pattern builds up on the clear acrylic from the backside. I never quite know what the painting is going to look like until I peel off the protective layer of film and man, that’s a happy moment every time! Enjoy this quick look at how this collection is created. The colorway shown in the video is “Night Garden” and is available on my website.

Ready to do a little shopping! Here’s a 25% off coupon code which is valid on any jewelry item now through the end of June!

Coupon Code: STUDIOGRAFFITI25

Coupon valid on any jewelry item(s) only at www.onceagainsam.com

Coupon not valid on Etsy, fiber art items, or commissions.