I'm beginning to share my new series of 9 x 12 inch jewel paintings with my email audience. These paintings are a continuation of a theme I began a few years back in the form of larger abstracts. The overall collection is called "Heirloom Art Pieces".

Many people took part in my January contest to name a 9 X 12 inch piece last month and I want to thank you for all your responses! It seems there was a common thread among your title suggestions involving "travelling". The title I picked said it in a simple and elegant way.

And the winning title for this piece is ... "Safe Passage" (see the video with original music)

It was sent in by Fern Chapman the president at Plant By Waters Ministries and Missionary Pastor at Eskasoni First Nation and surrounding reserves. I also discovered that she's an amazing musician (http://www.youtube.com/plantbywaters) . Her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/fernchapmanca

Fern sent me a photo of her prize: A 5x7 inch mini jewel painting "Hearts of Gold in a Purple Swirl." (can you tell I need help with titles?) - anyway, I'm happy it's living beside an orchid!

A week before the contest I had casually asked for title suggestions on a FB post for another new piece (see it at the bottom of this blog), and I received the wonderful title response of "Congregation" from Lynn Goldstein. So I only thought it fair to send Lynn a mini jewel painting too. She chose this one called "Golden Snowflowers."

Below is the jewel painting called "Congregation": See a video of the making of this piece. As with the above piece, I also created some music for this in a program called GarageBand (an app on my iPad). It was my first ever song!