When my husband and I want to amuse our children, we tell them about life in the "Dark Ages" of technology, when phones were tethered to the wall and video was non-existent.

A blog is an excellent tool for sharing your artwork, building a community, growing your art business, and strengthening your brand. However, a poorly done blog can be worse than no blog at all, says artist and cyber-savvy blogger Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

You may remember how my daughter and I are planning to share our creative space? Well, Meredith's got our home studio all figured out. For one of her classes, she had to sketch her ideal workspace, and she made the drawing you see here.

There's a great scene at the beginning of the movie "James and the Giant Peach." (Actually, there are a lot of wonderful scenes, but this one is key to the story.) James and his parents are on the beach looking at cloud formations and when James doesn't perceive something his parents see, they tell him to "try looking at it another way."

If you lack an art studio and consequently play with wet media in the kitchen or dining room, you are in luck. You have easy access to culinary you can use in your artwork.  Here are three mark-making ideas that will spice up your watercolor painting. All use supplies from the kitchen.

Every year at back-to-school time I think, this is the year I will get everyone in my home organized. Every year but this year. This year, I didn't even try. The remaining child at home will be 16 in a few days and my husband and I have been married almost 23 years. If I haven't been able to get them to stick to an organization plan by now, there's hope.

A few years ago, my husband and I got the idea to paint the risers of our back stairs. We took leftover paint from every room on the first floor and alternated the colors. We thought it was a fun and creative addition to the house. We were pretty proud of ourselves. But then I saw Melanie Royals's art studio.

A couple of weekends ago I spent the better part of two days sorting through the stuff in my home studio. By Sunday evening I emerged with a feeling of accomplishment: everything within the room had been sorted and stored in categories and I had two worktables cleared and ready for action.