Happy Birthday!

I hope you are all enjoying a marvelous 4th of July weekend. Mine is being spent close to home...a fairly typical weekend with kids, some time at the studio painting and working on various projects at home. (I did see fireworks on Friday night following the Twins game and they were awesome!)

But I am quite excited because I feel like I have accomplished a major goal of mine. My new website is ready to be born! There is still some tweaking to do, definitely some polishing, but I'm feeling ready to share it with the world...or at least all of you!

I created my Home & Bio page, started adding images of my artwork to the Portfolio page and even set up a handy dandy link to my Etsy shop (more artwork to be listed soon). I have imported my blog there (although it looks a bit different) and redirected my registered domain name to the site.

So if you want to take a peek, all you need to do is go to http://www.createdbyrisa.com 

(You can still come directly to my blog here by using http://www.createdbyrisa.blogspot.com )

This was a big deal for me...I've been dreaming about it for a year or more. Participating in Kelly Rae's course (and meeting lots of supportive folks there online) gave me the courage and the knowledge to give it a whirl. I decided to use Squarespace to not only build my site, but as my hosting site. It felt easier (for me) to do it all in one place. 

There was definitely some things I needed to learn. At times, I thought I wouldn't be able to create something I would be happy with. But I kept at it, doing a little at a time. Then the past two nights I put in some hours of concentrated work trying to get things to look the way I wanted.

And I think I got there! Like I said, I still plan to do some tweaking and polishing. But I would love for you to take a look and tell me what you think! (There is definitely room for improvement)

It's sort of fun really...tackling big projects like this...especially as I get older and it's harder to stay ahead of the technology curve (shoot, I'm just happy to stay a few steps behind!) 

I wanted to create my website to showcase my art and to help me look more professional. Rather than refer folks to my blog, I can direct them to my website (though my blog will be there too).

So strike off "Create a Website"  from my Artist To Do list.  

Mission Accomplished .