Why hand painted animal coins?

I often am asked how in the world I decided to hand paint coins. Good question since this is pretty unusual. I have been told there are only 6 or so of us doing this in the world. Obviously there was no one to teach me, so this became quite an obsession to stick with it long enough to figure out out.

Like many people, I have always loved animals & had lots of pets. In addition, I volunteer for my local Humane Society & foster bottle fed baby kittens, sometimes starting with them as young as 2 days old.
Having a living relationship with poor animal friends brings so much love to our lives, it certainly is worth celebrating.

My art adventure started when I was visiting a local artists studio and mentioned to my husband that it would be wonderful if I could find something I loved and had a studio when I retired. The wise man that he is, he asked me "why wait?"

I started with classes in hand painting silk, and sold silk scarves for a few years. I loved the vivid colors and textures I could create. Even still, I kept coming back to my desire to find a use for the animal coins in my coin collection. That seemed like the perfect art for me.

The challenge was how to find translucent paint so that the metal could shine through. After a few months of playing "mad scientist" and visiting art stores for different brands and types of paint, I finally developed my own blend of paints and a recipe for each color. The rest was lots of practice until I could color inside the lines :)

I live in Santa Rosa in the beautiful Northern California wine region with my husband, Chris, and my little army of small dogs, large cats, and a parade of little foster kittens.

I also publish interesting articles on my website about my foster kittens, as well as other warm & loving animal stories. Check it out at www.AnimalCoin.com.