Devotional painter uses Q-Tips to create her artwork

Thousand Oaks artist Flora Bratt will be demonstrating and selling her unique brand of religiously-themed artwork on Wednesdays and Saturdays at Beyond Borders, 888 Easy St., Simi Valley.

Bratt, whose life journey has taken her to exotic locations around the globe, began painting with QTips less than five years ago and has since created more than a thousand works of art, almost all of them featuring religious icons like the Virgin Mary and various saints.

Bratt said her inspiration comes from Mexican "retablos," oil paintings of Catholic saints usually done on tin or copper.

For more information, call (805) 523-1635.