Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook-May/Jaime

I was able to spend the entire afternoon with Jaime's sketchbook.  This is my spread for the month of May.  To me, May represents beginnings and endings.  It is my birthday which always makes me reflect on the past year, give thanks for the good and hopefully the bad seems less severe when revisited.  It is a time of celebration, of gathering my family around me and of hopes for what will come in the year ahead. 

May is the end to my teaching year.  It is celebrated by a nice recital where all my students can showcase their developing skills.  It is when I can sit and think about the progress each one has made, and begin to plan the directions I'd like to take them in the fall.

May is a time of stepping back my studio teaching obligations so that I may enjoy a more relaxed, free summer.  It allows me more time to spend outdoors during the beautiful Michigan summer.  It gives me time to devote to my art and time to really enjoy being by myself.

Finally, May is planting season (usually, but we've had so much rain everything is delayed this year!).  I love seeing all the freshly plowed fields while I'm out walking.  They look so neat and orderly and I've always wanted to go and play in one.  (I've managed to avoid doing this so my farmer neighbors wont be upset with me).  I also love to plant flowers while I'm surrounded by the fragrance of lilacs in bloom and the flutterings of the first butterflies of the year.  May brings many things to a close in my life, but it also opens many new and exciting doors.

I hope that Jaime likes my entry in her sketchbook.  I  had a relaxing and fun time painting it. 

And the winners are...

Jenn F (from Facebook) will be giving the box a new home

and

the little fishy will be swimming its way to Kathy.

Congratulations!

Happy Monday to you all!



Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook

Here's my introductory spread for the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Sketchbook".  This Sisterhood is a group of 13 artists located around the world.  We'll be mailing our books through a chain every month and in a year we'll get our books back filled with all kinds of artistic goodness.  Our theme after the introductory spread is months.  We'll be painting our interpertation of the current month, loosely based.  That means that May, to me is the beginning of "Sangria season", so my spread might just revolve around that instead of a traditional "May Flowers" spread.  Its all open to how we want to interpert the month which I love!  I'm excited to get my journal on its way.  Hopefully it'll mail out tomorrow or Monday.

My first spread we were to use color.  My favorite color is orange.  I love how vibrant and cheerful it is.  The text serves as an introduction, however brief to me so the others involved with this project can get a feel for me.  Its so much fun to "meet" these ladies.  Most of us have just been introduced over the past month or two!  Its always interesting to see how much us artsy types have in common.  Including a serious ZumaBlitz obsession and competition I'm in over my head with against Cam. 

For my sign in page I had an idea of cutting out butterfly shapes that each person can alter and then attach to the opening page and also the back cover if more space is needed.  I thought we could include all our info either on the butterfly as I did, or surrounding the butterfly on the page.  I hope that's not to quirky for any of the participants.  Once I got the idea in my head there was no turning away from it. 

I can't wait to receive my first book in the mail.  I'm still brainstorming ideas to use for the spread of May.  This is all so exciting!!

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you're having a beautiful mid-April day!

Butterfly earrings bring Spring to mind

I haven't made any a lot of jewelry in awhile.  I'll make some stamped metal jewelry when the mood strikes, but I haven't gone in depth with beading or wire work in years.  I used to do it all the time and even taught it at two local bead stores.  I think I got a little burned out and a lot distracted by other art possibilities.  

Now that I have my pixie hair, earrings are much more fun to wear.  I have a pair of nice chandelier style earrings that I bought and love because they are very lightweight and dont hurt to wear.  I was trying to figure out how I could make something really cool and a bit unusual.    I went to the craft store and they had these findings on sale for just 50 cents.  I knew I had to get them.   

I looked around my stash of crafty goods and found these

 

I poked a hole through the butterfly, used some thin beading wire to make sparkly beaded dangles from the 8 posts of each earring.  That's pretty much all it was.  I did some quick wirewrapping to attach everything.  I added an extra butterfly on the long part of the finding just to make it a little bit prettier and now I have some extra cute one of a kind earrings to wear!  They're light and dont pull on my earlobes so I'm hoping that I enjoy wearing them.

Pretty quick and easy and very inexpensive considering the clearance cost of the finding and using stash I already had for everything else.  So, what do you think?  I've got my mind spinning on what to do for another pair so we'll see what happens.

Butterfly Bowl

I spent a wonderful day at Creatopia

with a friend. I picked out the "popcorn bowl" and decided to try my hand at butterflies. Painting on the pottery is a bit weird in that you aren't supposed to mix the paints together to achieve shading. You paint everything 3 times and to get a shading I think you paint different layers a bit differently. I'm not sure about that. I havent figured it out. The butterflies are pretty much just blocks of color seperated by lines to define the sections so I didn't have to worry so much about shading. Another weird thing about painting on pottery is that you really cant see exactly how your painting will look until after it is fired. The colors are really muted and the details are hard to see prior to the firing. I had brought a magazine with pictures to look at as I painted and kept picking them out til the bowl had them all around. I joked that this was going to be my ice cream bowl. It is huge, but I really like ice cream!! In reality, it was serving as a fruit bowl and now I've begun mixing my bread in it for its rising time. I love how it turned out. It brings a spot of cheer to the kitchen.

Its a good excuse to spend some time with a friend and talk and catch up as you paint. We've gone twice now and had a blast each time.

Actually, I think we're about due for another trip.

The rewards of nature

The neatest thing happened yesterday. I started to work on this garden sign as soon as I got home from church. I found it at the craft store and it had the ugliest picture of a life preserver with the quote "Welcome Aboard" on it, but I loved the idea of painting on a garden stake. I quickly covered up the ugly and started sketching a butterfly. I was using a picture from a magazine I picked up early this spring. I worked on the painting all afternoon while my hubby and FIL worked on erecting a privacy fence. I stopped occasionally to talk with my SIL and nephew, but mostly painted for about 5 hours. It was a beautiful day here and I set up everything at the patio table and enjoyed being out in the sun. Anyways, after working on it all afternoon I was finally finishing up putting the sealer on when a butterfly flew over me and into my garden a few feet away. It was the one and only butterfly I'd seen all day and it landed on my purple weeds that I love and let stay in the garden every year since its a "pretty" weed. I walked over to look at the butterfly and nature rewarded me by sending a real yellow swallowtail to match the one I had just finished. It even landed on the purple flowers like I had put in the background of my painting. What a neat moment. I had to run in the house and get the camera so I wouldn't loose the memory. Even my husband thought it was pretty cool. My heart was so happy with the whole thing.

My piano finally was moved on Friday. It was a moment of mixed emotions watching it being loaded up and leaving. I was sad yet excited at the same time. My harp will be arriving on Wednesday along with my first lesson. I'm hoping that having a new instrument to play with will ease the seperation anxiety of the piano being gone. I'm sure I'll be relaying updates on the piano as they come, and also progress on the harp.

It's going to be another busy week here. I started out by playing a funeral today and have many other tedious things that must be done soon. Luckily there are some fun things thrown in to lighten my days. My nephew graduates from Kindergarten on Friday and I'm going to go watch. I think that will definetly be the highlight of the week. Its such fun to be an aunt! I hope all of you are doing well and having fun. Thanks for stopping by.

Spring Walk

We had a glorious day of weather here with lots of sun and the temp almost hitting 80. I decided to take the camera and wander the lagoon loop of the state park. Come along and see what I found.

This muskrat didn't seem to mind me peeking into his world. He was cleaning himself up, balancing on a log not far from the shoreline. A turtle was sharing the log, but you cant see him. I found that combination a bit odd. I never really thought about those 2 animals sharing a space. I actually saw 3 muskrats today. They seemed to be taking advantage of the sun while there still aren't many people about.

This egret posed for the first picture, but the camera beep as it focused scared him in to flight and I was able to capture this shot. When I kayak out here, these birds let us get fairly close. They kinda do a leap frog through our journeys, moving a bit further up the channel, allowing us to get near, and then moving further down. If you dont see one of them and get to close, they make a huge amount of noise when they take off in flight. They have scared me many times when I've been busy studying the nearby turtles and never noticed them until I hear a big commotion. They have a smorgasboard in the lagoons here with all the fish.

I'm still surprised I found this prince. He was hiding kind of under a bush purched on this log throne. I actually was trying to find a turtle when I found him. I didn't seem to bother his highness as he allowed me to bow to him and snap this picture. He was awfully big, and a little further on my walk I found another that was his equal in size. Of course, the second was in a seperate lagoon and I quickly realized I had walked through to another kingdom with a different prince.

This swan was all alone in the back lagoon. There were a group of swans near where I began my walk. They are always in that area near the lotus beds. Dont swans mate for life? I wonder what happened to this guys mate? He was very serene, stretching his neck down to dip into the water. He did get a bit territorial when a muskrat got a little to close. It made me glad I kept my distance.

These 2 geese were busy protecting their 3 eggs. Can you see the eggs? There was a blue heron not 20 feet away and I dont think the geese were real happy to have an egg predator so close. They built their nest on top of a muskrat or a beaver den. I actually hadn't noticed they had eggs until a nice bicyclist saw me with my camera and told me what they had out there. Not only did they have to fend off the heron, there were 3 other white egrets so close that you can see them and the heron in one of the other pictures I took of the geese. I guess its not all fun and games in the wild as they must protect their eggs from such close enemies.

I set out today hoping to see turtles. I love seeing them sun themselves on the logs. They are my favorite part of visiting the lagoons. When I'm in the kayak I try to see how close I can get to the logs. The turtles are pretty skitish and jump in the water at the first noise. By the time I snapped this picuture, at least 4 turtles had jumped off the log, but that still left these 14 brave ones for me to enjoy. There were lots of turtles everywhere today. Most of them were to far away to really discern what type, but usually they are painted turtles, with the occasional snapper thrown in. I grew up close to a river and I remember going down and finding turtles all the time. My dad would let me bring one home for the night, and then we'd go back and release him the next day. I've been fascinated with them since. I once stopped my car in the middle of a fairly busy road, put on my hazzards and then rescued a big snapper from the middle of the street and relocated him to the ditch where he would be safe.

I ended my walk by having this lovely creature flutter along with me for the last 1/4 mile. It looked like a monarch, but I really dont know. He was kind enough to land on a leaf so I could capture him before I had to go.

I hope that you enjoyed my walk. It was so delightful for me to slow down and really notice what was going on around me. I wish you all a beautiful weekend.

Mother Henna's Personal Healing Deck

I worked on one of my cards today for the personal healing deck project sponsored by Mother Henna. I'm showing it here in hopes of getting some constructive feedback. I want to add the words "Nurture with Nature" or "Nurture in Nature". Originally I was going to use a monarch butterfuly, but I loved the spots on this one. Its a buckeye butterfly. It is done with acrylics on cardstock. I used the 2.75 x 4 inch size so I wouldn't have to worry about reduction later. The corners will be rounded for the deck, but I was afraid to round them myself in case they wouldn't fit the deck.
I chose the theme of nature because it is a source for much of my creativity. Things I see on my morning walk will often come out in sketches later in the day. When I'm feeling emotional just going out and sitting by my garden helps me work out what is bothering me. There are so many tiny miracles that happen without notice everyday. The transformation element of the butterfly is extremely useful to us when we are feeling uncreative, or in need of a change. If a caterpillar can complete such a drastic metamorphosis, what prohibits us from changing anything? It is very easy to become comfortable with routine. I am one of the worst offenders for this trait. The problem is that my routine can prevent me from branching out to new things, new people and new ideas. Stagnation may be comfortable, but it doesn't help me achieve all that is possible. Watching how things change in nature reminds me that change is not a bad thing. Change is necessary to growth. By embracing the miracles of nature, I open myself to seeing things in a new way and not being afraid to test out new things.
What makes you expand your views or try new things? What holds you back?