Artful Adventures

Happy Mother's Day!

It doesn't matter if you are the mother of the 2 legged variety, the 4 legged furry variety, or if you have a plant on your windowsill-everyone is a Mother of somebody or something.  That said, may your day be filled with the simplest of pleasures that make you happy.  Like the lowly viola above, about as common as it can get, but also oh so wonderful!  First to bloom, last to die, and next year will pop up in the most unexpected places-the kind of tenacity that you have to admire.  The kind of tenacity it takes to be a Mother, first up in the morning, last to go to bed at night, and yet you are beautiful to those around you.  Now go celebrate, enjoy, and have some fun today!

Fall colors, but no orange:)

 

Last week on one windy day, every single leaf fell off this tree, exposing this nest that we didn't even know was there.  Another one of those fall wonders, watching colors change, leaves falling off & flying all over the place, covering the ground in wonderful shades of yellows, oranges, burgundy, and a fewe brown.  I'm so shoping to have a little free time to go gather some of them up to dry.  A few seconds in the  MicroFleur and they're perfectly flat & ready to be stored & used in art this winter.

Rather than show the brilliant fall foliage, thought I'd share some other plants instead.  This plant has turned into an unexpected surprise, and a welcome one at that.  We've had it for years, but moved it this year and split it up.  It wasn't liking it at all at first, and took a lot of tlc to convince it to live.  But once that it decided to live, it went to town, spread like crazy and has been in bloom for months.  Sometimes, plants (or people!) just need to find their element, the place that's right for them, and then you cxan sit back & watch them thrive & grow.   

The Obiedient plant is another one of those fall surprises, it doesn't look like much of anything all summer, but when fall rolls around it puts out it's delicate purple flowers that last well into frost.  And did you know how it got it's name?  If you gently push a blossom to one side or the other, it'll just stay there-very obiedient indeed!   

And for an update on the patient, he's doing just fine!  With all the bedrooms on the 2nd floor, we had to bring in a hospital bed & park it in the living room (right in front of the tv-lol) until he can manage the stairs with crutches.  In the meantime, the dogs are loving it, they just hop right up there with him & make themselves to home:)  Mr. Silk just plops right on top of him, while Mr. Smooth chooses the edge of the bed, and they sleep up there all day long!  The surgery day was a long one, it got pushed back about 1 and 1/2 hours, then took longer than expected.  By the time they got him settled back into the short stay unit, it was obvious that he wasn't coming home that night.  He was white as a ghost and couldn't keep his eyes open for more than a minute, so the decision was made to leave him there & bring him home the next morning.   

Jessie came up to the hospital after work, drove me home from the hospital, and then spent the night here.  It's been awhile since this child of mine has stayed here, so it felt good to have her around.  The next morning with the help of Trina, we managed to get both him and the extra car that was left at the hospital overnight, home-safe & sound.  I needed the extra help here anyway to get him back into the house-getting up those few steps that we have just to get inside the house are tricky on crutches when you're not used to using them.  And with Trina being an RN, I felt comfortable that if there was a problem, she'd know what to do, and Jessie kept a level head-all helping to counteract me being a nervous wreck:)  

When we drove up the driveway, we were greeted by this beautiful banner made by Paige & Sarah who had come over while we were gone and hung it across the front of the garage-what a wonderful surprise!  Being the budding artists that they are, they had leaf prints on there, had cut out letters from magazines to form words, used some stamps, did some drawing, and in general were quite creative & extremely thoughtful!  It won't be forgotten. 

With this being the first summer that Gary was retired, it seemed like rather than get more chores done around here, we got less done!  It was offically a summer of goofing off, I quess.  So when this surgery came up so fast, it was glaringly obvious just how much had been pushed to the back burner.  After the initial panic of trying to get everything done quick, then realizing that it wasn't going to happen, there's no choice but to just go with it-and learn a good lesson!  Not cutting the peonies back turned out to be a good thing, the pods & seeds that they make are pretty interesting, don't you think?  I'm picturing maybe a little spray paint, maybe not, who knows really, and long stems of them in a tall floor vase, or maybe in an assemblage.  Lots of possibilities here!  And to end tonight, have to share a little of the jewel like berries that form on the porcelain vine.  They look like little pearls to me!  Tomorrow morning, Amanda is coming to take me to the hospital for the first of who knows how many spoinal injections.  They're sedating me so I need a driver, and Gary can't drive, so once again I'm so fortunate to have friends that'll help.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that all goes well tomorrow!

Just some rambling today-

 

As if the fall colors all around us aren't enough, you can always count on Mums in full bloom this time of year, to add to the bursts of color.  It's kind of funny, after taking care of pots of flowers all summer, I'm so over it all by now that I've never bought a mum for fall in my life.  But they are pretty:)   

The day started out all sunny & perfect looking that we opened windows & turned the furnace off.  By the time the Packer game started it was clouding up a bit and feeling cooler-an omen for what was to come.  You quessed it, the Packers lost.  I'll always be a Packer fan, but it sure is a lot more fun when they win, and especially when Favre played.  All right, I'm over it, time to move on & get used to the Packers minus Favre, but it just seems like he'd been here forever.  And now to see him in another uniform-blech! 

Every fall we get these giant white things growing in the yard, Gary calls them puffballs, I call them wierd!  Especially this year, normally they're round instead of this goofy, although interesting, abstract shapes.  For size reference, the middle one is about 18" across.  Never in my life did I see anything like this until we moved out here.   

See how pretty & sunny it was here yesterday?  You often hear me talk about the lake & the beach in Algoma, but not so often about the bay side of the peninsula.  This is where we get the fabulous sunset photos, a little park (Red River Park) that's just a couple of miles from here.  Yesterday Amanda came over to work on some art projects.  It's always with the best of intentions, but we spend more time chatting than arting:)  For lunch we ran into Dyckesville to The Bowl for lunch, absolutely delicious, but you can just about feel the arteries clogging as you're eating!  From there we took the short ride up to Red River Park for a few minutes to show Amanda, who had never been there before.   

Look on the bottom right part of the photo, the part that looks like beach.  It's really heaps of mussell shells, all along the shoreline are piles of them.  I hate walking on it, there's just something wrong with hearing that crunching sound with each footstep.  Yeah, I know, a wierd quirk, but I can't help it.  I started a necklace yesterday with some new beads that I hadn't used before, only to find out that they weren't drilled big enough all the way through.  Hate when that happens!  Gary decided he'd try drilling them out which set up a whole set of problems, including a discussion of "lefty loosy, righty tighty".  It seems that the flexshaft thingy on my Dremel is frozen/rusted in place, when the bit that's in there now wears out, there just may have to be a funeral for the poor thing.  The only thing I ever use it for is for drilling pearls & stones, both of which are drilled underwater, so some water always spashes up on it.  Nobody ever told me to take it apart & let it dry out after I used it!  If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestion!  And if you're using your drill like me, let the poor thing dry out once in awhile:)  There's a reason why I'm not big on using power tools! 

New jewelry & a little summer

 

Remember when I recently posted about going to the Rings & Things bead show?  Well, I dug right in and got some work done, including this necklace made entirely from African Trade beads and found the perfect piece of vintage jewelry in my stash for the pendant.  It measures about 32" long, not including the pendant.  I've got 6 new pieces made, all of whioch are now for sale at The Flying Pig, but will post maybe half of them today & the rest in a day or so, too many photos for 1 post otherwise! 

For some reason, we're (by we, I mean Gary-lol) still finding photographing jewelry difficult, although it gets better each time.  Today it seems I can't get the colors right, not sure if it's my eyes because I didn't sleep much last night, or if it's the monitor, whatever the case may be, please bear with me.   

I think you'll just have to make a road trip to Algoma to see waht these really look like:)  This one is labradorite, trade beads, coin pearls & some of the prettiest freshwater pearls that I''ve ever owned.  They're really a darkish kind of blue/purple, but seem to change a bit in the light.   

There, finally!  This color is more what it really looks like.  The focal is a gorgeous lampwork bead, from a series of tree of life beads, this being one of the nightime versions showing the moon behind the branches.  I love this bead!  This one measures about 24", not including the drop.   

Last one for today, I feel like an infomercial:)  This one is about 28" long with the drop of stick pearls being about 2 and1/2" long.  Finally got smart & wired those little puppies together, they always want to spin aruond in different directions otherwise, drove me crazy!  Besides stones from the lake that we picked, there's sunstone with the faintest gold glint to it, coin & regular freshwater pearls.  So there you have it, that's what I've been doing lately!  Still want to tear down some large sheets of watercolor paper today, so I can get some walnut ink stained & others nature printed.  Here in WI, fall is happening quickly and we'll be stuck in the house before we know it.  If not stuck in here, it'll be too cold to do that kind of thing outside at least.   

Not sure why, but we didn't spend as much time by the beach in Algoma this summer.  Actually, I honestly don't know what happened to summer this year.  All I do know is poof-it's almost gone! 

This old lighthouse is a favorite sight of mine.  Nothing fancy, but if I look at a picture of it any time of the year, I can hear the waves & feel the warmth of the sun.  Lighthouse paintings are a favorite thing it seems, in Door County.  You see them everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.  It's ok, I suppose, and if I could paint one I'm sure I'd think it was fabulous:)  ok, I'm rambling, so lets move on----- 

There's a cool boardwalk that's lit & has benches along the way, lining the beach in Algoma.  For such a small town, it's a nice touch.  It's not a huge beach, or a fancy beach, but still---it's a beach!  And I'm always surprised at how few people go there.  It's rare that you can't grab a picnic table.  I keep a bag of books, pens, sketch pad, etc in the car so if we decide to stop there, I can go sit at a table & read or art while looking & listening to the water-one of my favorite things to do.  Well, looks like I ended up with a bunch of pictures after all!  ONe more & then I'll stop-promise!  Our passion flower has been putting on quite a show for the last few weeks, putting out a new flower almost everyday, which is about how long they last-one day!  But oh so worth it!

Summer Treasures

Don't you just love this time of year?  Second cutches of baby birds, robins in this case, keeping the parents busy at the feeders and raising a ruckus if a cat or some other critter comes too close to home.  You can just sit outside & listen and get a good idea of what's happening, and I love watching them all frantically feeding their babies. Summer around here is fast & furious, we wait forever for it to get here, then complain it's too hot, and now worried that it's already August and almost over.  We humans are a strange lot when you think about it!

This cardinal flower, which is in the lobelia family, has been blooming this brilliant red color for over 10 years now. It's in a spot up against a very tall pale pink plumed filipendula, the contrast is gorgeous.  They're a very particular flower to grow, and it's been said that I'm lucky it keeps coming back, but it does, year after year.  Tomorrow moring, Amanda and I are heading out for Valley Ridge to take a class with Misty Mawn on Thursday & Friday, coming home again on Saturday.  It was a last minute decision to leave a day early, so I've been running around all day trying to cram in an extra day's stuff into 1 less day.  It'll be fun to have a day out of town to explore for a change and I'm looking forward to that.

Every summer the birds plant sunflowers for us by dropping seeds from the feeder.  This year, they seem especially beautiful, and the placement is perfect as you drive up the driveway and approach the house-love that!

These flowers have always fascnated me, and I love the texture when you get up close & personal.  Something I always say I'm going to use in my artwork, but still haven't.  Note to self-get on that!

And as you get even closer, you might get lucky enough to see a little critter like this bee doing it's work.  Ok, I'm rambling now and I really need to be packing instead.  See you again on Saturday!

30 years and still going

Never did get around to finishing up the post that I started a couple of days ago-it's been crazy here! 

Tuesday was our 30th anniversary, and here we are-mid 80's(temperature-not age!!), humid, sweaty and a bad hair day, but we're at our favorite place to be, The Flying Pig, standing in front of one of my favorite artist's work, Jen Worden, and wearing my anniversary gift, a perfectly beautiful Nina necklace.  Talk about being surrounded by inspiration! 

The back of this necklace says it all, the hearts around here began to fly 30 years ago.  There's been ups & downs, but we're still here! 

Last week end, Gary attended class with me at Valley Ridge for the first time.  We were so busy doing our own thing, that I wasn't paying any attention to what he was making.  Turns out he had planned ahead, and the first piece of art he made was for our anniversary.

I was shocked-and touched, deeply touched!  It's hard to see through the mica covering the piece, but at the top it says "thirtieth", the word over the domino says "anniversary, and the domino numbers are for the year we were married-look close, you'll see 1978.  Is that sweet or what?

And a close up of the little nest he included with a heart shaped rock--

When we got back into town on Monday from class, we stopped to visit a friend of mine at work, where I used to work actually, adn was wondering why Cindy was frantically trying to put a vase of flowers together, saying it was late for a delivery.  She lied, it was for me, from Gary:)  A beautiful vase with ---

birds of paradise------

lilies-----

purple carnations----

 

gerbera daisies--

And roses!  Dinner out, and a wonderful card-pretty much perfect all the way around!

Reflections of July

 

This past couple of weeks, I've been quieter than normal, as I always am the first half of July.  Yesterday was the anniversary of my sister's death, July 18, 1976.  That date just sticks with me, I can picture my Dad answering the phone when my Mother called from the hospital, waking up my brother to tell him that Gina was gone, it's just like it happened yesterday.  So every year when July rolls around and we get the hot & humid weather, I just brace myself for "that day" to come & be gone.  Today I feel better about it, now it's behind me-until next year. After always admiring how Nina has often captured rain drops with her camera, showing reflections of the surroundings in those little drops, we finally got it-yay!  Not raindrops, but from the heavy dew that we've been having in the mornings from the extreme humidity that's planted itself over the state.  Funny how sometimes the drops look like little crystals, and the extreme close up of the foliage itself has been interesting.  Like life, if you always settle for taking everything at face value and don't look closely, you'll never know what you may miss.  So look around today, look closely, and tell me what you discovered, I'd love to hear about it. Our hollyhocks have never looked better this year, standing tall & proud.  But somehow they managed to seed themselves all around the outside edge of a garden, so the middle is completely hidden.  Another project to tackle next year and get it back under control. The hollyhock leaves get attacked each & every year by bugs that leave this leaf skeleton behind.  But it's ok, I'll cut it off, save it, and someday it'll find it's way onto a collage.  I love the colors & textures surrounding us this time of year, with some plants just hitting their prime and others leaving behine the texture of a spent flower head.  Always gets the mind whirling for future art projects.  Which remind me, there's a necklace partially finsihed that's calling my name!  Enjoy the week end!

The Things I've seen!

Definition of persistence-trying to post today!  This is about the 5th try, went right past the 3rd time's a charm thing, and kept right on going.  There's more pictures than words today, in trying to show you all what I've been seeing lately, summer's good for that, isn't it?                                                      

  Last night, Trina (the neighbor from across the street) came over to show us a baby oriole.  Apparently the chicks fell out of their nest the night before when the wind kicked up, but the parents were continuing the feed them while the brave little souls tried hopping from branch to branch, sometimes landing in the tall grass.  This little guy has managed to survive, with help from Trina who made a quick road trip to the closest bait shop for some yummy grubs that he gobbled right up.  The whole neighborhood is cheering him on!  Here we go again (you're all saying that right?) with more beach pictures, as if you didn't see enough of it last year.  But this was the first time this summer that it's actually been warm enough to tolerate sitting there-that wind coming off Lake Michigan is wicked!  But the water was as blue as I've ever seen it, and relatively calm besides. We weren't the only ones enjoying though, we were treated to watching a bunch of young seagulls playing around in the water.  They appered to be having a ball!  Can't be a summer post without more flower pictures from around the yard.  Here's a few, with more to follow in the days ahead. For tonight, last but absolutely not least, is of another sunset taken at Red River Park.  I've shown them here before, but this is by far the most gorgeous sunset that I've ever seen.  It was impossible to choose a favorite out of the bunch that Gary shot, one was more perfect than the next, so I finally grabbed this one-enjoy it!  And I hope you all get to see such a sight as this soon!

A quick recap of the week-how did that fly by so quickly?

 Yesterday was a stormy,hot, humid, sticky icky kind of day, with storms hammering most of the state.  Just as it was getting close to the sun going down last night, it was storming and yet there was a spot where the sun managed to reach through and shine on top of a low layer of clouds.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but there were so many layers of clouds that were visible, making it strangely beautiful.

Not quite sure how last week flew by, but fly by it did!  Last week end Jeremy was here to help Gary take down some trees.  There's always some sort of glitch that happens so it never all gets done, but at least it's started.  In the middle of it, the chainsaw broke so that took several hours and an internet search to figure out how to fix it, and they were back in business.  Those 2 scare me when they do this-something ALWAYS happens, they've never gotten hurt but the potential has certainly been there! 

This time around, it was the ladder that took a beating.  A limb didn't go down as expected and just like that, the ladder got trashed.  But the good news is that neither of them were on it at the time!  Like I said-those 2 scare me sometimes! 

Gary did find time to rearrange some of his found metal treasures on a stump in the yard, and just like that we have new yard art!

Seeing that for this post, I'm just hitting a few things frm the week (more to come later) I have to share the baby birds:)  Chickadees set up house in a bluebird house (we have everything BUT bluebirds that use the 3 houses we have for them!) after hearing babies chirping last week end, it was time to investigate.  Gary was able to get a picture of them through the top of the box, but it has wire over it to keep unwanted critters out of there, so you'll have to look close to see them.  The 3 babies are all sitting butt to butt, so cute!    More & more flowers are blooming everyday, more pictures of that coming soon.  Funny story about the poppies, we tried for years & years to get a transplant to take of these flowers, what we didn't know is that once you get them, they take over!  After killing off some perennials with their rambunctious growth, we finally got them moved to an area that's not too bad, but they need to be moved again soon.  Last week, I was visiting Jen Worden's blog, and she mentioned how sometimes it seems like no art is being made, when in reality, it's really is being made, just not done & ready to show, and then all of a sudden there's a bunch that's done.  That's so true!  Once again, I have a bunch of things in progress, but nothing ready to post, although a couple of neckalces just need to be aged & polished and then they're ready to go.  But the canvas work, that's another story!  There's a bunch in various stages of completion, but with every layer of paint or glue, there's a day of drying it seems.  So my question is, when I see folks churning out a couple of canvases a day, how the hell do they do it!  Speaking of arting, Jen's challenge for this month is to grab one of the many art technique books you own and work through the book-great idea!  One of the books I recently got was Acrylic Revolution written by Nancy Reyner.  It's a great book with a ton of techniques, some of which I've done, but most are new to me.  The really nice thing (for me anyway) is she shows everything using Golden products which is what I use anyway, making it much easier to get the desired results, perfect!  And to make it even better, Michelle Ward's challenge for this month at her other site, GPP Street Team, is to work with a resist.  She's using wax (or crayon) for the resist, but there's a different resist technique in this book that I may try instead or do both, but any way you look at it, I can do both challenges at once, you gotta love it when that happens:)   Ok, I need more coffee!  One last photo of a portion of a shade garden we did last summer in the front of the house, which turned out even better than I'd hoped for.  Oh, one more thing-anyone joining me in sending in their skinny jeans?  Read the previous post if you need to refresh your memory, but lets all do this!

Getting ready for some summer fun!

Check this out!  This box of innocent looking jars are going to give me hours of fun dying paper, fabric & ribbon this summer-I feel like the mad scientist about to embark on a new experiment.  Actually, that pretty much describes it:)  Awhile back, I talked about Mixed Media Nature Journals written by L.K. Ludwig, rather than repeat myself too much, you can go back & read it here.  For once in my life, I wanted to be prepared, so I made sure that I had plenty of Fabriano watercolor paper on hand (love that stuff!) and then went on over to Dharma Trading Co to order dye.  Sounds simple enough, until I got over there and saw all the possibilities, amazing!  Look here and here and then just keep digging through the site, there are enough ideas to keep anyone busy for a very long time!  This morning we ran into Kewaunee for an estate sale, it's that time of year for all kinds of sales, so off we went.  Not quite sure just yet how or when I'll use this stuff, but it was too cool to leave behind.  See that's the problem at these sales, no time to think, because if you don't grab whatever it is that you're looking at right away, it's gone right before your eyes.  But I'm either going have to do some assemblage pieces soon or I'm going to run out of room in here!  The other thing that keeps me out of the studio for a bit this time of year, is playing in the dirt & potting up containers.  Here's part of one of a pair, to go on each side of the front door.  It's the north side, so not much sun, but by incorporating houseplants, I can still have color in the shade and even bring the container in for the winter and keep it for next year.  See, the old mind is always whirling:)  The violas will drop seeds on the ground beneath it for next year, and the dusty miller, strobilanthus, and streptacarpus all make good houseplants.  I've always said planning a garden (or container) is like collage-layering colors, texture, shape & form-maybe we could coin a new term & like "art gardening", well, ok we can probably do better than that, but it'll do for now.  In the meantime, our flower gardens have gotten out of control over the last few years, so I've got Gary digging up, splitting, & moving plants all over.  And then we keep finding new ones-can't win!  Like this beauty we found at The Flying Pig out in the greenspace.  Robyn does a great job on getting her hands on some different plants to keep our gardens interesting and fresh looking.  Now we need rain to keep the gardens looking good, so far we've had very little.  Hoping this isn't a repeat of last summer!  Ok, now go plant something, I'd love to see what you all come up with!