Striped Antennae

With Rain Come Snails

On Deck

Typewriter

Morning Dew on the Prickly Pear

Summer Peaches

It's the Weekend!

Rhododendron

In my Garden

While the children played "Watermelon" against the garage, I took some macro shots in the garden. Though I'm not trying, I somehow seem to be getting a lot of bee pictures. This one's rather pretty, if you ask me; look at the wonderful pattern on its abdomen. Isn't it cool, too, how clearly you can see through its wings? I also love the confetti-like feel of the center of the Stokes Aster and the myriad of colors in the center of the coneflower. It's hard to imagine that these will become the seeds the birds flock to in the fall. Right now, they almost seem dipped in marmalade.

Little Things

I have lots of "big" ideas in my head, but haven't really had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the studio to get started. But I have had a chance to do a few small projects. First, it's my aunt's 90th birthday later this week so I made a special birthday card to mail off. I hope the foil will survive the trip to Germany.


I'm always intrigued by the stamps people make for themselves, so I decided to try it myself. I don't have the supplies to carve stamps, but I did have some craft foam sheets at home and some plexiglass squares (I have no idea where they came from!). I cut out some Xs and glued them to the plexiglass.


My Xs aren't too exact, but I really love how they stamp. I went a little wild yesterday, stamping all over leftover bits and scraps.


I'm also working on 4" x 4" squares for a swap with my fiber arts group. The squares are due in September, but we have to keep them under wraps until the exchange. I thought I was headed in one direction -- perhaps working in a series -- but a lack of supplies and time has sent me into completely different and random directions. I need to start now since I'm such a pokey worker. I'm already worried that I'll be scrambling at the end to get them all finished. I'll be sure to post a picture of all that I made, along with all the pieces I get in return in the fall.

Lilies

In a small flower bed by a parking lot, I was captivated by the colors of the lilies. Remarkable...

Esperimento

"Camp Mommy" was open for business this past week; in other words, I was entertaining my youngest. So, while my little camper painted on 6" x 6" canvas, I did too. Since I've never used mounted canvas before, I deemed each one an experiment, "esperimento" in Italian. I sampled techniques and products that I've been curious about and I ended up with three very different looking pieces.

Esperimento Uno: textile paint; freezer paper and tape resists; corrugated cardboard stamp; inked letter stamps; Aqua pastel crayons; cheesecloth adhered with gel medium; oil paint sticks


Esperimento Due: textile paint; bubblewrap print; scraps of gelatin plate printed cloth and oil paint stick rubbed cloth adhered with gel medium


Esperimento Tre: brayer applied textile paint; stenciled lettering; Pigma pen drawing; pencil drawing; pastel crayon

A Summer's Day

I went to the Central Park Zoo yesterday with my youngest and ended the day with a game of hoops with my son. It was such fun. Here are a few pictures:

On Assignment

I'm lucky enough to be part of a fiber arts group with Jane Davila at the helm. We meet once a month to discuss topics of interest to the group, ranging from rejection letters to how to take good pictures of our art. We also have "projects", for lack of a better word. Earlier this year, we worked together to mount a group exhibit. Last week, Jane tasked us with taking macro photographs -- for what end, I don't know. But this is certainly an assignment I can sink my teeth into. I'm hoping to post some of my macro shots periodically throughout the summer. Here's a start to my collection of close-ups. Can you guess what they are?




Another nice benefit of the group is the opportunity for critique. I brought along my flower piece for feedback. The consensus was that the flower outline needed to be darker. I didn't have thicker thread to use as some members had suggested, so I went over the outline a few times as Jane recommended. Melanie liked the hand stitching, but urged me to do some in contrasting thread elsewhere on the piece. I thought that was a good idea and the yellow lines behind the flower and in the lower left hand corner are the result. Now, I think I'm done.

Sewer Art

My eldest daughter is in Ecuador; my son is at an out-of-state baseball tournament; my husband is in a golfing tournament. That leaves my youngest and I at home to celebrate the Fourth. We're keeping it low-key and doing fun things that we girls like to do: jumping rope, baking muffins, eating popcorn while watching movies, and making ART!

I've been spying the sewer cover in the road by our driveway for quite a while and today I finally had a chance to play with it. My daughter and I took some fabric squares and oil paint sticks to rub over the surface. Even though we had the same colors at our disposal and the same sewer to work with, our art turned out very differently. My daughter used both the sewer cover and the road surface to create her texture. I think hers will make a great whole cloth little wall hanging. I love the bumpiness that the asphalt gave the rubbing. I think I'm going to borrow that on my next sewer piece.


Mine is just an abstract with the squares of the cover, along with random letters and numbers. I think I can use this as a piece of background fabric.


This is something we're going to do again sometime soon and we'll post the results when we do. In the meantime, HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Monarch Paparazzi

I behaved like paparazzi today, relentlessly pursuing a monarch with my camera. No, not Prince William or anyone like that, but a monarch butterfly. It's the first one I've seen all year and it was beautiful. I couldn't resist taking both color and black and white photos.



Yesterday I added some cross stitch to my work in progress. The family's consensus: not the best thing I've ever done (I agree, but not everything can be a masterpiece -- on the other hand, I learned a lot from this and that's good); and, don't add any more stitching or it will look too busy. That was unexpected. So for now, I'm going to consider this one done (I'm not sure it's worth putting any more time or effort into it anyway) and get to work on some color / value exercises I'd like to try.


Oh, and has anyone ever seen a green bee before? I saw one today. Wow, huh? I never knew....