Fine Line

It was 70 degrees in Lexington today....strange for January 12th...but perfect for a walk with Anita.  Here are some random photos from the walk....all unrelated to the topic I'm writing about....just something to look at...and each of these things made me pause and smile.

Winter Witch Hazel 

There's fine line I walk when writing this blog about not getting too personal.  Many of you know me pretty well, a few of you are getting to know me from a distance, and others only know the bits and pieces I share here. For the most part I try to keep the personal stuff to a minimum.....but that's hard to do because there's nothing more personal than joy. 

Today was the first Sunday at Hancock Church when it was publicly known that my husband Paul will retire as of November 1st....and it was emotional.  November seems like a long way away...but then again it's right around the corner.

You don't have to pick up everything.

Pieces and parts of our transition will most certainly find their way into this blog over the next several months.  I will be melding two houses....reinventing spaces at the condo....and handling and making decisions about almost everything we own. Although the condo is large, there is no basement and I am at the point in my life where I need to let things go...except maybe art and craft supplies.

I'm excited about what lies ahead for us and I'm looking forward to living in just one place....for as long as we choose to stay. Carol, the church moderator recently told Paul that every minister is a transition minister....and that has really resonated with me.  

A sticky looking rainbow on the pavement

What it made me realize is that every home in our whole married life has been a transition home....a temporary landing place until it was time to move on. We've lived in some wonderful places....but in some ways it feels like I finally will be going home.

Thanks in advance for walking this fine line with me during this transition.

Speaking of transitions.....the destination of our walk today was the "Granite Forest" in Lincoln Park. My friend David is working with his committee to create a mediative space that will combine repurposed granite slabs, plantings and nature, and poetic engravings.  It will be fun to watch it evolve.

Reasons To See The Principal

My friend Anne sent me a progress update on her Fun-A-Day cathedral window project.  She's right on schedule and doing great! Thanks Anne!

 

I came across another hand made stamp....this time two different sized circles on each end of a cork.  I'm kind of chuckling because the actual ends of the cork could have done the same thing.  I can't even remember what I used it for but I like the fact that the hand carved circles are a little more organic and not so perfect. Maybe it will be useful in the class.

 

Notice the bandage?  I pulled a muscle in my left thumb....and when I do certain things it's quite painful.  It's unbelievable how much I use it....I've just taken it for granted all this time.  I'm trying to give it stability with the bandage while it heals. 

My fingers look all gooey in the pictures because I did a background collage on a paint panel for a Fabulous Florals painted paper collage. I may go over it with a light wash of paint to soften it a bit.  I primed the 8x8 board with gesso then collaged the papers with soft gel medium.

My plan is to prepare several boards in different ways so I'm ready to roll.

I found this checklist for "reasons you have to see the principal".....thought it was pretty funny.  What in the world is an unexcused illness? 

I also collected a few of my commercial stamps that might be useful to create textures on the painted papers.  I really have NO idea at this point...I'm just shopping the studio!  I think I have "JOY" covered!  

Where There's A Will....

...there's a way.  I love a good home improvement project.

The linear feet of books along the floor in several rooms at the condo has been growing by the minute so it was time for a solution.

The day started with a blank slate....a blue blank slate to be exact.

The bookshelves are three different heights to follow the angle of the ceiling and the tallest one was too big to make the corner into the room. As Dave was contemplating where to cut it.....we realized it would fit through the bay window....just barely!  Where there's a will there's a way.  Phew!

And it's in!!!

I couldn't be more excited....about the shelves AND getting to load them up and style them. The shorter cabinet on the right will be closed storage with a thick wooden top.  It completely changes they way this room feels.

Back in Maine

"You will never change anything that you are willing to tolerate." Myles Munroe

I'm back in Maine for a few days and I enjoyed a few minutes at my puzzle table.....and yes....we're still enjoying our tree with just lights. 

Mostly I worked on chores and clearing table space in my studio for the Fabulous Florals class. We aren't going to actually start working on the steps until next week but I'm still gathering my supplies.

For gel plate printing I will need a variety of things to create textures in the paint.  I found this homemade stamp I made a long time ago on a wooden block...one side has a star and another side has a checkerboard....it might be useful.

Hopes and Fears

My biggest motivation for taking the Fabulous Flowers class is another chance to learn from an artist I admire, Elizabeth St. Hilaire.

And...the thought of painting with bits of recycled painted papers makes me kind of giddy. I've been saving interesting papers, book pages, and ephemera for years and I can't wait to start painting them....and painting with them.

Another motivating factor for taking the class is that I'm terrible at painting. But the idea of doing a loose underpainting then collaging over it seems rather hopeful...and at the very least a fun way to face my fear. I'm kind of chuckling....because I'm actually not very good at doing anything loose....so we'll see how this goes.

I've used my gel plate only once....and it was a hot mess. I've seen so many artists use their painted papers in such creative and interesting ways and I'm looking forward to learning and practicing the techniques. A gel plate is a squishy slab that you can roll paint on with a brayer, create textures, then make mono prints layering colors as you go. There will be much more on gel prints in the next few weeks when I really get rolling.....pun intended.  

This image of "painted papers" is from Elizabeth's online gel plate course...I just adore all the rich colors and textures.  In the class we will create a "palette" of colors that we'll tear up into bits to paint our Fabulous Florals.  How fun it that!

These sweet paper painted birds by Elizabeth just make me melt.

I'm thinking a fabulous bird is in my future too!

Paper Paintings

I't's a new year....perfect timing for a class!  Today I started a 5 week on-line course from an artist I've admired for quite some time.  Elizabeth St. Hilaire creates impressionistic paintings from tidbits of torn painted papers and teaches her techniques online and in beautiful places all over the world.

I'll share my motivations and goals...and my fears in the next little while....this post is about celebrating Elizabeth's art.  All of these images are either from her Paper Paintings Instagram or Facebook Pages.

I'm especially fond of Elizabeth's birds.

  

You may recognize this one....the canvas print is sold in stores and as a matter of fact my sister Angie has it hanging in her living room.






I'm also quite fond of her fruits and veggies.


 










The class is called Fabulous Florals and this Instagram post gives you a little snapshot of what we'll be doing.  Today was the first set of videos with an introduction, overview, and prep work as we gather supplies.  I can't wait to really dig in....but that may not be until next week.  I need to practice patience.....but I'm so excited to paint with papers!

Baubles

I'm back in Lexington after a long stretch in Maine and came home to a house still fully decorated for Christmas. My very first reaction was to sigh...but I quickly changed my attitude and reframed my thinking. Over the next few days I'll put on some music and get into my joyful puttering mode as I pack away my Christmas treasures.  Today I undecorated my tree.

I love handling my collection of ornaments acquired over time....many of them handmade or special gifts. But I will admit that I also love my bright colorful baubles....they just make me smile. Most of the baseball and Red Sox ornaments were on the tree in Maine....this one, however, stayed closer to Fenway.

Simple Things

The last couple of days have been pretty busy....but I enjoyed taking time for a few simple things including redoing Margie's door wreath.

We're changing it up every season/holiday so I removed all the Christmas red and added one little snowflake and a dangling glittery "peace."  And the perfect finishing touch for the wintery wreath was this lovely silvery ribbon for the bow from Janice. 

Doing these simple things for Margie brings me a lot of joy.  I'm already thinking about popping in a few red hearts for Valentine's Day.

It goes well with this lovely view into the woods...I love that single birch.

More Tried and True

This was one of those days I was glad to have a blog post draft to fall back on.  My day kind of got away from me and I thought this post was worth finishing up and sharing. 

There's nothing more simple...and nothing more tried and true than basic circles and squares....especially when you have punches that do most of the work for you.  

I punched up a greeting card into 6 squares and heavy gold foil wrapping paper into 6 large circles. With wrong sides together I folded the circle around the square.  Simple as that....just a bit of glueing and I had a Christmas card to send.

Normally I would glue the circle edges down...but I really liked the way the foil popped up creating interesting dimension.  

For this one I used a variety of recycled Christmas cards. 

I used the same technique in a shared art journal several years and ago.....you can read about that here.  I used punched watercolor squares and blue paper circles.  Here I did glue down the circle edges....and I outlined them with a black sharpie.  This technique is very similar to the cathedral window quilt square.

And.....I went back to my tried and true mosaic tile technique with Margie's coloring squares and made two more cards to go with her notecard Christmas present.

The coloring pages are punched from a smaller square punch and glued onto lightweight black card stock...then re-punched with a larger square. It looks like you've done a lot of fussy cutting....but it's just punched and re-punched squares.  A tried and true process I'll use again and again.

Long Shadows and Stats

I love the long afternoon shadows on the snow in the woods.

I can't let today go by without marking the anniversary of the start of this blog.  On January 3rd 2015 with the help of my niece Clarke, I started sharing my stories, my projects, and my daily joy here in this space. Today I start my 6th year and I still chuckle when I think about the fact that Paul asked me way back when if I would run out of things to say. I guess he has his answer....he's one of my faithful readers.

I am so appreciative that there are people who take the time to read it.....even if it's just a glance. I've loved the connections I've made with friends and family through it and the new friendships I've made because of it.  It continues to be positive force in my day and enough people have shared that it's been good for them too so I guess I'll keep going. 

Here are my 5 year stats:

I've published 1815 posts.
I've got 85 unpublished drafts....most of which just need to be deleted but goes to show there's a lot of joy that never gets shared. 
I've had 83, 345 total page views....and that doesn't count people who read it though e-mail.  I average between 40 and 70 a day....with outliers both high and low.

Blogspot tracks everything including where the page views come from and here is a chart of the countries and the number of all time views from each country.  Kind of mind boggling.

I'll end with the photo I posted on that first post...the moon through the trees as I was leaving Connie's after an evening of caregiving. Still one of my very favorite photos.....still one of my favorite people. 

Congratulations for making it to the end of this post...and THANK YOU for spending time with me here!

Tried and True

I was nudged by this image on Instagram.....so started my batik project today.  

After some fiddling and experimenting with patterns and blocks....I ended up with tried and true simple strips.  I want this piece to be somewhat of a landscape so working horizontally made the most sense.  I started in the middle with the focal point reds, oranges, and golden yellows....and I'm just starting to add purples.  Right now it's about 40 inches wide so it's going to be a big piece....maybe 30 x 40ish. I"m looking forward to moving into some other colors....but it's a good start!




As I browsed through cami.loves.color's other Instagram posts....this one made me smile.  I guess I love colors too.

A New Year!

Happy 2020! It will be whatever it needs to be! 

It was nice to see the sunshine after a couple of stormy days and it was a lovely morning for a walk.

And there's nothing better than new puzzle and company for dinner and cards. Life is good so far in 2020!

And it's especially good when Janice brings lobster nachos for an appetizer.  Yummy Joy!