My Spring so Far

I had to show you this spectacular sunset we had some weeks back. No photo adjusting just a gift from nature! 

Of course there are flowers popping up and the inspiration is flowing. This is Lung Wort I love the fact that you get three colors from it.

Grecian Wind Flower. I learned if you aren't sure it's a weed don't pick it because these seem to pop up in a different spot each year.

 Wild Trillium - YAY! I have been waiting for them. I am trying to re-establish them in the wooded hedge row of our property that used to be a cornfield.

 Not sure what this tree is but I thought it had really cool dangly things to make a mold of for my bead making.

 Here's the other pull on my love of gardening - the vegetable garden. I started to tackle it with the help of my mighty son before it dispersed into the lawn.

Peety Pie up front and Tucker at the back.

The soil is wonderful organic broken down manure from the farm down the road. I can't wait to get more.

To my surprise the kale was growing from the old stalks! Yay! untill Peety ate it. 

Almost half way finished. You can see one of my favorite tools in the background, a potato fork and a new one below.

 The double tongs popped those dandy lions right out! I was able to plant onions, lettuce and beets.

 New Beads For April Challenge

I absolutely love this polymer clay bracelet bar that kinda came out accidentally on purpose. It is rustic and feminine which is how I describe my personality.

A lovely button came out of the challenge too also polymer clay

 

I am having so much inspirational fun with this month's Art Bead Scene's challenge!

 Here is a pendant made from polymer clay.

 And here is a kitty bracelet bar that I also made from polymer clay. I just couldn't resist him! Cat's  were a big part of my life growing up and I definitely  have kitty plans in my beading future.  I also made the button and the round beads. The solid color beads are from Gaea that I bought from
  Lima Beads.

I also incorporated 2 vintage buttons, Sari silk and small ceramic beads from Bead Haven in Frankenmuth Michigan.

For some reason I just love the minty green.

Here you can see the images that I picked out from the painting and I just couldn't resist the kitty!

I redid the button because the darker one bugged me!

 April Monthly Challenge

"Jacob’s Ladder", 1957

by Helen Frankenthaler

oil on canvas, 9' 5 3/8" x 69 7/8" (287.9 x 177.5 cm)

About the Art

The delicately colored Jacob's Ladder shows compositional echoes ranging back to Cubism and the early abstractions of Vasily Kandinsky, but as a young New York artist in the 1950s, Frankenthaler was most influenced by the Abstract Expressionists. Like Jackson Pollock, she explored working on canvases laid on the floor (rather than mounted on an easel or wall), a technique opening new possibilities in the handling of paint, and therefore in visual appearances. Letting paint fall onto canvas emphasized its physicality, and the physicality of the support too. Frankenthaler also admired the scale of Pollock's work, and she took from him, she said, her "concern with line, fluid line, calligraphy, and . . . experiments with line not as line but as shape."

Frankenthaler departed from Pollock's practice in the way she used areas of color and in her distinctive thinning of paint so that it soaked into her unprimed canvases. Because the image is so plainly embedded in the cloth, its presence as flat pigmented canvas tends to overrule any illusionistic reading of it—a priority in the painting of the time. Nor should the work's title suggest any preplanned illustrational intention. "The picture developed (bit by bit while I was working on it) into shapes symbolic of an exuberant figure and ladder," Frankenthaler said, "therefore Jacob's Ladder." MoMA, New York. Source

This month I am very excited about the painting I saw so many things that I can't stop my brain!

It has really helped me to enlarge the painting and pull out the images that I see. I do enjoy the movement and subtle layers it provides us. It reminds me of a garden.

Spring Has Sprung! At Last!

Of course the day I post this it' snowing out but it's still better than 30 degree weather.
I am so happy to see my early spring flowers popping up and wonderful Helleboris is blooming.
I love how the pink ones have an almost silvery tone to them and then I have a deep plum, yum!
These flowers really helped inspire me for the beads that I made for the March Art Bead Scene's challenge.

Here are some shrubs that I planted last fall thanks to Judy she lovingly  donated her Mock Orange shrubs. I They smell wonderful! I have 3 of them planted around my Kwanzan Cherry. 

This is how it's supposed to look. Hopefully one day.

Kwanzan Cherry

Uh oooohhhh... what happened here? I guess that's first on the list.

This is my fruit garden and I fence it off because the rabbits eat the bark off in the winter and I have lost at least 4 trees. I leave the Autumn Joy Sedum, those rusty brown things, for the butterflies in the fall and clean them up in the Spring. You can see the Daffodils popping up behind them. they go all the way down the garden.

Not a flower but Coral Bells are beautiful leaf color and shapes that start bringing the garden to life.

You can see the fern popping up   on the left and some sweet Woodruff  peeking up in the middle of the Coral Bell. Sweet Woodruff is beautiful and a wonderful accent ground cover but you have to keep and eye on it.

This is our baby pond. We have our down spouts run underground, to the dry well with another run off into the yard. I have it surrounded with shrubs for the birds.

Even though there is work coming my way I am eager to get my hands dirty every Spring!

Art Bead Scene March 2016 Challenge

On my last post I said that I saw three things in this month's painting challenge, well it really was four. Any hoo... I really love the colors and the impressionistic feel of this painting. I also draw with a lot of cross hatch and I love to carve.

Bottom line I was mostly inspired about the Spring time-ness of the painting!

These two polymer clay beads reflect the colors and the cross hatching texture.

I made this bird a couple of months back and I feel that it reflects the bird and the color of the bird that I saw in the left hand side of the painting.

Here are the owls again.

March Art Bead Scene Challenge

This month Art Bead Scene has presented a wonderful painting for us to be inspired by! I love it. It reminds of spring and boy am I am ready for it! 

When I looked at this painting I saw 3 things at first.

"Still Life with Pussy Willows"

By Taisia K. Afonina
1964, Oil on canvas
80 cm × 60 cm (32 in × 24 in)

About the Art

The painting shows a table laid for tea drinking on a spring day in a Leningrad apartment mid-1960s.
One of her most famous work, Taisa Afonina painted in April 1964 at her home in Leningrad on the Zverinskaya Street 2/5 in apartment 21. Here she lived from 1952 to 1994. Set of objects in the picture is organic and natural, causing numerous associations. Composition of the painting is devoid of stage effects. It seems that the observant eye of the artist captured on canvas daily life of a bygone era. It gives the created image a special impact to the viewer. The exquisite silver composition fills us with the invisible presence of those who are dear to us and whom we will always be waiting.
The painting was exhibited in 1965 for the first time in the Spring Exhibition of Leningrad artists in the Leningrad Union of Artists.
"Still life with Pussy-Willows" has been in many shows throughout the years and printed in several publications.

I have been playing with polymer clay using a more water color style. My pussy willow buds didn't come out as white but I enjoy the process.

I had come up with an idea for owl beads a while ago and had actually started making them when the challenge came up so I proceeded with them in this color palette. I really like them but will continue to refine them.

Chunky And Late!

One day late but hey, I was busy! 

So what did I learn abut chunky jewelry. Well for someone who doesn't always wear chunky jewelry it can be a little more of a challenge. But I'm an artist right? Should be no problem, right? Well of course I can make simple things a problem. Lately I tend to overthink things and with that I overwhelm my artistic flow. You can see from last month's post I had several Ideas and even had a color palette, ordered beads and materials to finish it. But NOOOO! I had to get myself frazzled and dislike everything. First I didn't like how dark it was, it's Spring! I wanted a lighter color palette. The new Pantone for 2016 color is Blush a baby pink and a baby blue. 

But over and over I got stuck with dark colors and antique brass. I love antique brass but not for Spring.

I went around and around and with constant interruptions from life in general stopping or slowing me down. I finally just made something that has been in my radar for a while.

I wanted to make simpler necklaces and had found some Czech owl beads from

 Solana Kai Beads. Along with other beads in a brighter color palette that I had started collecting.

I also found a chain belt at T.J. Max to take apart for this challenge.

Soooo, consequently I have a partly chunky necklace!

Package from Lima Beads. I was going to use the arrow head that I got from my father. I really wanted to do a primitive theme. I'm still going to work on this one though.

Here's the end result chunky ring, chunky clay bead.