Tuesday, June 29, 2010

MOO has landed!


Last month, Jenny Doh put forth a call for MOO cards (moo.com). These little cards are like baby business cards - barely 1" x 2-3/4". I've toyed with the idea of making MOO cards from time to time but just never got to it. When Jenny's call came I decided the time was NOW! It was really easy to upload some photos of my recent artwork & enter the necessary info for the backs. Here are cards from my first batch of MOOs.

And I just discovered one of my cards on Jenny Doh's blog at http://jennydoh.typepad.com. See if you can find it - the photo above gives you a hint of what to look for - it will be found in her posts last week.

Have you MOOed yet?

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Hollyhocks Class




My hollyhocks class was a great success! Everyone had a good time playing with paint, wax and learning a new embellishment technique or two. This was a more impressionistic painting and all the finished paintings turned out great - they all did an outstanding job!! Here are a few photos of them all hard at work...

Friday, June 4, 2010

Hollyhocks in My Garden



I love flowers. And living in Florida gives us the chance to have flowers nearly year around - notwithstanding the last couple of winters! There are some northern varieties that are hard to come by, though. Most of the bulbs - daffodils, tulips, bearded iris - don't do well in the ground. There isn't enough reliable cold weather for the dormant stage these flowers must endure to bloom the next season. We can get some of them seasonally in pots and I do so every chance I get and photograph them to death! For my iris fix, I have to make the trip home to Tennessee and photograph my mother's iris. Her iris are true family heirlooms and came from my dad's mother. They are truly wonderful and a sight to behold when in bloom!

Because of the harsh winter we had, there was extensive planting required to get the yard looking good again. We spent several weekends (as well as several Benjamins) replanting & mulching the yard. On one of my trips to my favorite - and very expensive - nursery there were pots of hollyhocks just opening their lovely wide open faces. I hadn't seen hollyhocks growing since my grandmother used to plant them along her vegetable garden fence! The flowers are crinkly & ruffled & sheer with the sun shining throug them. They remind me of little girls in their little pink dance tutus. So... the hollyhocks found their way onto the cart and made the trip home to the new garden.



They have pretty much bloomed out now. The stalks sit there and I am hoping the seed heads do their job and there will be more hollyhocks to come. In the meantime, my newest artwork will remind me of twirly little girls in pink tutus.