"Old Lady Gardening". Really? (and some Altered Book art)

Sometimes, more than I like to admit, I like to torture myself by looking at the stats on this blog.  I'm pretty sure it's one of those "no-no's", like tracking the stock market on a daily basis.  You can get yourself all in a state with the ups and downs.

Anyhew, there with the stats is a thing that shows "traffic sources", and it will show the google searches people have made that lead to your blog, with the key words they use.

"old lady gardening"

hmm.

Of course, one of my goals is to be one of those spritely "old ladies" always in the yard, with sticks and seeds in my stylishly ultra short steel gray or snow white hair (think Judy Dench), stooping down conversing with the fairies that live near my frog pond.  I didn't think I was quite there yet, though.  At least my hair is pretty much the same old boring brown, with some gray mixed in, that it's been for a number of years.  But I do often have sticks and leaves and seeds stuck on me.  And sometimes I find a chicken egg forgotten in my coat pocket from the last time I went outside.

Well, enough of that.

This was my spread for the March meeting of the Altered Book group I belong to.  The theme of this book is "Good Fortune" (as in fortune cookies).  The fortune at the bottom says "One dreamed of becoming somebody.  Another remained awake and became."

And further up on the page I wrote with pencil that existential observation "Things in the mirror may appear closer than they are".  I spent a lot of time on my recent trip to Austin looking at that phrase imprinted on the side mirror of the car I rode in (what should have been an 11 hour drive took 14 hours due to interstate construction).

Another member of the Altered Book group (the owner of the "Good Fortune" book as a matter of fact -- come on, Cindy!  I dare you to post a comment! -- I don't even have those weird unreadable letters and numbers to trip would-be commenters up ;-), brought these to show -- they are made from toilet paper tubes.  I think it would be cool to make a chess set out of them.

This sums up the day . . . .

Another "Noteshelf" app journal page created on my iPad today.

Too cold.

Sleet.

Watching birds at the feeder -- a pair of bluebirds have been showing up daily over the past week, along with a downy woodpecker, a cardinal couple, several chickadees (of course!), red breasted nuthatches, and juncos.

And I've had my 5 yr old grandson Aydan here all afternoon (and evening).  So the wooden trains are snaking out into the upstairs hall and the girls' old wooden dollhouse, flower fairies and and gnomes are getting a good workout.

Playing around with "Noteshelf" on the IPad

Above is a page I made with a new app I got for my IPad yesterday that I've been playing with, called "Noteshelf".    You can make pages for "books" using a variety of page backgrounds (this is on what looks like wide ruled notebook paper, although you can't see it well in this picture) with a variety of templates included in the app -- plain, graph paper, ruled paper, list paper, to do type lists, etc.  Then you can create text in a variety of fonts, place the text, move it around, shrink or expand it.  You can also use your finger or a stylus to doodle, write, and scribble in different colors -- either with a line or wash effect, use little graphics, and even take photos without leaving the app and size and stick them on the page, and apply text or doodles directly over the photos.  You can also send the pages you create to email, facebook, twitter, or photo stream (I put this in photo stream, so I could then use it in Blogger).

You can give the books you create names, and choose from different "covers" and they sit "displayed" on a shelf ready to click on to open and read, use, or edit.  What an easy way to do some journaling or document a project and make notes directly on photos or text.

I'm sure there are probably other programs and apps that do similar things, but this was really easy to work and worked seamlessly and cost under $5.00.  Can't beat that!

Sharing with Sunny Simple Sunday

2012 Calendar Challenge Finale!

December all finished!  (if you ignore the blank squares when I forgot the calendar existed)

Just one more loose end from 2012 to clean up:  Completing Kate Crane's 366 Calendar Challenge for 2012!

Back in January I decided to participate in the 366 Calendar Challenge, where one creates a calendar spread for each month, and then each day writes or doodles something evocative of the day -- a kind of combo journal and art journal endeavor -- resulting in the end an artistic recording of the year.

I seldom had a month ready to go right at the first, but I usually had each month ready within a week of the first.  And my journaling endeavors confirmed what I already knew -- May, June, and December tend to disintegrate into busy days running together, punctuated by stupified fogs that I wake from periodically, leaving days of blank squares when I completely forgot the calendar even existed.  Looking back I also see that I wrote "Aack!" on a lot of dates.  

But that's all ok.  Just part of life.

I tried out lots of different arrangements and techniques with the different months -- cut and glue, doodling, duct tape, stamps, water color pencils, paint, etc.

Below is the completed calendar:

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Andrea Carlson - Christmas Card

I hope this links up properly.  Andrea is an old friend, who lives in Pennsylvania now.  She homeschooled some of her 4 children for a time, and knit with us in the park for years on end while the children played, She is a wonderful artist and musician and is going to embark on a European tour this coming year.  She wrote and recorded this Christmas song, so I hope you'll give her a listen and check out her website www.AndreaCarlsonMusic.com .  Enjoy!

New Chicken Coop Reveal!

It's Wednesday morning, and our college daughter is hopefully boarding the Megabus as I type this and beginning her journey home.  The fridge is full of the ingredients for tomorrow's feast.  My trusty assistant, Crock Pot, is cooking our dinner for tonight (easy beef teriyaki) so it can be ready when husband comes home with Hannah and I can focus today on prepping some of our dinner for Thanksgiving.

And I FINALLY finished painting the new chicken coop!

Now we just need to get it moved off of the deck and into the chicken yard!

linked to Friday Farmgirl; Sunny Simple Sunday

November Calendar Challenge

Wow -- almost to the end of the year!  I can't believe I have kept up with the 366 Calendar Challenge over at The Kathryn Wheel.  To recap, each month the participants in the challenge create a calendar page and then journal a little bit about each day in any way they choose.  At the end of the year one has created an intensely personalized and artistic calendar, filled with little memories of each day.

Here is my October spread all filled in:

and a separate view of each page:

And here is November, not too terribly late:

I was kind of stumped for ideas for November, so glued on torn pieces of some scrapbooking paper one of my kids was given several years ago.  I didn't like that much, so I covered it all with some gesso, then I squirted on some ink sprays -- of which I only have two colors, and not very autumnal at that -- but then November is such an odd month here in Memphis anyways -- we have had temps in the mid 30's (no hard freeze yet, but often we have by now), and now today was in the 80's.  Tonight it is storming, tomorrow will be cold.  We get our peak color in November, but all the leaves usually get blown off the trees by storms (as they are tonight), and we have had our most violent killer tornadoes in November.  A Dickensian month ("It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times . . .", sandwiched between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

I drew a tree in the center, but didn't like it much.  I grabbed some paper scraps, including crumpled strips of paper sacks and glued them on the edges, along with some dollar store silk leaves.  I decided to segment the branches for the days of the month -- but it's all wrong for the number of weeks and number of days, so I'll just kind of ad lib each week.  You can see the 3 days of this first week of November on the left-most branch, with the extra tree segments just doodled in.

I think it all finally came together rather nicely.  In fact, it might be my favorite spread thus far, because of all the texture and different components.

Be sure to check out The Kathryn Wheel and check out the pages created by all the participants.

Flowers from Cans and Favorite Garden Places #4

Back in May we were at the beach in the Seaside/Seagrove area of Florida between Destin and Panama City.  Within Seaside is a public charter school and a garden that serves both as a school garden and a community garden.  I love to walk around it every day we are there, and the students, faculty, and their community volunteer gardeners always invite me to harvest whatever I want while we are there (and I've been known to pull a weed or two if need be).

The garden is circular, with raised concrete block framed beds surrounding a center open area with benches (for teaching and demos).

A canopy shades the center area (it is Florida, after all!  Notice the cheerfully painted plastic pots, the stakes with painted flowers from cans, and the large wooden plant labels (every plant was labeled in Spanish this year).  Towards the rear is an outdoor cooking and demonstration area.  The first day we were there, there was a banner over it saying "Seaside Community School Welcomes Emeril", who evidently had been there that week.

Some of the beds are quite narrow, but abundantly planted.

Along some of the fence are colorfully painted wooden birdhouses (from Hobby Lobby or Michaels I think) -- very cute grouped together.

There is even a hydroponic garden.  But it was those tin can flowers that caught my eye.  So a while ago I decided to make some myself.  I only had one large can and several small ones.

I cut the cans, primed and used some cheapo paint from the mistake section at Lowe's, along with some other leftover paint.

I'm not super happy with the colors -- but I didn't want to waste paint I really like in case the whole thing was a flop.  I need to decide whether to go on and hang them on the fence outside, or protect them from the weather over the winter and keep them in the screen porch until spring.  I can see how this must have been a good project for a group of middle school aged kids.

October Calendar Pages

I can't believe I've managed to keep up all the way through October with the 366 Calendar Challenge on The Kathryn Wheel.

Here are my September pages, all filled in -- I really think this was my favorite set of pages so far -- I've never painted flowers before (or much of anything "picture-wise", other than backgrounds), but I just love the way the hollyhocks turned out.  I used a book, called "Fast and Fun Flowers in Acrylics" by Laure Paillet, that I had bought some time ago after reading about it on Barb's Nature Blog (that blog is such a great resource for anyone interested in nature study and nature journaling).

For October, I covered the pages with this black lace patterned duct tape (which actually does not stick as well as one might hope!  My 15 yr old informs me that is how it often is with the "fancy" duct tape aimed at crafters).

The glare from my light over the kitchen table is difficult to deal with in the photos.  It's currently very October-ish outside -- raining and in the 50's.  And to think it was 90 degrees less than 10 days ago!

I drew and cut out the letters for October, glittered the edges with silver stickles, and attached the letters to the page with pop-up glue dots for a little dimension.  The dates are written beside each journaling circle in silver ink.  I added some swirls around the pages with the stickles.

I can't believe there are only two months left in the year!  Be sure to visit The Kathryn Wheel and view all of the other participants' calendar pages linked up at the bottom of the post.  And if you are a homeschooling parent, or just a parent wanting tips on appreciating and making art with children or for yourself, as well as ideas for nature study and nature journaling, check out Barb's Nature and Art blogs.

Altered Book Club art for September

I participate in a monthly round robin in the Altered Book club I'm in.  Each member picks a theme for their book, and then the books get passed around for everyone to do a spread in, in turn.  The theme for the book I had in September was "Nursery Rhymes".

First I scribbled on the pages with brown, green, and black watercolor crayons, then activated it with a paint brush.  While the pages were still wet I smooshed them together, and then pulled them apart -- which gave a very earthy, bark like look.  My nursery rhyme was the "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, going to the garden to - eat - worms" chant, which I made a copy of from a book I had bought off the sale table at Borders years ago for super cheap called "I Saw Esau" (full of tongue twisters, obnoxious chants, and word plays of childhood).  I drew and painted some worms and stuck them on with those pop up thingies, and glued on a bunch of fall leaves from the dollar store.

A couple of pictures cut out from a gardening catalog, along with the words "let the worms do the work" completed the spread.

September Calendar and Hollyhock Challenge

One blog post -- for TWO LUSCIOUS CHALLENGES.

First up:  Violette, author and artist and a favorite blogger of mine (because she has an incredible Purple Magic Cottage with a giant Dragonfly she made mounted on the front) issued a HOLLYHOCK ART CHALLENGE.

Now hollyhocks are one of my favorite flowers AND I needed to create my September Calendar pages for the 366 CALENDAR CHALLENGE at The Kathryn Wheel, sooooo I painted up some hollyhocks for my September pages!

I used acrylic paints, colored pencils, watercolor crayon, and a white signs unibal pen.

Now, before I transform that into my SEPTEMBER CALENDAR, here is a picture of AUGUST all finished and filled in:

Now to turn hollyhocks into a calendar:

Let's see how those colors look outside.

And a closer look at each page:

It's not too late to join either the Hollyhock Challenge or the Calendar Challenge!  Check out Violette's and Kate Crane's blogs and all of their wonderful creativity.