This diamond Harlequin page I made is from a Round Robin altered book with a Masquerade theme. 

There are lots of sparkles and feathers and very bright colors in this treasure of a book compiled by friends.
 Inspiration Avenue is having a Masquerade Ball this week I want to share this Fleur de Lis party favor there.
Please visit IA to see more party guests and their disguises.


Golden Lotus Blossom

My creative inspiration grows like a flower in my heart. Before the flower can bloom into a piece of art
it goes through a growing process from its roots. I have contemplated this deeply and came up with
the letters from the word inspiration to explain the unfolding:
Inspiration Avenue
Nature
Spiritual seeds
Passion
Ideas
Reflection (joy)
Angst
Truth
Imagination
Opportunity
Need

This  watercolor piece was done for  Inspiration Avenue blog party challenge "What inspires you?
What gives you wings?"

FEAR

Inspiration Avenue asks:
What do you fear?

"No fear" was my motto for a number of years.

It still is in a way.

However

having courage and being fearless

would not help me a bit if I became senile

and could not care for myself.

So I fear

Out-living my usefulness

and

being a burden on others.

~

Visit Inspiration Avenue for more FEAR

Owl be loving you always

Funny how synchronicity pops up regularly. While working on my ofrenda for dia de los muertos celebration,
I came across an owl necklace that belonged to my mother. I plan to put that in the shrine I am building.
Inspiration avenue also chose an owl as the theme for this week. We have owls that live here in this urban habitat in the desert. I just love how nature works things out harmoniously.
We must take care of the natural world and our earth home....always.
xx

Mantilla

One of my favorite places to visit and play is Inspiration Avenue.

This week the theme is Spain.

My entry is a pencil, pen ink drawing with a water color wash.

A Spanish woman wearing a traditional lace veil

worn over a tall comb

known as a mantilla.

Flowers are often worn with a mantilla.

I love to wear flowers in my hair too.

In fact I have one behind my ear as I post this.

It's from my birthday bouquet.

OLE

OLE

OLE OLE

:-)



Please enjoy Sedona while I get my computer fixed



paper play and hot spiced tea

In Arizona we don't get typical autumn weather like much of the North America gets.

Our fall weather is mild.

It feels cool to us after a blistering hot summer.

We do get lovely colorful show on the trees in the cooler regions of our state.

Locally we are content to enjoy a change in the sunlight,

our harvests of chiles, corn and greens,

We also enjoy our autumn flowers

such as geraniums and marigolds.

On a day like today

playing with paper

 and

hot spiced tea.

Simple Woman' Daybook

Daybook for September 11,2011

FOR TODAY

Outside my window… it's just beginning to sprinkle.

Thinking about.... the history of this day and hope for the future

Thankful for…my family most of all.

In the kitchen… there is a little leftover chocolate cream pie
wonder if I can get it before Lee does.heh heh

Wearing… khaki pants /shirt no shoes,funky looking glasses.

Creating…in my sketchbook

Going to…take a trip this fall.

Wondering  if all of the Hatch chilies I bought this weekend are too mild.

Reading…a book of prayers

Hoping to spend some time making art this week.

Looking forward to a good week.

I am hearing…Alicia Keys singing New York, New York

Around the house…evidence that my grand children play here

One of my favorite things…music

A few plans for the rest of the week… working,laughing,playing,living, loving

A Day

I'll tell you how the sun rose,

A ribbon at a time
The steeples swam in amethyst,

The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,

The bobolinks begun.

Then I said softly to myself,

"That must have been the sun!"
But how he set, I know not.

There seemed a purple stile

Which little yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,

A dominie in gray

Put gently up the evening bars,

And led the flock away.

Emily Dickinsen

My new gypsy skirt unfurled

The Bees Knees has cute vintage clothes at affordable prices.

I love my new funky turquoise and black gypsy skirt.
Silver sequins dance around it in fractal patterns.
This is my entry into Inspiration Avenue patterns theme this week.

It's the bomb!
Simple pleasures....
Find more Joy at Meri's.

Gray Sphinx

Here is the kitty who has been hanging around our back door.
Yes we fed him and gave him water.
He is a beautiful gray color, very unique looking. I think he is part Siamese.
He is very very sweet. This week he is going to the vet for check up, shots and a flea collar.

From my Sketchbook

Ordinary everyday things.....
~a jar filled with pencils,
~my favorite little doll
~ keys
~a pair of scissors
~this and that from around the house
~ a Conch shell

My entry for Inspiration Avenue's "Beach" theme this week.
Amanda and Jeff brought this to me when they came back from the Caribbean several years ago.
They actually caught it, cut out the conch that was inside and ate it raw. They said it tasted good.
It now sits in my bathroom with all of my other sea shells and a sand dollar I found.

Sunflower sovereignty

As it is with most things there is synchronicity in my life.
This week Inspiration Avenue celebrates Sunflowers.
My entry is a little pastel chalk drawing.

The other day after a promise to myself, I went out and bought Sunflowers.
They looked beautiful in my cobalt blue vase.
Unfortunately they didn't last too long.
Their pretty heads were so heavy they hung down after just a few days.
However it did my heart a world of good to keep that promise I'd made to myself.

~Always keep promises you make.

Our lady of the red chrysanthemum seeds

A red  Chrysanthemum is a symbol of love.

Our lady of Red Chrysanthemum seeds has within her heart the potential for continuous blooming chrysanthemums.

Confucius thought of chrysanthemum flowers as an object of meditation. 

In Japan, the process of unfurling of the petals of a chrysanthemum is said to be reflective of perfection. 

The red chrysanthemum is associated with love and perfect when you wish to send  messages of love.

....as I am sending a message of love 

and the potential for love 

to you right now.

Namaste

Learning to paint from within.....
Let me introduce you to The Goddess of Divine Contentment.
She is painted with twinkling H2O's, metallic gold paint and her heart sparkles with glitter.

Painted for the Artful Gathering class, "Our Lady of the Divine Spark", by Shiloh Sophia McCloud. 
It  has been eye opening. (which could be why my goddess has such big eyes)...
(don't know why she has big lips)lol
I am learning how to  throw away the critic, invite the muse in, think about what I treasure and want more of in my life....and pray as I paint. Putting those emotions on the brush and in the paint as I scrub it on the page.
In the past  I often listened to my intuition as I did art, but not always.

Maybe she doesn't exactly look content....I like her more for the feeling I got....
When I painted this I was thinking about one particular day. It was sunny, flowers were blooming,nothing special was going on, but I felt content.

Laden with fruit

"...i dreamed my feet suddenly became roots that drove deep into the earth and into the sky my arms became branches...and suddenly i was an ancient fig tree..laden with fruit."

 ~

A friend told me a dream she'd had.

I did this little painting for her.

It is my entry into Inspiration Avenue 

for

"Tree" theme this week.

Couldn't let a tree theme go by

without participating.

It's just an ole
swimming hole.....

Taking a bit of a break
with love to you all.

All in the family

This is supposed to be my niece. A delightful girl. A fun girl to play cards with at family gatherings.
She is a natural redhead with lots of freckles. A real spark plug!
A while back she used bleaching cream to get rid of her freckles.
I wonder why, because her freckles are really cute. Angel kisses.
Anyway....
She tried lots of beauty tricks as we wanna be diva girls sometimes do.
Once she glued fake fingernails on with superglue,then she painted them bright red.
She wanted to look "cool" for the first day of school.
She laid down while her nails were drying and fell asleep.
Unfortunately blanket fuzzies got stuck on her fingernails.
Great!
Frustrated, she used fingernail polish remover to get the blue blanket fuzzies off of her red nails.
However the nail polish remover had a chemical reaction with the fake fingernails.
They curled up corroded and funky looking, and still had fuzzies on them.
Super glued on tight!
Yeah she looked real cool on the first day of school.

No names mentioned to protect the innocent.
:-)

Gimme wings

Wings needed for  drifting around the sky at dawn and dusk.
I want to play among the tree tops and visit the island of the birds.
How about you?


Illustration done for Inspiration Avenue and also posted to PPF.

Summer reads

Just finished reading Distant Hours. It's about some insane old spinster twins who live in a castle. There is a Mudman who lives in the moat. He climbs up the castle walls. OOOoooo murder and mystery.  Liked it!
 ~
Before that I read Julia Child's book My Life In France.
Loved it ! She was an interesting character, a great cook and writer,her own woman,very opinionated, spoke several languages. Every time she moved to a new country she learned the language. What a concept!
Loved some of her opinions and political views.
Go girl!

Usually I have several books going at a time.
Another great book that is on going is True Balance by Sonia Choquette.
I've been reading it all this summer and  I'll probably still be looking in at this one through out the year.

 

Now I have started another book. 

It is one I have read before.

I will be joining a friend who is also reading the book.

We walk the earth path and sometimes we need reminders of our earth centered values.

This book is about grounding your spirit in the rhythms of nature.

The Earth Path calls to me over and over.

So I joyfully picked it up again today.

~

Then the mail came.

A letter and reminder that I have to go back to work next week.

July 25th

back to the library.

And more

BOOKS!

~

Picasso collage

This week Inspiration Avenue is paying respect to Pablo Picasso.

I chose to make a collage to honor his painting "REST."

Being a vintage woman,

Rest means more to me now than it ever has before.

I need all the rest I can get!

Shhhh

The joys of an afternoon nap.

~

 

Picasso's REST:

It is one of my favorites. 

Isn't it awesome?

One thread

At Tapestry of Art Through Time,  there is a challenge there each month to explore and create something from a particular historical period in art.This month the challenge is Byzantine art.  Art from the Byzantine Empire from about the 4th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Here is my entry:

A picture of Christ from the Byzantine period was in an art magazine. I had an old pressed wood cross from the dollar store waiting to be embellished. It was cut and pasted with care to get the details like his hands on the flower petals. After   the collage was done I added gold paint to reflect the Byzantine period. All in all this was a  fun challenge.

:-)

Homemade Serpent

Save used bottle caps of different colors

Poke a hole through the center

String them on a wire

Make a 5 foot snake with alternating colors of caps

Finish with button-bead-button-bead tail

Viola!! A serpent you don't have to fear.

What will I do with it?
It really is pretty.
Perhaps I'll wear it out someplace funky.
It's bendable I can wrap it around things in my house.
The children want to play with it....
Probably I'll hang it in my art room.
Fun huh?
~

Le Clos de Benaire

The Island of Jersey UK, which is really closer to France, is this month's Virtual Paintout location.
Found this graveyard here to draw in one of my sketchbooks. There are lots of things in my little sketch books but I rarely show them due to crooked lines and wonky perspective....
both on the art and the artist.
:-)

Song of Bernadette

 One of my favorite poems is the Song of Bernadette, written by Leonard Cohen.
The poem is about  Saint Bernadette Soubirous,
who, from February to July 1858 in Lourdes, France,
reported 18 visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The poem inspired this painting :

The Song of Bernadette
There was a child named Bernadette
I heard the story long ago
She saw the queen of heaven once
And kept the vision in her soul
No one believed what she had seen
No one believed what she heard
But there were sorrows to be healed
And mercy, mercy in this world

We've been around, we fall, we fly
We mostly fall, we mostly run
And every now and then we try
To mend the damage that we've done
Tonight, tonight I just can't rest
I've got this joy in my breast
To Think that I did not forget that child
That song of Bernadette

So many hearts I find, broke like yours and mine
Torn by what we've done and can't undo
I just want to hold you, won't you let me hold you
Like Bernadette would do
~ Leonard Cohen 

This is my entry to Inspiration Avenue
for this week.

Star Spangled Boy

Born on the 4th of July

In the year 1999

My grandson Tristan.

Celebrating his 12th birthday this year.

Shocking electric blue hair

and a true blue heart.

Happy Birthday Tristan.

~

Picture taken at Montezuma Castle Spring 2011

It's a hot time in the old town.

Today my BIL Dan came over. He is the best!

He helped us do some repairs and paint our family room.

All of the furniture was moved out of the room. 

Things were chaotic.

~

~

Then the mailman came and left a treat for me in the mailbox. 

A giant postcard made by my long time friend and blogging sister 

Janet

It is just beautiful and made my day so much sweeter.

Thank you Janet. Awesome art as always!!

~

Now the family room is painted. Curtains are rehung. Furniture is moved back

and

I have something  pretty to put in my art room.

                                                                             ~
Linked to Sweet Saturdays

Heat Wave

While it's hot outside I'm playin' around inside with my paints. I took a silk flower and used it like a stencil dabbed paint around to make this background.

Messed around a bit using cool colors...

Lots of sticklers and glitter here and there make this page sparkle.

Having fun!

Sun King

Sun King...
Shines brightly in copper and gold Twinkling H2O's.
drawn for
Illustration Avenue...
BTW
It's Hot!
110 degrees today.
Lucky for me it's nice and cool inside.

Purple cacti

These purple cacti are growing innocently on my pathway. They deserve to be photographed.
In fact I want to paint them as well.
Love their colors and the way the Teal dissolves into Purple.
Gorgeous!
Thank you Mother Nature for these and other gifts you have bestowed upon us.

Weekend in San Deigo

This is the view from our hotel;
the San Diego Convention center. Beyond that is the harbor and the beach.

 

The Gas Lamp district is full of jazz and blues clubs, street artisans, great shopping,

There is fine dining, and all around excitement. Bright red passenger trains cruised down 

the railroad tracks from time to time.

Here is my funky rendering of the scene:

Not architectural at all, obviously. It was done on the fly. Just wanted to try my hand
at the interesting building.

I did this Tic Toc 20 minute challenge in my sketchbook.

Pathway through a Poppy feild

"Yesterday she took a different path, it felt right to her.Passing a garden gate behind a wall she noticed the flowers inside were twinkling like stars.
Intrigued she opened the gate to investigate. Inside she fell into a sparkling bright red and golden flower. She was held there emerged in glittery happiness until she drifted off to dreamland."

If you want to participate in the TicToc 10 or 20 minute challenges contact Kat Wright.

It's an on going process.
Some days are perfection.
My clothing fits a certain way.
I am assured in my skin.
Birds are singing and love is all around.
I feel happy and have dancing feet.

Other days the opposite is true.
All of my clothing shrank over night.
Nothing fits. There's too much fat on my body.
My imagination runs away and thinks up some horrid scene.
I forget my natural well being.

Is that just the way it goes?
Is it hormones? My diet?
Psychological or Physical?
Still working on it.

Loving my free time right now.
Pondering this and other things.

Baked

Summer temperatures are rising here in Southwest desert.
The ground is parched and dry.
We are in a drought of several years duration.
In fact it has only rained 1" this year here in the Sonoran desert.

Everything is baking except cupcakes.

This Ocotillo cactus is my entry into Inspiration Avenue theme this week: Baked.

Pathways

While doing self care the other day,
I wrote down a roadblock in my life.
~my rebellious nature~
Knowing art heals I did this little piece.

In this meadow I wrote my angst then covered it with grass.
I take the path less traveled.
Blaze my own trail....
Is it the best path? Probably not always.
But it is my path and has been good one.
I do not follow well.
Some friendships are under developed because
I can't seem to go with the program.
I never could follow a religion or someone else's beliefs.
However...
My spirit thrives.
The Meadowlark sings in my heart.

This fits the Sketchbook theme this month of pathways.

On the Google street map of Cannes France, I found a chaise shoppe

which inspired this little drawing.

:-)

 

Rainbow girl

A child who owns all the colors of the rainbow.

She is not partial to a favorite.

She knows that every color is necessary.

~

Even though the blues and greens didn't show up well in this scan,

they are represented in the original.

 Painted for Inspiration Avenue challenge this week: rainbow.