Comfort

This collage was supposed to be spontaneous, but these two birds insisted on a plan.  As I was tearing up the pieces for this collage, the word, "comfort" kept coming up from multiple types of tea.  These birds are very serious about their job to bring comfort, but they are also mischievous birds, as birds made from painted paper plate scraps and tea materials usually are.  One had an angry eye for a while, and well, that wasn't very comforting, so they shopped the tea papers a bit more until a more comforting option was found.  

Though there are other papers in this piece, including hairy papers that were simply up to no good, this piece contains a lot of tea bags - Bigelow, Yogi, Pukka, Celestial Seasonings, Harney & Sons, Choice Organics, Organic India, Stash, and Tazo, which was mostly used to inform the pattern on the Comforting Chamomile bird.

Flowers in November

 These flowers grew at about the same time but in different places.  

I was in the mood to cut shapes, so that's what I did!  I used a flower picture from a long-ago hike outside of Salt Lake City.  I remember looking at the picture of the flower and thinking about how the background was stealing the show.  

I used many recycled papers - a silver and peach perfume box, unused pastry bags from Paris, an endpaper from a damaged book, a Starbucks gift card holder, tea packaging, and even some old thank you cards.  Included is one small piece of a print from a licorice box that completely jazzes me up.  I love the licorice print so much I would probably use it as wallpaper somewhere if it was possible.  Can you guess where the licorice print is? 

Also included is the last Kew Gardens coffee sleeve from our trip to London/Paris in 2019.  The coffee sleeves were not only this calming yellow, but the paper itself was buttery and crackled so beautifully when used.  Can you find the word, "Kew?"  How about, "Make a difference?"  Those are from my very last Kew coffee sleeve.  I will never feel uncomfortable asking for a few extra coffee sleeves or various papers from places again.

This embroidered flower was my sidekick for a couple months.  It went to Florida with Robert and me when we visited family.  It went to my first art show, so I could keep my hands busy and my anxiety muted.  I used up some leftover thread and let it grow how it wanted to.  I like to think it's one of those healing flowers. 

morphing

This collage grew from another rejected collage that was scraped and sanded down.  Interestingly enough, I went into the first collage with zero direction and the collage withered and died.  The second time I went into the collage, I knew only that I wanted green and purple to work together as a background.  Later, during a walk I saw the slime of a snail trail lit up in the purple dusk and I knew what the purple and green were going to support.  The original slime color wasn't going to stand out enough, so that is how snail slime morphed into blooms.  I didn't know all the steps going into this piece, and I think that was a bold place to live for someone who likes a plan or scheduled moments of spontaneity.  

This collage is made entirely of tea packaging (tags, bags, and boxes): Taylors, Yogi, Allegro, Stash, Bigelow, Pukka, Harney & Sons, English Tea Shop, Choice Organics, Teavana, and I'm sure some others I'm missing.    

Climbing

This collage was there for me during some tough moments when I was struggling to live outside my inner dialogue, and the inner dialogue sounded suspiciously like Judge Judy bouncing off multiple despairs.  

Thankfully, I clung to that electric green, which is both the smallest and strongest moment in the piece.  The green climbs through what can be anything, depending on what Judge Judy is yelling at you that day.  

Here is some of the progress.  It started as an abandoned nest collage that I eventually scraped and sanded down.  So underneath there are still bits of that nest drawing.  I like the metaphor of that.

big life wonkiness art things

Despite the small blip of turmoil and change in my life (calling it a blip because I know how good I have it in spite of job woes, but really it has felt tremendous), I have still been making things.  Though my construction of sentences isn't what it used to be!  

Naturally, when one goes through big life wonkiness, it's a good time to dramatically change other things too.  I have finally started transitioning to a different way of doing my pictures.  For a long time, I've been uploading chunks of pictures from Dropbox to iPhoto.  In Dropbox I have a folder that syncs with my phone pictures.  As I need the pictures, I move them from Dropbox to iPhoto.  I also sit down occasionally and move all the pictures to wherever they need to go, whether they go in iPhoto or not.  Confusing?

Well, I finally got organized enough to just sync my phone pictures with iPhoto, and now I'm realizing I'm not as organized as I thought I was.  Add to this small drama the fact that you can't upload pictures straight from iPhoto albums to really anything on the web - blogger, art show submission forms, social media.  The upload box only opens all 80,000 of your pictures rather than the albums you lovingly created for such online adventures.  So now I'm recreating some albums in Dropbox for easy access.  I love undoing and redoing work as much as the next person, so I'm simply glowing from the zen feelings I get from all this. 

So yes, I've been making things and there are pictures of these things...somewhere.  I am getting back to a place where I only have to deal with the complications of Blogger living in the dark ages when it comes to generating a post with pictures.  

Here is something I have made recently and it's for sale.  Check out my Etsy for prices, sizes, and additional info.  More art to come!

October moments

Some moments from the past few weeks:

Margo has been enjoying this gray bed recently, but it appears she doesn't know how to lay in it.

Another day, another 10+ cups of tea, especially now that there's a hint of cooler weather.  Just a heads up - Give a Tea is too weak and has a clear wrapper.  Yogi Chai Rooibos and Bhakti, on the other hand, are two staples.  Bhakti is a concentrate that unfortunately has added sugar, but it's really the only spicy chai I've found.  Other chais claiming to be spicy aren't even in the same league.   

Izzy is doing good.  She has two bunnies now, but she also has a foster bunny so to speak.  We recently went for a walk with her, and she is happy.  The dogs were very happy to see her and the bunnies too!

We have had a couple cool days and evenings, a few trees producing blinding radiance, and two exceptionally windy days.  Autumn is here.

A few leaves are so big!  Each time one smacks into me on the windy days it feels like I'm being attacked by a large bird.  I tried identifying this leaf on three identification apps and some googling.  No luck.  Every app says it's a maple leaf, but it doesn't even remotely look like a maple leaf.  I think the golden retriever modeling the leaf is perhaps throwing off the apps.  I'm surprised the apps aren't telling me it's a golden retriever tree.  Any guesses?