still life revisited::2

(Something weird is happening with my blog and all the posts I’ve made since this one aren’t showing up– grrrr… I have lots of stuff in the works and a shop update coming at the end of the week. Stay tuned, I’ll get my resident computer genius to iron out all the kinks.)

Computer geek says “all is now well” ; )

sand dollars, beach stones, felted stones, driftwood, maple seeds

And, speaking of still life photos, I have postcards from the original series.

I had #24, #25, and #26 printed up. I’ve put them into sets of a dozen postcards, 4 of each image, sewed some linen envelopes to keep each set in, and printed a pretty seedpod on each one. I’m really excited about how they turned out. I actually got them put together before we left Ohio and had good intentions of selling them over the summer, but with all the travel and temporary living those intentions were a bit unrealistic. So– I’ll do it now. These pretty little sets of cards will be in my shop sometime next week.

But, that’s not all!

I had to preserve some maple seeds from my special tree at our old house more permanently, so I’ve been playing with some precious metal clay. That means that for the first time I’ll have some nature girl jewelry up in my shop too! It will probably be toward the end of the week.

I’ll keep you posted on the exact day.

before it’s too late

Here are my boys all dressed up Halloween night.

We had a camp-fire, Frankenstein,

and a little turtle.

The turtle passed out the candy. Very cute.

On a side note– I have discovered my new favorite food– pumpkin cheesecake. Part of the insides of our jack-o-lanterns go toward a pumpkin pie or two every year, but this year I got a little crazy and made pumpkin cheesecake with this simple recipe. I would post a picture of it, but it’s all gone. It was that good. I think we have officially replaced pumpkin pie in our household. Even though I have a freezer full of pumpkin puree, I can’t let myself make another until Thanksgiving…

(Oh, and I must say that, regretfully, we do not have a single picture of the girl ninja. She was very stealthy and all of her sneaky jumping ninja moves kept her out of the sights of the camera. She was dressed all in black. Can you imagine it?)

Happy Halloween!

We carved our pumpkin family on Wednesday, but they didn’t like the 70 degree weather too well. Even though they shriveled, they still glowed last night.

The kids insisted mine have a baby jack-o-lattern inside.

still life revisited::1

I loved the still life project too much to just be done with it, and now I have proof that my art stuff really is (mostly) unpacked. I got my light box put back together. This nomad summer of ours didn’t put an end to my collecting of seeds and stones. Aside from filling jars and shadow boxes with my bounty, I have been setting up new still life scenes in my head while I lie awake in bed at night. This one has maple seeds plucked from my favorite tree right outside the kitchen window in our Ohio house. Hurriedly picked as we were loading kids in the car to drive away. There’s a big New Hampshire granite beach stone back there– one that showed up many times this past February, a driftwood stick gifted to me by a special friend before we both left our old homes, and three small stones from the ocean shore by San Luis Obispo gathered this summer when I visited Barry there. The stones covered in felt– those are from our new backyard here. The kids and I collected stones and felted away last night out of necessity because this week I discovered resurrection fern and have been mulling over images of stones covered with felt and crocheted lace almost obsessively. I mean, round, smooth stones covered in intricately crocheted thread? You can’t get much cooler than that.

Still life photos won’t be daily, but when the inspiration strikes they’ll be here. I’m excited to set up my little worlds with some of my favorite things. I can orchestrate something peaceful and pretty and quiet and clean– even if it is in an isolated little white box.