More finished horses

Fall Theme Day, Snacks and a Movie

 We could be out raking leaves, or I could be doing something interesting and creative with them.

 Our plan today is just to relax and enjoy the changing of the seasons.

A great movie for fall color and offbeat humor is "The Trouble With Harry". Refreshments mentioned in the film oddly enough are mostly beverages so you have a choice of tea, apple cider or lemonade to go with your blueberry muffins. Relax and enjoy the film,we are.

Falling leaves, shape and color

I shot these photos while sitting out at the tea table in the front garden. We kept wondering if we'd be able to capture some of the leaves falling and laughed as they dropped on and around us everywhere. These pictures aren't much but we had a great time shooting them.

I gathered the rest of these leaves in the back yard

Fall leaves and flowers

Here's a selection of the last bits of color in my garden today. I'm putting them in the scanner to see where the ideas take me and what other possibilities open up with various programs in the computer.

 I removed the stems and dropped the flowers in a bloom at a time then closed the scanner lid on them which seemed to press them in an interesting way.

UpCycle and recycle ideas are everywhere

 I saw these ornaments in a catalog today and it gave me an idea.

 A broken garland

 A gift bag and some ribbon.

I had everything I need to make and present a set of these ornaments on hand. All I need now is enough time to get the job done. I'll just divide that ribbon up into pieces long enough for each ornament. I'm not sure how many I'll be able to make out of this but I'll get them up on the blog as soon as I finish them.

Iris Horse Design

New designs for a black horse

 Each side of the horse is different because I'm just relaxing now and having a bit of fun painting fast and easy flowers. I sometimes find that I like the easiest designs best and wonder why the idea didn't occur to me months ago while I was doing everything the hard way to paint the ornaments for that boxed set.

I guess the answer is that I was concerned with coming up with different designs for each of the horses and forgot to just enjoy painting them.

New Horse designs

Finished Sock Monkey Drawing

Sock Monkey and Horses

 I'm doing this drawing with watercolor pencils and ink. I kind of like the results so far, what do you think?

A couple of ideas for butterflies

Playing with wood cut outs

Every now and then people bring me stuff to paint on to see what sorts of ideas I can come up with. The Halloween cat idea looks promising but the butterfly idea needs work.

Both sides now

 I guess there's not much I can say about this except that this was the easiest and fastest one yet. No one is going to be looking at both sides at the same time so it left me free to relax and really enjoy the painting.

I'm really happy with the results. Ignore the odd marks on the legs, they're actually marks on my scanner bed because I like to throw all sorts of objects on it while creating designs and I managed to get some scratches on it.

Boxed set of ornaments

I've got 2 finished horses to clear coat this morning and 2 more to finish painting today then depending on whether or not the finish filling the box I may have to carve and paint some more. I was hoping that one dozen would do the job but now I'm not quite so sure.

Close up with the latest horses

The longest project

Progress Report

I'm having a lot of fun with that drawing I was working on yesterday and have had it put on everything from t-shirts to phone covers in my Zazzle store-even tried a bright background on it when using it on a pillow.

Today I picked a few tiny carrots and got ready to put down the garden for the season.

I'm still painting the last few horses to complete that set of ornaments I've designed and been making since February.

It's brisk outside and a hot cup of tea was more than welcome when I came back in.

Still, I want to paint...really paint. Get everything out of my way and let it fly. It's amazing how good that can make you feel.

As I dive back into my projects, I wish you luck with yours- keep up the good work!

Wildflower drawing in watercolor pencil

Wildflower Photos

Picking wildflowers and gathering seed

As the season draws to a close here, I'm doing my best to enjoy things as long as I can and to insure some color for next season as well.
I'm still trimming back the rosebushes and cleaning up the debris. There's always something to do in a garden.
In the back yard I'm trimming back the raspberry bushes and haven't quite decided whether to transplant bushes this fall or wait until next spring.
Cooler weather, hot cider and campfires...I guess fall has it's own charm.

Still Horsing around

 This project feels like it's taking forever!!! The smell from the spray polyurethane takes a long time to dissipate so it will be a while yet before  I'm ready to put the finished ornaments into the box.

 Just 3 yellow and one red horse left to do. Working the yellow designs on top of the red horse took 3 coats to cover completely so that took extra time too.

The rest of this project should move pretty quickly...at least I hope so because there are so many other projects I want to do and just not enough hours in the day to get everything done. On the bright side, with so much to do, boredom hasn't been much of a problem.