Saving money on centerpieces

Remember that almost anything can be used as a container for artificial flowers. Don't just shop in the usual places. Check in the office supplies or kitchen sections of the stores as well. The containers I'm using here were organizers in a bundle of four for a dollar. They were an assortment with yellow, green, red and blue. I'll be using the red and the blue ones this summer and the other colors this fall.

I used some odd bits of leftover ribbon. with this type of bow it doesn't matter whether all of the ribbons are the same width or not so it's a great opportunity to use up your scraps.

 The total cost of these were under five dollars each and they'll be good for years of use.

Knitting Theme Dala Horse

New Daisy drawings in pencil and ink

Here's the page in my sketchbook where I finished the daisy drawings. I'm still working to see how many things I can make with them, so far it's on necklaces, key chains, magnets and stickers so I'll be getting back to it soon to see what else I can think of. The drawings themselves are colored pencil and ink on paper so it's surprising to see how they look on other surfaces.

Making something out of the mess

 This first design was made from bits of photos on my worktable along with some colored paper and marker. Yes, I plan to use it to write letters on but I'm sure there are lots of other possibilities as well.

This page was more fun. I cut up my colored pencil horse designs and added them to a picture of a chair I'd painted over a decade ago that also had horses on it. Of course at that point I couldn't resist adding more colored pencil to pull the whole thing together and finish it off with a bit or marker to outline some areas.

Painting Road Trip

Well, I guess that title sounds a lot better than this post is today. I never really go anywhere so the most excitement I get is packing up my supplies and going over to the "Painting Pals" group at the senior center. It's nice to have lunch with the gals and see the projects that everyone is working on. My plan for today's session is to come up with some square designs that I can put on throw pillows in my Zazzle store. There are so many people that live in places where they can't hang art on the walls, I think that pillows are a great solution-don't you? What could be better than art that can make you comfortable and happy?

I enjoyed painting this watercolor and I imagine that you'll find it hard to believe that it took me 3 whole hours to do it but now the real fun begins as I put it into my design program and see how it looks on different colored backgrounds.

Creative Solutions to Storage and Organizing

Anyone can throw money at the problem of storage or finding ways to organize their "stuff". They hire people, buy or rent places to put it in or simply move into a larger place.
That's not a reality for most of us so the smartest thing we can do is look in the bins we've got and try to find better ways to make that work for us.

Question #1. Does the bin or other storage container cost more than the items that are in it are worth?
Question#2. Is there anything I really need, want or use in here?

The solution of course is to pull out the things you don't need or want and give them to someone who might. This will create more space for FREE.

The best things about all of this are:
 1.That you still keep the things you want, need or use .
2. You didn't spend any money.
3.It gave you something to do with your spare time.
4.You gained more storage space.
5.You rediscover your treasures.
6.You can donate the things you pulled from your bin to charity.


When you play the game this way, everybody wins.

3 for 1 image

Ta da dump,dump,dump

An odd title for this post but a bit more fun because it sounded to me like old time theme music for movie serial or television show and a lot less like the boring reality of hauling a trailer load of trash and recycling from all our building & clean up projects around here to the processing center.
The great thing about having done that is that we can get back to work on the old garage that we're converting into an art studio and workshop.
Which of course goes back to the garden because my inspiration for everything comes from all the plants and flowers here...and of course you have to create a great garden to work with when your favorite things to paint & draw are florals.
We're also planning to use some of the scrap lumber we've set aside to build garden arbors that I will also paint...probably with vines & flowers which of course brings us back to the garden again...which brings us back to the art, which brings us back to gardening etc.,etc.,etc.