Up a tree at Christmas

Hello again and thank you for following my blog. Earlier I said that I was going to go to Zazzle and work with my old Christmas tree designs.

Well, it was a good idea but what I discovered when I got there is that NONE of them are your normal, all purpose trees.

The types I have so far are one made of seashells, one of iris flowers, and believe it or not my most popular one is made of sunflowers.

One collection but I definitely need to come up with something more mainstream. One is made from a button collection and others are made of things like Dala houses and other images.

 

I collected a few inspiration images but they weren't what I wanted either so I went back to my pens and markers.

Somehow I just haven't gotten around to drawing a pine tree. It's about time for me to start. Don't you think so?

I think these look promising and plan to start working with them right away.

There are lots of ornament and garland designs in my image file that could decorate these trees in lots of ways. I can't wait to get to it.

Keep watching this space and see where it goes!

Seasonal, Holiday, Christmas Cards

 I'm giving up buying and sending out Christmas cards this year because like a lot of people, I simply can't afford it.

Instead I'm devoting my time to designing new ones for my zazzle stores so that I will be well prepared for next year.

The bright side of this is that once I submit the new designs to zazzle I can send the prototypes and mockups to some of the special people at the top of my Christmas List.

I'm just getting started with a warm holiday beverage.

I'm going to use the middle of this cup for holiday designs that I already have on zazzle. Which should save time and energy on drawing.

This image was cut out by hand and mounted on red construction paper to make my first card.

This second design never saw print. I wasn't quite satisfied with it so I just painted it up and mailed it.

Sorry friend, it doesn't mean that I love you any less, I'm just too thrifty to throw it away and I have to get back to work.

Christmas tree practice didn't go well so I'm off to zazzle to use the Christmas trees that I had drawn and painted in better days.

Wish Me Luck,

Julia

Wrapping Things up for the Year

I felt that this is one of the best new dala horse ornaments that I carved, designed and painted  this year so it will be a Merry Christmas present for the person who has bought the most Dala Horse Ornaments from me and collected them for nearly a decade now. Without her encouragement I may have given up on them a long time ago. Thanks!

Being an Artist/crafter/designer etc. all of these years means that I almost never have money to do Christmas present shopping with so it gets a bit like Santa's workshop here in the rush to make sure that I can make something for everyone and avoiding the temptation to just give everyone the stuff that didn't sell.

I can't believe that the season sneaks up on me every year some recent years have been so awful that I almost gave the whole thing up and decided to hibernate until spring.

Getting older I also find myself wondering what I'm really doing with my life besides just taking up space.

I hear in the media that rather than trying to explain all of the things that we are and do that we're just supposed to call ourselves "creatives'' and hire out as consultants or just appear on TV shows or other media. 

This whole thing really made me laugh because I took a bunch of aptitude tests once and the best conclusion they could come up with is that I could either flip burgers or host a television show and I've got to say that I didn't feel particularly inclined to do either so that brings me back to what sorts of things I've been doing lately.

Going back to projects in my sketchbooks that I had given up on.

Babysitting a caterpillar as it gets ready to hibernate for the winter. Meet my room mate 'lil K. I know, It's a looong story and a bit of an education.

As long as I was doing all of this evaluating I thought I'd start at the beginning and see where things go from there. So far all that brings to mind is that I sure miss that space themed Toybox, LOL

Those of you that have followed this blog know that I design greeting cards. What you don't know is that it doesn't pay much and often I can't afford to buy them myself.

This handmade card is the result of that and the fact that I've been sorting through things trying to get my house organized.

This allowed me to use up some old photo bits and make a Christmas card for someone special.

There is a lot to sort through and there are lots of piles of piles yet to go. Who knows what it will lead to. If you don't hear from me by spring, send out a search party.

Happy Holidays,

Julia

 

Holiday Time, Ho, Ho, Hum

 Moving right along, Christmas has been showing up everywhere since around Halloween. 

As we're urged to shop for the things we don't need and can't afford anywhere.

This is my response:

I cut up 2 sheets of red and green colored paper and made a miniature paper chain to trim the orange tree that I grew from the seed of the snack I was having one day.

I plan to use the image in one of my stores either as a photo, drawing or painting with the caption "Ho, Ho, Hum". What do you think of the idea?

I realize that it's risky posting all of this here but Christmas is a season of giving and if you're able to do a better job with this than I am then it is my gift to you. Just let me know how it works out for you or send me a copy- Thanks. 

This wildly fun pair of florals were the result of sorting through my art and craft designs while writing to a friend. I can't wait to hear what she thinks of them.

I usually post the horse photos in my dala horse blog but this snowflake idea will span all sorts of media, objects and surfaces so it really needs to appear here as well.

I suppose showing my notebooks is a risk as well but I would hope that no one reading this wants to hurt or steal from me. What I want you to see here is that I collect snowflake pictures anywhere I find them and just keep practicing until I can can come up with a snowflake that combines bits of these different ideas.

I am entirely self taught and I guess I'm vain enough to hope that some of you may want to learn from my methods.

 Along with my sketches I include some inspiration photos as I let the ideas  "cook" until I'm able to get back to them they are figuratively "on the back burner".

Hopefully by the time I get back to it I'll have a fresh approach to the whole thing.

This next page is inspiration photos as well and a bit of practice with collage.

Well, none of us are perfect. Especially in our sketchbooks so I really had to laugh when I discovered I had spelled Ideas wrong on my label maker when I put that page together and I'm far too busy to go back and fix it now. You get the idea, don't you? LOL

A few thoughts for the Holidays

How are you today? I'm so bored that I'm making paper airplanes out of the junk mail to fly into the recycling in. LOL

I've been trying ,but not too hard to clean up the living room to get ready for Thanksgiving 

All except for this one spot on a shelf, you could barely walk around in here. Where would I ever put a fully set table and chairs for five?

Of course the first thing to do was to put things on the shelves. That would help a LOT. I KNOW there is floor space under all of this!

I'd been moping and feeling kind of sorry for myself until I heard that my sister out east had bought us an entire Thanksgiving dinner to share with my sister's here. That Cheered me up a lot.

It even inspired me to start some holiday themed painting.

I had gotten to the point where I just want to hide under the bed until all of the holidays are over. How about you? 

The fact that I won't have to shop or cook this Thanksgiving should put a jingle in my bells as I limp through life on my way to Christmas.

We had to stand in a food line again and it's not the first time this year but I'll bet it happens to more people than you know.

Oh well, that's a great reason to look forward to a Happy New Year. Almost anything has got to better than things have been this year.

My Best Wishes to all of you that you'll find your self warm, safe, dry and fed in that Happy New Year. It's more that a lot of other people have. a lot of the time that it's one of those things that just slips our minds.

There is joy in life, we forget it often. It's kindness that brings it back

Brush away your troubles and paint something happy,

Julia

The Biggest Surprise Falling My Way

While looking through a catalog yesterday I was surprised to see a set of bed linens that looked a lot like a painting that I'd done last year.

Of course my background color is different but you can see that the design idea is much the same.

I always find that exciting because it means that my ideas are marketable and already popular with some people.

After that, the next thing I did was pull up photos of some of my other leaf designs to explore the possibilities of developing a new product line with them.

This is actually an "in progress" photo of the painting that currently has a blue background. I'm wishing now that I'd left the blue paint off of it.

Here's another painting that I wish had a different background on it.

These are a couple of old watercolor studies I did in the painting group years ago at the Forest Lake Senior Center. I would often do a bunch of quick watercolors and give them away to people.

It never occurred to me to do anything more serious with them.

This is a fun acrylic leaf stamping that I did at home one year. I went around my yard and painted directly on the leaves and then stuck them directly to the canvas then pulled the leaves off, leaving the print behind.

There are so many different things you can do!

Get Creative and Join the Fun!

The Last Round Up

As those of you that follow me know, I always stop and sort every thing out and clean things up in between projects.

I had just finished making a bunch of collages and was out of matte gel medium so I figured it was time to put everything away until I could get more.

As I got to the bottom of the first pile I found part of a picture of a cowboy and thought "as long as I'm rounding every thing up and had been watching some old westerns on TV that I would make one more collage and call it " the Last Roundup".

The Thought both amused and inspired me. Here are the results.

I had been stumped on what to do with this painting for a long time. I'd kept painting things on, then paint over them again. sometimes I'd add bits of paper but always ended up painting over them again.

Then I got the idea to cut the cowboy so that it looked like he was taking cover behind the flowers and let my imagination take it from there. 

It got to be fun after that making up a bit of a story from old sheet music and antique books. I felt so good about it that I cut this big smile out of a magazine and added that in there too.

I thought that the various paper bits looked too white so I attempted to antique some of them to make thigs vary a bit. I don't know if it's art or not. All I know is that it makes me happy and cleaned up the room a lot and that helped too.

I hope this gives you some ideas about making the best of things and creating joy.

I'm wishing you happiness too,

Julia

Going around the place looking for an idea

 

There is no shortage of bees here and we are getting more comfortable with them as the years go by. there are times that these sedum are neary covered with them.

It is surprising how many places this little guy can get. He seems to spend most of his time trying to get to the birdfeeder, tunneling through and eating my garden and generally keeping us busy.

I was truly amazed at the size of this one zinea plant was. It had fallen over and filled an entire planter. It wasn't until I pulled it out that I realized that it wasn't A group of separate plants.

We've always got downed and dead tree branches so we're always ready for a campfire when permitted. As long as we're burning anyway we like to reward ourselves by cooking a snack or a meal when things burn down to the embers and over the years we've come up with a lot of different things to make using a few basic tools. It's wonderful to spend some time and cook outdoors. That's really made from scratch and it nourishes your soul as well as your body.

As the leaves changed color and began to fall I decided to bring the cherry tomatoes in the house to finish ripening. These day's they live in the dining room where they're being picked as they're ripe.

I seperated what was left of the shasta daisies and transplanted them for next year. I'm happy to say that this one plant bloomed twice for me and seemed like a great bargain and I'll love it even more if it comes up next year because i divided it into 4 different plants.

We also dry and collect the seed from the marigolds to plant in next year

wish me luck!