work in progress

The weekend was quite busy - I'm beginning to feel the pressure of leaving on Saturday for a two-week trip to Poland. Cleaning, laundry, organizing... not sure that I'm a big fan of this stage of traveling...

Anyway, I managed to find some time for the craft table. Some time was spent on cleaning, and also for preparing a few birds based on cardboard cutouts. Painted them with gesso first, then red paint, then glitter paint, one-step crackle and finally golden accents. Whew! Plus drying time after each of the steps, so it takes a while.

Then the menagerie continues with some dog characters...

...and, finally, there are Christmas trees cut out of a giant tree in an old greeting card.

So many ideas, so little time!

Mountains in art journal

Art journal pages don't require the kind of discipline that must be present when I work on cards or an item that will potentially be used by someone else. Things don't have to be nice and even, I can use ANY words I want, and even if I feel like I've messed up, the project won't be thrown away. Lessons will be learned, and the page will find its place on the giant binder rings.

The page below has two sort-of mistakes: one is the size - all other pages are 8.5x5.5, and when I started this one, for some reason I didn't realize that I had grabbed a larger base. Too late now - the page stick out. Maybe I should make a few more pages in random sizes and pretend it's all been done on purpose.

The second unsatisfactory item is that misty object on the left - not sure if it belongs, but oh-well, I can't scrape it off.



The project was inspired by a page from a calendar. It featured the famous reflected view of Grand Teton, so it first brought back the memories from our trip to Yellowstone, which also included a drive through the awesome Tetons.

The top quotes the first two verses of Psalm 121:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

The blue words next to the buttons list three important Biblical mountains - Hermon, Carmel and Olives.

I find it a very pleasant way to memorize some new Hebrew vocabulary and practice my handwriting, which to a real Hebrew speaker would probably look crooked and childish. As long as it's readable, I'm happy :)

Nature's stained glass

Last Sunday we hiked through a marshy nature preserve, taking advantage of - who knows? - perhaps one of the last super-sunny days of the season.

Don't you think that colorful leaves look like stained glass, if you stand under a richly sunlit tree?

So beautiful, so many colors. I feel blessed.

Real estate thank you notes

We closed on a condominium last week and since we received a ton of help from our awesome team, we wanted to send everybody a thank you note. Luckily, I had a set of stamps just perfect for this purpose! The only problem was deciding if I should use the little house or the sofa.

The house won. The sofa has to wait for another occasion. It will probably be used very soon - a girlfriend at work will be moving at the end of this month :)

Oh, deer

Here comes the first batch of Christmas cards! No red and green yet... but I'm working on it :)

A lot has been happening over the last few months and especially the last few weeks - it felt like paperwork, loans, banks etc. took away all the inspiration for crafting, writing, taking photos... I only did what needed to be done in order for the household not to fall apart.

Now I feel like a sack of potatoes has been lifted from my shoulders. At the same time, a cold moved in... but I'm getting over it as well, and ready to go back to the creative table, which I cleaned last night. Yay! Sometimes, I guess, it's good to go through a difficult process to appreciate the time where such burdens are absent.

As usual...

...I'm experiencing problems with the standard Christmas colors, namely red and green. I make myself use them - otherwise, all my cards would be pink, mint, blue, coral...

colors from the farm

My craft table is covered with Christmas papers and stamps, but we are of course enjoying the fall colors. We went to a nearby farm with my granddaughter last Sunday, and on that gorgeous day, we found a lot of bright colors, especially in the garden around the vintage farmhouse.

 

The dahlias brought back a lot of memories. My Mom, who passed away last summer, had a whole collection of them, ranging from bright white to dark purple and deep wine color; some of them must have exchanged genes because there were also multi-colored blooms... then there were the spiky ones, and the calmer, round-petaled flowers; the pom-poms and the flat ones.

 

Digging them out was one of the autumn routines; we would store them in the cellar, and then they would come out again in spring, planted in a new spot and hopeful for a new season of brilliant perfection.