Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Life these days

1. It has been snowing (lightly) for days. I love it. It looks pretty on our neighbors' lattice.
2. I was taking pictures of how the paper flowers look from inside and thinking, man- I just can't get a nice shot of them between the ugly blinds and rolled up towels we have wedged in the gaps to block drafts...I wish I could get everything to look clean and beautiful and perfect. But then I thought, Why get worked up over that? Life is good. So here's pictures of how things really look.
3. I'm working on a new drawing from the Book of Kells.
4. Little girl took a bath this morning without screaming her head off the whole time. Win!
5. J brought his juice cup to me while I was drawing and calmly asked for a refill. This is a huge improvement over his tendency to holler at me from the family room. I have been telling him that that is inappropriate behavior and he needs to come find me instead of yelling...and it worked? Whoa!




Saturday, March 10, 2018

Colorful window flowers

Earlier this winter was the first time in ages that I made paper snowflakes. I made around 40 of them in various sizes and taped them in the windows of our house and they looked so pretty, but once March arrived, it just seemed a little depressing to have them up (even though snow is forecast for seven of the next ten days- ha!). A couple weeks ago B gave me the idea of doing the same kind of thing but with colored paper, to look like flowers. Our house is all white, so the pop of color could look really cool from outside (especially during the long, slow transition from winter to spring that we have here). Well, I was instantly sold on that idea- thanks, hubby!- and the next morning eagerly browsed Neenah paper. I knew I needed paper similar to what I’d used for the snowflakes: text weight and pearlized/iridescent. I couldn’t believe it when I found the same paper I’d used for the snowflakes (which I’d ordered from them in 2008), plus a bunch of other gloriously hued papers. They have this amazing deal where you can buy sample packs of 5, 12.5x19-inch sheets for less than $2 (shipping prices are a bit of a buzzkill though), which is perfect for this project. I ordered eight colors! They arrived about a week later; B laughed as I gazed at the shimmery colors with a crazed grin on my face.

Next comes cutting the paper into squares. Each sheet can be made into 3 squares: 12.5x12.5”, 6.5x6.5” and 6x6”, plus a 6x0.5” strip (save it!). I’m going to layer the snowflake/flowers since many flowers are more than one color and it’ll add some nice contrast.


Here they are in process! We have a lot of windows, and even though I'm limiting the scope to the windows that can be seen from the road (which is the majority of them), and since I believe that more is better- I'm aiming for about 40 flowers, plus some leaves that I'll cut separately from the green paper. More pictures to come soon, once they're all finished and taped-- I mean, "installed" (sounds so much better in artspeak)-- in the windows.