Tomatoes, Lillies, African Glass and some art.

I have been very busy lately, doing things other than art! We had a wonderful visit from my brother Peter, his wife Elise, and my nieces, 15 year old Mali and almost eleven Kate. They live in Tanzania and it is a very rare thing to get them all in the same place at the same time, never mind in the States!!! They have a wonderful and exciting life there but it sure is nice to have them at our house on visits! I wish that we could see them more often!!

My brother always brings us wonderful treasures form his travels. This time he graced me with some wonderful hand made glass beads. These beads are extra special as they are made at a Women's cooperative art group from recycled glass bottles. Women are finding themselves as the sole caretakers of multiple families due to the crisis brought on by AIDS. Many women are getting involved in creating wonderful art and thru Fair Trade practices, they are able to support themselves. Peter has promised to send me more of these wonderful beads.

I just love these beads because they are so hand hewn looking! Some of them even look like hearts. The colors are just wonderful as well and will fit beautifully into my favorite color pallette!

I am starting to harvest my tomato crop. We lost a huge Bradford Pear tree on our front lawn last fall, in a big wind storm. the space left behind is in full sun. So i plopped down some pots and planted some MATERS!!! This fall we are going to construct a raised bed on the site so we can have a real veggie garden . Right now Iam fighting with the squirrels for the tomatoes!! I covered the entire site with bird netting and hopefully I will be able to get to at least half of the crop before the darned squirrels!! There are few things that taste as good as a fresh warm tomato just picked from the garden!

I couldn't resist sharing this picture of my lilies. They just keep coming and the color combos don't get much better than this!!

Now for a little bit of art! I have really been struggling with this technique- in fact the whole thing almost ended up thrown in the back of my closet in the "I Give Up PILE!!" One thing that I have re-learned is that I do not like working with fusible web products.

The swap was for 4 post cards for my Surface Design Group and the Title was Perfect Petals. Supposedly I was supposed to be able to iron fresh petals and blossoms between two sheets of fusible web and generate a beautiful arraingment!! yikes- not QUITE!!! I eneded up using already dried hydrangeas from last years garden and I managed to get 4 cards done that i felt were good enought to send out. I probably generated 10-15 cards worth of trash. One can't expect everything to work as advertized nor to love every technique that one tries!!

After doing some bead work and stamping with a hydrangea stamp before adding the flowers things started to come together. When I tried it with the fresh flowers. the heat from the iron changed the colors- to be expected. WHat I did not expect was that the smell would be sooo nasty. It also didn't help that I was having a hot flash at the time-Ya THINK??????

Anyway here they are and I hope that the gals who I am swapping with are happy with them

I am working on more projecta to post on my Etsy store site so I will be posting more art here soon! thanks for stopping by and don't forget to leave me a note to tell me you were here!