Lisa Vollrath

Scattered

So, I blew off my local art group meeting last week, simply because I couldn’t pull it together to gather supplies and drive ten minutes. It’s that time of year.

The period between Halloween and Christmas is always brutal for me. I love Halloween so much that I continue to design products right up until the end of October—and then, November 1st, I realize I’ve done nothing about Christmas, at the very time when people who like to make things are ready to tackle it for real. Yes, there are a lot of folks who start buying Christmas things in July, and every year, when those orders start coming in, I think gee, I should be planning new Christmas things. But then, I look at the calendar, and see October, and all thoughts of Christmas go right out of my head. I admit it: I have the attention span of a four year old.

Anyway, we are now smack in the middle of the scramble to catch up, and make Christmas things. I have so many projects going right now, I’m running out of horizontal work space. I have things going in my office, studio, dining room, kitchen and living room. I had to move furniture around in the office this week so I have more room to work. My house looks like a bomb went off in it. A big, glittery, red and green Christmas bomb…

Meanwhile, we’re experiencing yet another wave of Indian summer. The weather is unseasonably warm. I have little weedlings sprouting up in every corner of the garden. I had to take an afternoon off this week to mow the backyard, which should have gone dormant by now. Next week, it’s the front yard, which is also infested with tiny weed sprouts. It’s crazy.

I am determined to finish my book for The Sketchbook Project by Christmas. We have two more fourth Friday art journaling sessions scheduled at my local group—one is the day after Thanksgiving, and one is two days before Christmas. I’m thinking both meetings will be small and quiet, so I’ll be able to get a lot of work done. I’m SO close—three sets of unworked pages, and a few more that just need lettering and a little finishing. I can do this!

Elevens

Today is one of those magic dates: 11-11-11. I think we get one more of these, next December, and that’s it for my lifetime. Probably yours, too.

This week, I started playing with magazine pages and gesso. I’m not sure what I’m making yet. Some sort of journal thing, if it stays together long enough for me to keep working in it. Since it’s basically ripped up magazines, some gesso, and a little paint, I won’t be too heartbroken if it doesn’t work.

I’m determined that I’ll finish my journal for The Sketchbook Project by Christmas. I have three sets of unworked pages left, plus some lettering and finishing on about half a dozen others. The same folks who organize this project sent out an email this week looking for folks to do another journal project, due in April. I thought about it long and hard, and then passed. I’ve enjoyed working on the one I have, but I think I want to focus on some journal work that stays home before I dive into another project that goes away when it’s finished.

It’s Autumn. Right?

Yet another set of glue cards to swap with my local group. I now have three sets of three that are unswapped. I’m thinking the glue card swap experience is a bust. Perhaps I’ll put together an organized swap somewhere online.

I had a weird experience this week. I listed some things on Etsy. I had a few too many samples laying around—and also, a handful of assemblage pieces I made for this month’s issue of The Monthly Muse.

It’s been a while since I’ve made any really serious personal pieces. I’ve never really considered myself the kind of artist who makes amazing works that people will value enough to buy. My strength as an artist has always been my ability to look at something, and know exactly how to make it. I write amazing, clear, easy to follow instructions. I don’t make art that should hang in a gallery (although I’ve had the occasional piece in galleries) or a museum (although I do have two pieces that I know of in relatively obscure museums).

But these pieces I did for this month’s issue are different. I pushed my own envelope. I made myself do things I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I created two pieces, in particular, that are some of my best work ever.

And so, I stepped out of my usual “I’m getting rid of a bunch of samples” mentality, and listed those pieces as artwork with gallery pricing. Low gallery pricing, because it’s Etsy. But more than I would usually feel comfortable asking for anything I made.

And my artist friend who inquired about one of the pieces before I listed it didn’t faint at the price I was asking. I trust her, since she really is one of those gallery kind of artists. She would tell me if I was out of my mind on pricing.

It isn’t often that I feel anxious about my work. I do have the occasional oh-god-what-if-they-hate-this feeling when I try something new, but it goes away quickly. I’m pretty confident about what I do and the way I do it. But this was something outside my comfort zone.

And apparently, that’s a good thing.

Just a Spoon Full of…Something

Last Friday’s altered art group meeting was all about altering spoons. I’ve been wanting to play with old silverware ever since I first made altered spoon pendants from stainless steel for the June 2007 issue of The Monthly Muse. I’d read that silver and silver plate respond differently to flattening than steel, and are easier to cut. I discovered that both are true—and also, that silver is easier to break inadvertently, in the totally wrong place *ahem*. Of the four spoons I purchased for our project, I ended up with two bowls and two handles to play with. I’m pretty happy with the handles. I had an embossed lettering failure with the flattened spoon, and in repairing it with my Dremel, ended up with a pendant that looks like it says “ONCE UPON A TINE” instead of “ONCE UPON A TIME”. I suppose that would work if the error was on a fork. On a spoon, it looks sort of goofy. The jury’s still out on the colored spoon. I like the words, but don’t like the way they stand out from the colored background. We’ll see if I do anything about it, or just toss it into the sample box.

The group was much smaller for Friday’s project, which meant we could all sit at the same long setup of four tables, and have one conversation, where we usually populate eight tables, and have three or four discussions going at all times. Since we’re coming to the end of the year, and there were questions on our discussion board about whether we’d be meeting for our usual fourth Friday art journaling session in November (the day after Thanksgiving, and Black Friday) or December (the Friday before the Christmas weekend), I asked a simple question: is everyone happy with how the group is structured, and what we’re doing?

We spent the next hour or so working on spoons and discussing what we were getting from the group, and how it fits into our lives. I learned a lot about the other members, and talked a little about the other art group in which I’d participated, which faced this same question in a less graceful way. Several members expressed their dissatisfaction with the journaling portion of our group, but it was more about their own focus and progress than the way that meeting time has been left unstructured. I listened as several people articulated their plans for that time in the New Year. At the end of the hour, many of us were smiling, and happy that we’d had the talk.

I’m planning on asking the same question at this coming Friday’s journaling meeting.

At one point, our group leader asked if I was looking for us to move in a different direction, or if I had ideas about things I’d rather do—but since the whole point of my being there is just to spend a couple of hours every two weeks around other arty folks, instead of sitting at my computer, obsessing about this week’s new product offerings, answering questions and writing instructions, I’m content to go with the flow rather than try to guide. I’m happy to teach occasionally, but I’m happier to just sit and play. I’d like to do more altered book work, but I don’t want to try to organize a round robin or a regular project, because I just don’t want to be the mom. That’s been a running theme with me through any art gathering in which I’ve participated: I’m happy to pull my weight, pitch in, and participate, but I don’t want to be in charge of anything.

Anyway, what I learned from talking with the other group members: it’s good to ask a question once in a while. It’s good to ask what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it, and if we can make it better. Not that anything has to change—it’s just good to take stock every so often, and remind ourselves what the goals are, and whether we’re doing the right things to meet them. Since the year is winding down, and we’re all about to get sucked into that swirling vortex that is the holiday season, now might be a good time to do that.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, mostly because on the 15th of the last, oh, four months, my garden hasn’t had any blooms to speak of. It’s been a hot, bleak summer here in hardiness zone 7B, with 69 days of triple digit temperatures, and stage 1 water restrictions. However, last week, we had a few days of slow, steady rain, and a lot of the garden plants that didn’t die back completely burst into flower. Here’s what’s blooming today:

Another Year

Today is my birthday. Pretty much my favorite day of the year. Not because I’m doing anything special. Just because it makes me happy.

A year ago today, I was in Santa Fe, buying myself a birthday present: a ceramic sun face for my garden shed. It was something I really wanted—a little arty touch on my very functional shed. I even painted it bright blue, so the sun could float in a brilliant sky.

Sadly, a gust of wind caught the door of the shed one day while I was working, flinging it open, and smashing the little ceramic sun against the right front of the shed. It shattered, but due to my industrial strength installation job the pieces stayed in place. So, it looked perfectly fine from the kitchen window, but up close, it looked like this:

Not pretty.

Enter my summer project, the gigantic, flat, painted version of the smashed ceramic sun. It’s been sitting out in the garage, getting coats of acrylic varnish for a couple of weeks, and this morning, I finally decided to grit my teeth and drill holes in it for hanging. Drilling through finished artwork? Stressful.

So, here it is, hanging in place, as intended. Happy birthday to me!

I’m a Little Crispy

I spent most of last week getting Reborn Books class ready enough to open enrollment. I spent about a week longer than I thought I would getting all the videos ready, and I was already a month behind schedule for getting the classroom up and running. By the time Thursday rolled around, and I finally posted the enrollment message at Ten Two Studios, I was fried.

Friday was the monthly art journaling meeting with my local group. I usually work on my book for The Sketchbook Project. After running around doing all the week’s errands all day, I had nothing prepared for journaling, so instead, I packed up a gluebook and some magazines, and spent the evening cutting and pasting. It was a great way to de-stress after a hard week. I forget sometimes how freeing it is to gluebook.

For the Birds

I looked at my calendar today, and realized it’s Wednesday. The last time I looked, it was last Monday. I’ve lost a week…

Well, not lost a week, so much as worked right through it. I’m this close to having my first online class ready to post, and have been working like a mad woman to get things written and recorded and ready. I’ve shot 24 or so little videos, edited them, and converted them to Flash files, then uploaded them and inserted them into the classroom site. Who knew video was so labor intensive?

This morning, I forced myself to take an hour, and do these glue cards, so I’ll have them to swap at the local group meeting this Friday. I’ve been itching to make them, but the idea in my head is much better than the execution. Still, they’re done, and done is beautiful.

The other thing I did this week was buy a cheap web cam, and start playing with it on sites like Google+ and Ustream. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. Video chat, anyone? Last night on Ustream, I watched someone working in her journal. Live. It’s a nifty toy, and probably what will finally drive me to buying a laptop, and setting up a wireless router.

The weather is lovely here for most of the day. We still have that ugly couple of hours in the afternoon where the a/c kicks on, but mornings and late afternoons as the sun starts to sink are pretty great. I should be working in the garden, but honestly, it’s too depressing at the moment. There are dead things there. Expensive dead things. I should replace them now, because fall is prime planting time for perennials, and all the nurseries are having sales to make up for all the revenue they lost during this brutal summer, when nobody was planting anything. I just hate pulling out dead plants. I feel like a gardening failure each time I lose one.

OK, back to work for me. Class eye candy is coming soon, because I’ve made half a dozen new books while shooting the videos.

I’m Not Proud of This

I don’t have any new art to show this week, so I thought I’d show you the current state of my workroom. I know. It’s bad.

In my defense, I’m working on videos for an online class I’m hoping to announce soon. I started working on a basic ATC class, but I got bogged down in what exactly I wanted to do with it, and whether anyone on the planet actually needs a basic ATC class at this point. Yesterday, I moved on, to a class I actually sort of taught in real life to my local group last month. Except I only had two hours, and really this class should take weeks. Which it will, when I get the online class together. But first, I have to do a bunch of videos, and some written lessons, and maybe a few collage sheets. Oh, and samples. Lots more samples. Which is why my workroom looks like someone tossed a grenade into it.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea at this point. Tossing a grenade in. Because it’s bad. It’s really bad. It’s time to drag in the big trash can, and toss some serious junk. And before you ask—yes, the rest of the house is also a mess, but not like this. I do manage to control the clutter elsewhere. Right now, the whole house needs a good floor mopping and dusting, or a couple of hours of maid service.

There is one portion of the house that is relatively free of clutter:

This is the two square feet of my table that you usually see. It’s where I shoot hand shots for projects. That black thing clamped to the table is a monopod for the camera. I just bought a quick-release for my new camera, so instead of screwing it onto the pod each time, I just flip a lever and slide it into place. It’s brilliant. I saved a ton of time last night, as I moved back and forth between the work table and the computer, shooting videos, and then downloading them to turn them into Flash files for the classroom.

Oh, and did you notice that I didn’t start this post with complaints about the weather? Today, we’re having our first double digit high temperature in two months. I celebrated by cooking something in the oven this morning—something I just don’t do in the summer unless I absolutely can’t avoid it. Tonight, it’s supposed to be in the 60s, which is about twenty degrees cooler than it’s been at night all summer. I intend to throw open the windows, shut off the air conditioner, and enjoy the heck out of it.

Is It Autumn Yet?

This week, I happened to read a blog entry from exactly a year ago. In it, I talked about turning off the air conditioner and opening the windows for the first time since June. That’s a big deal around here—opening the windows to let the cool air in, and generally air out the house after a long, hot summer. Unfortunately, with highs still in the triple digits, and lows in the 80s, that day is nowhere in sight.

I managed not to do much work on my journal for The Sketchbook Project this month, so when my local art group’s monthly journaling day rolled around on Friday, I hadn’t prepared any pages for backgrounds or textures. I finished a little lettering, and did one little section of a new set of pages, but mostly, it was a waste of my precious two hours of working time. I’m really going to try to get this book finished by the end of October, so I can move on to another project that’s been sitting undone for over a year.

Anyway, I did finish these rose pages this weekend. That’s something, right?

Done. Or Done-ish.

For those of you who don’t follow my Facebook page, here’s the finished sun-face. Minus a little drilling, and a lot of sealing, which I’m leaving until the weather cools. That part is messy and stinky, and has to be done in the garage, which is about 300 degrees right now. I managed to get one good coat of matte spray sealer on it to hold it over until I can do the heavy-duty stuff. So there.

I don’t do art just for me very often, so it’s been a real joy to finish this project. Once it’s up on the shed door, I’ll be able to see it any time I’m in the kitchen, which is decorated in sort of the same colors as this piece. Wait, I have a picture of it, when it was first finished…

I spent the first two years I lived in this house working on this kitchen. I did all the work with my own two little hands, tearing it back to the studs, removing a wall, extending another wall, drawing and redrawing the kitchen plans to fit the maximum number of cabinets into a ridiculously small space. My kitchen designer gave me the thumbs up when I presented the plans, but questioned my choice of dark cabinets and a white counter top, because with my slate floors, it was completely devoid of color. Then I took him out into the garage, and showed him the pile of tiles I’d been buying, a few at a time, for two years, and he approved. I knew I wanted this colorful back splash before I bought the house. I tore a photo out of a decorating magazine with sort of the same idea, but in solids. I did the tile work myself, over a Thanksgiving weekend. It’s my favorite thing in the house, which is mostly very subdued in color. Guys like my living room, front bathroom, and hallway for all the dark wood, leather furniture, and solid neutral colors. Women turn the corner into the kitchen and breathe a sigh of relief when they see bright, light, and color. Even the door is colorful—in a sea of brown wood doors, I painted the back door from the kitchen to the garage the same green that’s in the back splash.

There you have it. A little peek into my world.

Here Comes The Sun

Remember this sun-face design I posted a while back? Well, since my camera was out of commission, I couldn’t really do a lot of work this week. I took that as a sign that I should do some cleaning, and work on a few unfinished projects. I’ve been dragging my feet on this big piece, so I hauled it out, threw it up onto the bed, and made myself work on it.

Here’s how it looked Monday afternoon, just moments after my new camera arrived. I base-coated the wood, black on the back and sides, and gesso on the front, and then traced the design onto the surface. I saw a tracing method on Pinterest, using old newspaper as the tracing paper. You basically find a piece of newspaper that’s very inky (dark ads, like in the movie listings, or in my case, the restaurant ads of my favorite local Chinese newspaper), slide that between the image you want to trace and the surface you want to trace it on, and draw over the image with a pencil. It takes a little fiddling, but it works—and since I had the newspapers in the house, it was available and free. Yay! Once traced, I went over the design with a black Sharpie, a method I had stored away from when I used to paint murals on the rooftop of my college theatre.

Tuesday morning, I had it this far along. I painted the background and sun rays, and it looked a little flat and boring. The sun face I’m replacing is Mexican talavera tile, and very ornately painted. I wanted to keep some of that, and also create something that integrates with the garden. I decided to paint the second layer of rays as leaves. Better, but still sort of flat. I rummaged around in my file drawers, and found a flower stencil. I started stenciling. It looked better.

Here’s the way it looked this morning. The piece is so large that I’ve only been working on one side, so I don’t have to keep lifting it up and turning it. I started to stencil the background with flowers. I’m thinking I’ll do some dots in between the flowers. I also want to do something with the circular band around the face, and on the cheeks and forehead.

I also have to figure out how I’m going to mount this on the door of the garden shed. I should do that soon. But first, more stenciling…

RIP Kodak EasyShare CX7530

This, dear friends, is a photo of the camera I’ve been using for the last seven years, taken with my crappy phone camera. Today, I did what I often feared I would: I dropped it on a concrete floor, with the camera on and the lens extended. And I killed it.

I use my camera daily. It’s such an integral part of what I do that the camera dock is conveniently located so I can reach in the office door and grab it as I’m walking down the hall to my studio. Without it, I’m out of business. Well, not actually out of business, but definitely sidelined. This afternoon, I was putting the finishing touches on a new kit, and one of the last things I generally do is grab one of everything in the kit, including the instruction sheet, and photograph them, so people can see what they’re getting. It didn’t occur to me until I was walking into my studio with an armload of stuff that I couldn’t take that photo, because my camera is dead.

*sigh*

On the plus side, I ordered a new camera this afternoon, and forked over the extra bucks for one day service. It’s probably going to be here on Monday. I think I paid about half what I did for my old one, and I’m getting way more megapixels, a bigger screen, better video—and it’s purple. It’s also another Kodak, because as inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras go, this last one was a winner: easy to use, lightweight, plenty of features I used, and not too many I didn’t. Here’s hoping the new one is the same.

I’ll just be over here with my crappy phone camera until next week…

Saturday Mail Delivery WIN!

One of the oddities of having a mailing list of over 4,000 people is that I occasionally get random stuff in the mail. Such is the case this morning. Janie emailed me earlier in the week, saying she was reorganizing her beading stash, and had a serious amount of the tins I used in my Round Beaded Tin Ornament Kit that she would happily send me—and she’d even pay the postage. Not being completely crazy, I accepted the offer, because let’s face it: any time anyone says they’ll send you a box of stuff for free, and you don’t have to pay the postage on it, it’s a good thing.

And this, dear friends, is what arrived on my doorstep (minus the 15 year-old blind, deaf, photo-bombing rat terrier): the mother lode of little metal tins with clear glass lids, some nicely arranged in bigger metal carriers, and some loose. It looks like the Lee Valley warehouse exploded in my dining room. Most of them are not the size I use for the ornaments—they’re the little ones I’ve been wishing I had bought more of when JoAnn carried them in their jewelry section, because I used them to make little shaker pendants a while back, and thought they’d make a cute kit, but stupid JoAnn discontinued them. So, now there will be a very reasonably priced set of kits, because the really expensive part just arrived FREE!

Oh, and Janie? You rock. Seriously.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Today is day 35 of triple-digit temperatures. Not funny.

This week, my neighbors on all sides got new roofs from the same company. After the wicked hail storm in May, roofers descended on our neighborhood like a swarm of locusts, and apparently, one company cornered all the work, because all my neighbors have the same sign in their front yards. I’m guessing this is done to tell the other roofing companies that the signed houses are already spoken for, because I’m still getting flyers on my front door, and guys knocking on my door, while my neighbors are not. I briefly considered putting a sign in the front yard that says MY INSURANCE COMPANY SAYS MY ROOF LOOKS BRAND NEW, SO I DON’T NEED ANOTHER ONE, or dragging out the sign leftover from the last time I got a new roof, because it’s still in the garage somewhere, but haven’t managed to do either. Mostly, I just say ugly words under my breath every time I pull a flyer off my front door.

Anyway, this week’s roof-fest has been a symphony of nail guns, big trucks, and the random crashing of old shingles being raked off my neighbors’ roofs. Because it’s so dangerously hot (14 people have died so far), the poor roofing dudes can only work very early in the morning, or very late in the day, as the sun is going down. They start at 7AM, leave at 1 or 2, and come back again at 6PM. In between are lots of water breaks in the shade, which happens to be right in front of my house. My hell strip has been the roofers’ break room for the last week.

In amongst the noise and the heat and the roofers sleeping on my front lawn, I’ve been conquering new software, trying to come up with the right combination of toys to teach some online classes. Yesterday, I learned how to convert very large .mp4 video files to very small .flv Flash files—and then, I worked out a way to post them using the BBcode the classroom setup likes. For dessert, I used the same sort of custom BBcode to insert Flickr slideshows, which, after a lengthy search, I discovered is just about impossible. Impossible just wasn’t an option.

Last night, I looked at the calendar, and realized that my local art group meeting is next Friday, and I’ve done nothing to prepare. I’m teaching everyone how to make my favorite reborn books, and I want to get a bunch of samples done—and that shouldn’t be a problem, since I have a huge pile of half-finished books in my workroom. I also had to do three more cards for our gluecard swap, with a water theme. I don’t think these are particularly inspired cards, but maybe they’re not finished yet.

Or maybe I was just feeling lazy this week. I’m blaming it on the heat…

Let the Sun Shine

Here’s a little teaser of something I’m working on. Yes, I do see the irony of working on a giant sun face when it’s blazing hot outside…

This is going to be a two foot circular painting on wood, for my garden shed. It’s a replacement for the little Mexican ceramic one that’s been hanging on the door since I visited Santa Fe. Sadly, the wind caught the door when I had it open one day, flinging it wide open, smashing the ceramic face against the side of the shed. All summer, that smooshed face has been hanging there, the cracks getting larger. It hasn’t fallen off, which I think is more of a tribute to the industrial strength hanging job I did than anything else. It looks fine from the kitchen window, but every time I look out there, I know it’s broken, and it bugs me.

This piece has no other function than to be pretty. It’s not for a swap or a project. I just want to make it. That kind of arty luxury seems to be rare in my life at the moment…

Journal Progress

Do I even need to start this post with “it’s hot”? We’re on day 25 of temperatures over 100 degrees. Our lows are now in the 80s, so there’s no relief, even at night. This morning, I woke up soaked in sweat, and discovered that the front panel of my air conditioner had popped open, shutting it off until I smacked it back in place. Not funny…

Being trapped indoors for most of the day has its perks. I’m making slow, steady progress on my journal for The Sketchbook Project. My new arty group does journaling on the fourth Friday of every month, so I have to uninterrupted hours to work. I’ve discovered that if I get a few pages prepped with photos, I can do shading, coloring and painting at the meeting, and then finish the pages in spare time before we meet again. I finished this set of pages this morning while waiting for glitter glue to dry on some shrine samples.

Unfortunately, I’ve also discovered that my little journal is growing too fat. The project’s guidelines allow books to be one inch thick, and right now, mine is a little bit over that. I’m trying to figure out how I can cut down on the bulk without destroying the book. Removing pages is definitely in my future.

All the work I’ve done in this journal is posted here. I should have two more sets of pages done in the next couple of weeks. Little by little…

Open & Closed

Over on my Facebook fan page, Denise asked about this set of journal pages that I posted last week. This is part of the work I’ve done in a journal for The Sketchbook Project. I’m sort of doing a sketchbook all about my garden. Except there isn’t much sketching in it.

OK, I drew the little floating bits blowing around the weeds on these pages. That counts, right?

Anyway, Denise wanted to know if the pages fold out, because there’s that nice racing stripe of pink stuff up the middle. The answer is yes, they do fold out. Like this:

Usually, when I do foldy-outy things like this, I design them so they’re more subtle. I like surprising the viewer with whatever is hidden behind the flaps. However, this book is going to go on tour, and be viewed by people who might never have handled an altered book, and are expecting to flip through a sketchbook like they would any other book. I intentionally inserted pages that fold out, up and down, and I’m not doing much to hide the fact that in order to view the work in this book, you have to interact with it.

Unfortunately, I’ve watched many people flip through my altered books, and miss the foldy-outy things. They either don’t see them, or don’t think they’re allowed to open them. I think part of that is the hidden surprise thing. They can’t see that there’s something more underneath, so they don’t want to poke around and see if there might be more, because they might be doing something that will hurt the book. Since I won’t be there to say, “go ahead and open it”, I’m doing it visually. If I handed you this book with the fold-outs closed, you’d want to know what that pink stuff is, wouldn’t you? So, you’d lift a the flap a little, and peek, and seeing there’s something there, and discovering that lifting the flap won’t cause the book to burst into flames or fall apart in your lap, you’d probably go ahead and open it.

There you go. That’s me, over-thinking things…

In The Weeds

This is the time of year when I dream of having a lush, green English garden, where I can sit and watch the birds and butterflies, and maybe read a book. Fat chance.

The reality is that from about noon until the sun goes down, my garden is a blazing inferno. There is no place to sit and enjoy. It’s get in, water, cut some okra, and get inside for ice water and air conditioning. The only thing growing happily right now is the weeds.

A garden is a wonderful place to learn to balance expectations with reality.

The reality is that most things that will grow in the beautiful English garden in my head won’t grow in North Texas. So, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about native plants, and finding things that are pretty, and still tough enough to endure through drought and water restrictions. I’ve discovered all sorts of beautiful plants whose flowers attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

I’m sure there’s a clever point in here about accepting that when what’s in your head, and what’s on the paper in front of you don’t match up, it’s time to find the beauty in the reality, and forget about beating yourself up about not meeting expecations—but it’s just too damned hot to be clever.

Even the Artwork is Hot

Yeah, yeah—it’s hot. Like, record-breaking hot. Whatever.

This has been a weird week. I started by buzzing off about 95% of my hair, which was already pretty short to start. It’s not shaved short, but it’s definitely as close as I’ve ever come. What can I say? I work in the garden, with a hat, and a sweat band, and gloves—and what I do to protect myself from the sun and the bugs makes me even hotter and more miserable, and completely sweaty. I just had one soaking wet head too many, so off came the rest of the hair. On the plus side, I sweat much less when I’m outside. Minus: now my straw garden hat is too loose. It’s always something…

My new art group meets tonight, to alter bottles. I told everyone I’d bring collage sheets, because I have a ton of label-themed sheets. Then, for some reason, I decided I should finish up all the label sheets in my pending folder, in time for tonight. So, I have four brand-spanking new sheets to share this evening. I just packed a box to take with me, with extra bottles for those who have posted that they don’t have one—and then, I walked around the house, and picked up one of every type of altered bottle I have, to use as show and tell. It’s a crazy assortment. My latest addition is a mayo jar that’s been colored like a vintage blue mason jar, and has a solar light attached to the lid. Yes, I’m making my own solar lamps for the garden. That’s how many glass jars I have to spare…

At the last group meeting, I went for a walk with Jane, to explore the Indian grocery store a few doors down from our meeting spot. While we were gone, they other ladies decided they liked my Little Fat Gluebook idea, and wanted to do a swap of some 4×6 cards. I missed the explanation, but since I knew the size, and that the theme is HOT (go figure), I made this set of cards. Now I’ve heard that we can use any media, so I might do another set with my garden photos and some pastels. Or not.

Maybe altered bottles next. We’ll see what happens…