A new page for Soulbrush's book ~ There are pages and creativity flying through the mail, thanks to the Girlfriend's Traveling Sketchbook project started by Kate of Kate's Corner. I got mail from Cathie yesterday and I recieved books from Joss (Soulbrush), Lynn, and Babs. I was chewing my nails, wondering which one to start on first and how to make the pages, then I though...OK, calm down (ha no stress here) and just work on them in the order that they are on the mailing list...so I studied Joss's book and it's full of wonderful bright color and designs and I knew I had to use some vibrant colors and do something fun. Soo, I ended up painting a crescent moon and stars and painted a red border all around. I hope she is going to like it, her book is looking great, and so are the others! I'm inspired to start on Lynn and Babs books now, what a fun project this has been!!

This is something I've been fiddling with and it's 8 x 10 inches, acrylics on a stretched canvas. I sort of laid it aside for a few days to see if I want to call it finished, or work on it some more. I picked a bouquet of photos out in the yard (photos below) to share with y'all! My camera has been busy the last few days. Babs, lookee at my oreo seed plants, they're growing great so far!!

Untitled WIP ~ I just started painting this last night and it's 8 x 10 inches, acrylics on a stretched canvas. I used the pearl acrylics for the dots and I'm seeing a sort of gate or fence so far. Who knows what it will look like when I'm finished though. I've been having such a hard time getting in the mood to paint lately (where are you muse??) and it's so frustrating. Wow, such sad news today, first Farrah Fawcett dying, then Michael Jackson, which was a complete shock! I can still remember my Mom saying, when a celebrity died, that the deaths usually come in 3's. She was right since good old Ed McMahon from the Johnny Carson show also died the other day. RIP Ed, Farrah, and Michael. :(

Yikes ~ This fearsome looking creature in the photo below really wasn't so scary...he was actually probably less than 2 inches in length and was sitting in some flowers. I believe he is going to turn into a lovely orange butterfly someday. I used the macro setting on the camera and I couldn't even see the metallic blue colors on those fearsome looking hairy spikes until I opened the picture in the computer. Nature is so neat!

Little Red Kitten and Big Blue Swimming Pool ~ This mischievous little red kitten is an ACEO done in acrylics and black ink. He's my entry for the June NFAC (nibblefest art contest) in ebay here: Little Red Kitten

We're having a pool party at the house and this is what has been occupying my time for the last few days. This big blue bubble holds 5,250 gallons of water (yes, that makes me a little nervous) and it took lots and lots of hours for this thing to fill up. This is actually the 2nd quickset pool we have had and the first one lasted 5 years. Ahhhh, water here I come. The floating duck, which I nicknamed 'Disco Duck' is actually the chlorine tablet holder. Ya'll come on over for a swim!

The Saga of the Incredible Girlfriends Traveling Sketchbooks ~

Yea, I got my sketchbook page done for Cathie from the Clevelandgirlie blog. I worked on it last night and finished it today. Her sketchbook has a theme of 'words of wisdom', so I remembered a favorite old poem and tried to intregrate a few words from that poem along with a 5 x 7 inch acrylic painting I had done. Some things I used for her page are the acrylic painting (with a sparkly gemstone inset in the sky), a goldleaf pen, gold and pearl metallic acrylics, crystal glitter, matte medium, and permanent black ink. I used that old poem as a calligraphy project way back in college days, but I have never been able to find the original author, even after lots of google searches last night. It's possibly one of those that have been around forever and the original author lost. I always thought of that poem as a reminder of hope, that no matter how bad things are today, they will get better. I'm hoping to have this ready to mail to Karen of the blog Beelieve by tomorrow, 'heads up' Karen! :) Also, I forgot to add that since Cathie's page was made of fabric, I used a piece of gessoed canvas for my page for her book.

My calligraphy skills weren't that great but I still passed the class! I did this over 25 years ago.

Dramatic and colorful skies tonight ~ I don't have any new paintings to share, but instead I'll share the fantastic skies that we had right at sunset this evening! Thanks to a bunch of storm cells popping up all around us, the sky looked so amazing I was running for my camera! Now if I could capture all those colors in a painting! TGIF and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Catching Twilight 1&2 and Hummingbirds zooming by the front door! ~ Some new ACEO's I painted last night...

Last night I was out on the deck looking at the magic purple of the evening light and was inspired to do these 2 ACEOs above. They're both acrylics on 140 lb. watercolor paper.

We've been having such fun watching these little 'hummers' feeding. I put the feeder right next to the front door and they are noisy little critters, fighting and chirping and zooming around. It's amazing how they seem to defy gravity!

'Birdcage' ...(photo on right showing the sparkly)

'Whirlpool'

'Pinwheel'
~ I had a huge sheet of semi-transparent yupo paper and I've recently been trying acrylics, black ink and sparkly crystal glitter dust for texture. I really like the effects in these ACEO size ones!
Puddin' must be one of those 'lol' cats I've been hearing about because I sure had to laugh at her playing 'hide and seek' under the bed last night! :)

Cherry Tree and the Traveling Sketchbook Project ~ This is a 6 x 6 inch painting in acrylics on a stretched canvas and ugh that glare, I just noticed it but at least the colors look ok, better than the first pictures I tried to get of this one.

Check out Kate's Corner and her awsome idea for the traveling sketchbook! I hope I did this right, since this is a new kind of project for me... here's my first page, acrylics, glitter dust, and butterfly stickers on semi-translucent yupo paper, that I mailed to Karen who writes the blog Beelieve and she's the person who is on my list! This is going to be fun!