Warm Amidst Cold

This lady I imagine is walking through the snow in order to carry a hot meal to a family who may be sick or who may have a new baby. I admit, I did get help from Jo March of Little Women. I got on youtube and found the 1998 Little Women clip were Jo and her sisters carried food to a needy family so I could get a better idea of what it should look like.

This picture is made of: garlic peel, poinsettia, Japanese maple, poppy seed, bark, corn silk, bean strings, cotton and I'm not sure what her dress and bonnet are made of.

I Have A Great Mom

My Mom Allows Me To...

Use her baking soda to boil magnolia leaves to skeletonize them

Fill the house with explosions of cattail fuzzies when a picture needs a little snow

Use her cutting board when I need to slice open daffodil flowers

Fill her refrigerator with flowers that I haven't gotten around to pressing yet

Take two rooms to use as pressing studios

Use her toaster oven to activate my desiccant board

My mom has listened to me practice the same talks over and over again for various programs and been a constant encouragement and motivation with my art work. The list goes on and on. Lately Mom has pressed dozens of butter cups for me. Thank you Mom!

Framed!

My rose picture finished getting framed! I remember in the beginning of my picture-making career how much it struck me that a frame can make a picture look so much more like a piece of artwork. There are some artistic mediums where I think some of the pictures look better without a frame, but I think mine are best framed. It is also very interesting in the frame shop to see how different various colored mats make a picture look. There are some mat colors that will make the whole picture look sad, mats that will draw too much attention to themselves and then of course there is that mat that looks just right. Something that we try to keep in mind when framing is to let the framing compliment the picture not the other way around. The art is the focus; framing frames it. Anyway those are my two cents. Enjoy the picture.