Four Things

It has been a long time since I last blogged! I offer no good excuse for that but I hope to be better in the future. I have four things I would like to mention:

1. I named my studio! It is called Sarah's Lavender Cottage.

2. I have a show coming up this Saturday at Unicoi State Park. For more details click on my "Schedule of Events" (located at the top of the blog).

3. My friend Amanda Kaylon is setting up a website for me! She is the designer of http://www.purityandprecision.com/ and http://www.rachelnoeljewelry.blogspot.com/. The goal is for me to sell online. It has been nice getting to correspond with her about fonts, colors and other pretty things.

4. I have been expirementing with using the same technique I use to make trees for making a horse picture. This is how it is coming along.

Lost

Maybe they'll be found after a new pair is bought.

This picture is made of: hydrangea, bark, tendrils, maple, aucuba, parsley, dill ground orange peel and cinnamon.

My Fair Lady

“I despise those gowns with sort of weeds here and weeds there,” said Professor Henry Higgins, the main guy in My Fair Lady. I found it ironic that I made that gown entirely out of weeds. Julie Andrews played Eliza Doolittle on Broadway before Audrey Hepburn was filmed in the part. It was decided when casting Eliza that Julie Andrews was not a famous enough actress so they offered the part to Audrey Hepburn. Audrey Hepburn wanted them to accept Julie Andrews, but when she was told it was to be either herself or Elizabeth Taylor in the part she accepted it. I enjoyed blending the many shades of birch bark to make her face. Eliza was a flower girl in the movie. I’m a pressed-flower girl.

This picture is made of: aucuba, birch bark, corn silk, statice, pampas grass, maple, Queen Anne’s lace, seaweed, skeletonized magnolia leaves, money plant, various other leaves and some grass heads.

Gleeful

Why is she gleeful? Did something cause her sensation of running through the flowers, or is she simply a gleeful person -- happy to be who God created her to be? A lady, free from cultural norms. This picture included a first for me. Never before has one of my ladies had toes.

This picture is made of: corn husk, baby's breath, statice?, cock's comb, bark, seaweed, aucuba, maple and tendrils.

Happy Birthday Nathaniel!

Today is my brother Nathaniel's 13th birthday. Nathaniel is one of my best friends. We do chores together and watch movies together. We share the same memories and know a lot of the same people. Our art forms also work well together. Nathaniel often plays his dulcimer at events while I sell my artwork. I'm so thankful to God for each of my siblings. I love the way God created families to work, play and generally be together. I have my best friends over every day.

It's That Time Of Year!

This Saturday, May 21, is the 49th annual Mountain Laurel Festival in my hometown of Clarkesville. I'm probably not the only one who has experienced firsts at this festival. Five years ago I was an excited 11-year-old, ready to do her first art show set up with the mindset of demonstrating and showing her cards, with not many to sell. The second year was even more exciting. It was the first time I had ever attempted selling my framed pictures. People actually bought them. I went home feeling so rich.

This year I will mostly bring corn husk dolls to sell, with maybe a picture or two. Many of my friends will also be there, my brother and his friend Calvin will be playing stringed instruments with a group of other bluegrass musicians. The Clarkesville Garden Club will be selling plants. John Kollock will be sketching children for free from 10:00-2:00 (ages 2 to 10). My friend Elizabeth will be selling jewelry and who knows what kind of art Miss Cecile and Miss Becky will doing. Those are just people who I know who will be there. There are a lot of other people who will be around too. The ones I mentioned and I will be in the Mauldin House Gardens. A lot of other vendors will be on the square. I think food and more music will be in Pitt's Park. The parade, which goes through the town square starts at 10:00 a.m.

Purple Paint

I have a mom who will wake up at 4:30 AM and paint until 8:00AM. She'll come back later that day for another coat and then again in the evening to paint some more. Yes, Mom and I worked odd hours to make my purple dream come true. Here's what it looks like inside of my art studio/ gallery now.THANK YOU MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bluebird in Bloom

Henry David Thoreau said “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” I thought that was a pretty way to look at it. (Forget that my sky is corn husk colored.) This particular bluebird carries flowers on his back, including some flowers from the UK. I think he also has delphinium, cornflower, and dyed spider mum on his back.

This picture is made of: corn husk, maple, cotton, banana peel, cornflower, some sort of flower from the UK, spider mum and mica.

Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt

My Great Grandmother made two big Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts. Her quilts feature the color yellow as does my pressed-flower picture. I wish I could say I did that on purpose but alas, I did not. I had an abundance of yellow maple leaves and thought they would work for a quilt.

This picture is made of: maple, butterfly weed, mountain laurel, aucuba, statice, corn husk, Queen Anne's lace, a tendril, birch bark, onion, banana peel, fern, poinsettia, bloody dock, mushroom, Japanese maple and raspberry.

The Hawk

This picture is one I made from a World Wide Pressed Flower Guild class. The way each individual feather is made was tedious. Sometimes I'd make a feather and it would fall apart or stick to my finger. Despite the challenges, or because of the challenges it was a good class. This picture is made of: hydrangea, maple, mulberry, banana peel, cotton, money plant, bark and dead daylily type foliage.

Vanity

Every week I work with my friend Miss Charle' in the garden. When fall arrives we are constantly raking. Raking makes a huge temporary difference but it sort of seems like a vain effort when we're in the process of getting an area nicely raked as we're watching fresh leaves fluttering down.

This picture is made of: corn husks, dill, hydrangea, mulberry, bark, maple and banana peel.

Surrounded By Music

Musicians get into their music. My 12-year-old brother plays the mountain dulcimer, and I know he really gets into what he is playing. While I was making this picture he found some good music for me to listen to and advised me to make her face looking down at her instrument because that is what he does when he is really getting into the song he is playing.

This picture is made of: delphinium, seed, bark, corn silk, aucuba and dill.

Stick

What I wanted to get across in this picture was, well, a dog. I wanted to capture the energy of a dog racing toward you with a stick in its mouth, eager for you to thow it again- the life and the excitement of a dog in its element. We had a black and white springer spaniel- Solomon. He loved to play "stick".

This picture is made of: pampas grass, cotton, aucuba, banana peel, cornflower, mulberry, corn silk, ferns, lichen, various leaves and some mica to add sparkel to the eyes.

It Won Third!

This winter I spent hours thinking through, researching and making this picture to be entered into the Philadelphia Flower Show. To my surprise and delight it won third place. The overall theme of the flower show was "Springtime in Paris". I entered the pressed-flower category of a Paris Cafe'. Audry Hepburn movies were helpful for research. Dent de Lion Cafe' was named after the yellow flowers we, in America, call dandelions. For those of you who don't know, I am reading the French novel by Victor Hugo, Les Misereables. Reading it has given me a great intrest in France. Although Victor Hugo's novel is set in 1830's France, I brought many of its characters to a more modern day scene, except for the family at the bottom, which is my family. Below shows who's who. Jean Valjean is the main character in Les Miserables. He adopts Cosette, who loves Marius. The black tabletops in this picture are made from black hollyhocks with corn husks underneath them to give them a more interesting texture.

Inspector Javert's world revolves around the law. He chases Jean Valean (who is a parole violator) throughout the book. Javert took two tries. The first Javert was too big.

Marius is not a waiter in the book but it seemed like a good thing for him to be in this picture. His clothes (in the picture, not in the book) are made out of banana peel and his apron is black hollyhock.

Theses revolutionaries are plotting a better world. They all end up dying on a barricade.

Black hollyhock is the material I used for all the little curleys on the chairs. OK, these two characters are actually extremely poor and would not have clothes like this. But I wanted to have lots bright colors in this picture hence, the fancy clothes. The Thenardiers are criminals. Their daughter Eponine is in love with Marius which is just too bad because he loves "someone else".

And this is my family. Everthing in this picture is natural. Philadelphia rules state no color enhancment.

Here is a list of the plant material in this picture: creeping raspberry, birch bark, aucuba, bloody dock, dandelion, thyme, butterfly bush, ferns, statice, cornflower, rose, lettace, black hollyhock, corn husk, gray poplar, money plant, variouse fall leaves, black-eyed-Susan, banana peel, onion membranes, cockscomb, Japaneses maple, corn silk and some sort of a dead iris type foliage.

TO SEE THE OTHER PRESSED FLOWER PICTURES THAT WERE ENTERED, CLICK HERE. THERE WERE SEVERAL DIFFERENT PRESSED FLOWER CATEGORIES IN THIS SHOW SO MAKE SURE TO SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THEM ALL.

Winning third was a great 16th birthday present. I also got to go to the Les Miserables musical with my grandma, my dad and my brother.

Yee Haw!

I’ve been making pressed-flower cowboys ever since I sold my pictures on cards for $2. My very first cowboy was inspired by a piece of plant material that reminded me of a cowboy’s vest.

This picture is made of: maple, mulberry, banana peel, bark, tendril, orange peel, cockscomb and aucuba

Shapes

The trees in this picture are made by cutting different shades of brown leaves into thin strips and then gluing them in such a way that one side of the tree is darker than the other, with a natural transition from one to the other. It seems like pretty tedious work but I really enjoy it, sliver by sliver forming each branch. I haven’t figured out what the cardinal on the branch is looking at or thinking about. I just felt inclined to put a cardinal there.

This picture is made of: corn husk, various brown leaves, raspberry, maple, tulip, money plant, banana peel and orange peel.

Wings

What is our fascination with butterflies? It seems like anytime anyone sees a butterfly it brightens their day. Most of us don't get that way about horseflies. “Butterfly” was one of the first long words my two-year-old brother, Eli, learned how to say. Anytime one would fly through the yard he'd exclaim, "bo-fly.”

This picture is made of: cosmos, statice, bark, corn silk, delphinium, banana peel, aucuba and maple.

Mom's Bird

The robin is Michigan's state bird. Mom grew up in Michigan. She was proud to "own" this bird. When she got a lot older she learned, to her dismay, that the robin is also claimed by two other states as their state bird.



This picture is made of: hydrangea, maple, money plant, cotton, banana peel, mica and various fall leaves.

Fuzzy Feline

One advantages of the medium of pressed-flowers is being able to match textures as well as colors. If I was a painter I'd have to figure out how to illustrate fur with the way I manipulated the paint. But since I'm a pressed-flower artist I can just grab a fuzzy pampas grass head that already looks like cat fur to illustrate cat fur. I like making pictures of cats.

This picture is made of: pampas grass, cotton, poppy seed, banana peel, fall leaves, chrysanthemum and mica to add sparkle to the cat's eyes

NEW STUDIO AND ART GALLERY!

This has been a prayer and a dream of my family's. I now have my own art gallery and studio. It's on the same property where I've done my art shows in the past. We're not exactly sure how we'll plan my time yet - maybe I'll go over there to work twice a week or something like that. We'll see. But it is all exciting.