I'm Spinning!

Mom has always told us not to spin because as a little girl she ended up with a concussion when she spinned and fell down, hitting a table. Another time when she spinned and fell, she broke her collar bone from the way she landed.

But I'm not practicing that kind of spinning. The kind I'm doing earns her approval. A few months ago a friend taught me how to spin. At the time I was borrowing another friend's spinning wheel, and went to another place to use it. By doing that I was able to practice, but now I am pleased to announce that God has blessed me with a spinning wheel of my very own! A friend fixed it up and sold it to me. I think the color of the wood and its extra details are so nice. It will be good for spinning in a cabin during a re-enactment. I've been buying my wool already carded and clean but I want to work on cleaning and carding my own wool. Please let me know if you know of a place where I could find wool, raw or clean, for a good deal.

He Makes Dreams Come True

Dad is a freelance outdoor writer.

Dad and I on our way to California. He went fishing. I attended a World Wide Pressed Flower Guild conference.

First we saw the sequoia trees.

Dad makes dreams come true. He brought me to California for the World Wide Pressed Flower Guild conference in 2008. He used to draw pictures with me when I was a toddler. Now he counsels me in my art business. Dad has helped me write receipts for pictures sold and has stayed with me through long show days when nobody came by. Dad gives me opinions on pictures when I'm having a hard time deciding on something or something doesn't look quit right. He helps me discern what shows I should do and how I should price my work. Thirty-two hours after we got home from our family trip to Michigan, Dad went back north to Ohio. He went so he could bring my younger brother, Nathaniel, to a dulcimer competition (By the way, Nathaniel won first place!!!). Yes, Dad makes dreams come true. I don't know why God gave me such a good Dad but I'm sure glad he did.

Sketching

Sketching is one of my new projects. My drawing teacher thinks I really need to look at things- not just assume that I know what they look like. So I've been assigned sketching. Hopefully it will help me be more observant. I, along with my family, are leaving for a trip up north this Thursday. We'll be gone for about a week so I won't be blogging- I'll be sketching. Along with visiting relatives I'm going to a World Wide Pressed Flower Guild gathering where I'll be taking classes and will be able to talk to pressers who have been pressing much longer than I.

My Room Smells Like A Thrift Store

I had two jean skirts and a pair of pants that I didn't like and so I cut them into pieces. After mixing up my pieces I sewed several of them back together into a skirt, using a sewing machine. I sewed the little flowers on by hand. I used the top of one of the skirts for a waist. That way I didn’t need to mess with zippers or buttons or anything. I want to make more of theses skirts to be able to wear around the house. They're practical. Because of the textures and colors I don’t think stains will show up to badly on them. Mom, Autumn and I went to the thrift store where we bought all sorts of frumpy jean jumpers and pants to turn into skirts- hence my room ended up smelling like a thrift store.

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.

She's On Her Way

Miss Cecile

No, this is not Miss Cecile. This is the scarecrow my friend Miss Cecile made. This scarecrow's name is Daisy. I think this is the fourth or fifth year of Daisies. Daisy stands in the vegetable garden of the Mauldin House Gardens, the public garden where I volunteer. This year Daisy's a little older, she is now wearing her hair up. Miss Cecile has her dressed to be a governess or a teacher sort of person. I think she made her face by covering a gourd with paper clay, which is like paper mache'. Miss Cecile is a seamstress who worked in the fashion industry. She can make anything she wants to make. Her main art form is jewelry since that's how she makes her living. You can see her work here- always so well done.

Spring Tresures

Pitcured above are very young oak leaves. Now that they've started growing they will very quickly grow big and green. So now's the time to catch and press these little tresures. But it's not just oak leaves. Many trees have young leaves this size but in different shapes this time of year. The maples are pretty neat right now but they don't have the little red coating on them. They look bright green. These oak leaves feel like they have a soft coating over them. One side is redish and the other side is grayish. You can gently scrape off this coating and find green leaves under it. Bellow you can see how I used some tiny oak leaves for one of my pictures.

Things In The Works

Making a tree out of leaves.

Creating a camel.

Beginning the Santa Maria.

Taking Show Inventory

Today I took inventory of my corn husk dolls for the Mountain Laurel Festival. The show will be on May 15 in Clarkesville. I already have 26 little tiny dolls and 15 regular-sized doll. I hope to make more of both, along with some sheep and maybe a Nativity set. I have a lot of dolls with fall colored accents. I probably should focus on adding some pinks, blues, greens etc. People also seem to like sweeping dolls, and I only have one of those.

The Rope Broke

I've always admired tire swings. I've swung on them some but don't really have a personal attachment to one. However, I do have a personal detachment to stick swings. I tied one end of the rope to a stick and the other to a branch, but then it broke. My memory is a little blurry but I think the rope broke while I was swinging.

How Do You Press Your Flowers?

"How do you press your flowers?"

This is a question I'm often asked. The answer is that I generally press with one of three different methods.

1. The method I most frequently use involves a homemade press made of peg board, air conditioning filters and paper. The peg board pieces make up the top and the bottom of the press. In between them you layer the remaining items as follows: air conditioning filter, blotting paper, flowers, blotting paper, air conditioning filter and so on. An advantage of this method over some others is that the air conditioning filters allow the flowers to sink in so the entire flower becomes exposed to pressure and not just the thick center. A lot of presses include wingnuts and bolts on all corners to give the flowers pressure. Instead of tightening nuts, I stack heavy boxes on my presses for the pressure.

2. Another favorite method of mine is the Microfleur. With this press, you sandwich your flowers, pop them into the microwave for several short spurts, and you have pressed flowers within minutes. You probably wouldn't use this method if you had hundreds of leaves to press because it would get pretty tedious and time consuming to be constantly taking leaves in and out of the microwave. Also, you have to let the microwave cool every now and then or else you'll catch it on fire...Sorry Mom and Dad! The advantage is you have what you need when you need it. If I'm working on a picture that just needs one special flower it's nicer to press it and have it immediately than to have to keep my picture on hold for five days while the plant material is pressing the other way. Another good thing about the Microfleur is that it allows you to press wet fleshy things such as mushrooms. Since it presses things so fast, the mushrooms or whatever don't have time to get moldy or yucky in their press.

3.

The other way I occasionally press and which I would recommend to a beginner is to use a phone book. The phone book was my first press. You can use it to find out if you like pressing flowers before you invest money in presses. You simply open the book, put in a piece of blotting paper, the flowers and another piece of blotting paper, then turn a chunk of pages and keep layering throughout the book. Weight on top of this is a good idea.

Basic Pressing Guidelines:

1. Most pressing methods that I'm aware of have you put your plant material between a couple of pieces of blotting paper. I'm not sure if my definition is correct but I think of good blotting paper as any paper that doesn't have newsprint on it. If you use paper towel, make sure it doesn't have texture, unless you want little clouds embossed on your rose petals. Computer paper works well.

2. Contrary to those who say you should press flowers for a couple of months, what I've heard as a general rule is to let your flowers press for about five days. The flowers will feel different when they're done. They will not be as flimsy, they should feel paper-like and not wet.

3. Over the course of the pressing time it may be good to change your blotting paper a couple of times if it feels wet.

There are many, many other methods of pressing, but so far theses have worked well for me.

Which One?

Late last year I was commissioned to make a reproduction of one of my earlier pictures, Mushroom Creek. So to fulfill the commission I started making the picture shown directly above, but I didn't like the way it was coming out, so I started over and made the picture shown above it. While making this picture I wasn't sure about if I should do a particular detail or not. So I called the lady who commissioned it to see what she thought. She asked if I had more than one of this picture so she could choose. As a matter of fact I did. So I finished both of the pictures so she could choose. I ended up happy with both pictures. The lady ended up happy with the pictures. She chose the bottom one, the one I started in the beginning. And now I am happy to have an extra picture I could sell at a show.

Old Art Work On Yellowed Paper

About five days ago I had the privilege of sitting at my grandma's table to sort through my dad's old, old school papers, stories and drawings. It was neat to see the many pictures he drew of fish, the different mediums he used and how some of the work showed signs of who he is now. I put the pictures and things into page sleeves. I enjoyed seeing what Dad used to draw. Isn't it cool to see work on yellowed paper. Grandma says she doesn't know where Dad got his obsession with the Jolly Green Giant, but he was one of Dad's favorite things to draw.

Shepherdless Sheep No More

Of course, sheep need shepherds, which is exactly the void we filled last Saturday. A few weeks ago, you may remember, I taught a class in which we made 60 corn husk sheep as table decorations for a church reunion. Well we can't have 60 unshepherded sheep running around the church, can we? So Last Saturday I taught 4 adults how to make corn husk shepherds. Our original goal was 30 shepherds but after a little refiguring we realized that our first calculation was a bit off, we really only needed about 15 shepherds. So we made our new goal, and I was proud of my students, who did a really good job.

Rose In A Glass Class

This picture is my version of an online class I took with the World Wide Pressed Flower Guild. It's one of my few pictures that features a whole flower. Ironically though, it really isn't a flower at all. It's really a bunch of birch bark from my uncle's and aunt's house in Michigan, which I cut into little pieces. This was a good, challenging class taught by a lady who lives in Russia. By the way, did you know that loofah sponges don't come from the sea? They're a kind of gourd that grows on a vine. Do you see where I used it?

This picture is made of: some sort of dead daylily or iris foliage, loofah, Queen Anne's lace, onion membranes, maple and birch bark.

Inexpensive, Modest, Non-Frumpy, Practical, Feminine Clothes

Have you every tried to find inexpensive, modest, non-frumpy, practical, feminine clothes? That's a tall order. It can be discouraging, walking through stores.

One solution I've found for work clothes that don't look like boy clothes is to paint t-shirts. Sometimes you have to go to the boys section to get good t-shirts, but then you transform them with a little fabric paint. I paint flowers on my shirts, but any little detail on the sleeves or pretty design would make it look more feminine. I'm not a good painter. I usually make a big cartoony, muddy, mess. But fabric paint is usually fairly easy to work with. You can paint with the bottle but I prefer to pour the paint out on a plate and use a paintbrush on the shirt. That gives me better control. After a day or two of drying, the shirts can go in the wash just like any other t-shirt, except you should inside-out them when they're in the wash. Some of the paint may chip off over time, especially when you've painted it too thick.

Second-hand stores are cool too!

Plant Agent Returns

Miss Charle' is over the gardens and grounds of the City of Clarkesville. About five years ago she wrote an article for the newspaper. My Mom contacted her through the article to see if she'd be willing to take on a little 10-year-old apprentice. She was willing - we've worked together ever since.

Miss Charle' has been a huge supporter of my business from the beginning. I consider her my plant agent. If I'm working on a picture with some weird color or texture that I'm having a hard time matching, I'll tell Miss Charle'. Sooner or later she'll come up with something. Miss Charle's good at seeing things when others don't. She'll point out the grand texture in the seemingly ugly brown leaf.

Miss Charle's also introduced me to the garden club, which has opened up into many good things. Miss Charle' practically forced me to start doing the two-minute plant lessons once a month at the garden club meetings. Through that simple exercise I've been learning how to prepare for speaking and overcome the fears of speaking in front of people. Wow, I didn't want to do it, but she made me, and I'm so thankful.

Miss Charle's a good friend of our family. She's always bringing us something, whether it be a snack, a building pallet, a leaf or a book. She knows what we like. Miss Charle' is finally back from her two-week trip. She's been working among the needy in Central America. She's been struck by the fact that the people don't have poor self-pity sorts of attitudes. They live in poorer conditions than we can truly grasp, but they plant gardens outside of their houses.

I'm glad Miss Charle' had a good time on her trip, but it's so nice to have her back home!
If you want to see some artwork, just come to the Mauldin House Gardens in Clarkesville, where you'll see these gardens Miss Charle' planted. Above is a slideshow to give you a sample.