Orange & Green

Last week I was walking through the kitchen when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the incredibly gorgeous color combinations of Pyrex bowls and fruit.  I don't think George consciously meant to fill the bowls with the opposite color fruit because when I pointed out his genius he said, "Oh yeah, that's neat."  Sometimes I think he is a design prodigy and he doesn't know it.  After I noticed it I just had to stare at the bowls of fruit for ten minutes and instructed George he was not allowed to eat any of the fruit until I blogged it.  Luckily I got around to it the next day so no fruit was lost due to blogging (which is not always the case). 

“Serendipity: Such a beautiful word describing the occurrence of events by chance. I like to think it’s the energy you put out into the world returning your energy with love.” ― Steven Aitchison

Creative Juice Retreat

Last weekend I headed out to Adams County for a retreat with a few women from my Creative Juice group.  The goal of the retreat was to get away with other amazing, creative women and to create, sleep in, hike, cook, and connect.  We did all that and more!

Our first project was a collaborative stop-motion video. Michelle is a talented singer songwriter and we used the lyrics from her song "When a Flower Meets a Butterfly" to make a video.  Margot downloaded an app that allowed her phone to automatically take a photo every fifteen seconds so we had to work quickly between shots.  We are still editing the video but below you can see a still from the project.  I will link it up when it is done.

On our hikes we all collected various items that caught our eye.  As you can see below Margot collected foliage for a beautiful flower arrangement. 

We also collected a datura pod which I thought looked perfect on these bottles. The house where we stayed had all sorts of vintage bottles and antiques to hold our collections (Thank you Mal & Jen!).

One day we ventured out to an amazing antique barn off Tater Ridge Road.  The owner, Herb Erwin, collects millstones which I am madly in love with; but to my dismay he won't sell them.  I should have taken more photos of his giant warehouse full of antiques, but I was too busy oohing and aahing over everything.

I also kept coming across incredible textures like the ones shown below.  I thought the patterns on this rusty barrel were beautiful.  I am never disappointed when I stop and look closely at things.

Although the creative part of the weekend is fun, my favorite part is connecting with other creative women.  At times I am so in awe of their beauty it makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.  There were also times when the connection was so palpable that it made my heart soar.  There were tears, uncontrollable laughter, mysterious dreams, heartfelt stories, and food made with such care you could taste the love.  When I got home I was exhausted but so filled with gratitude for the time I spent with these women.

"To be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass: husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider's web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need, and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living. How desirable and how distant is the ideal of the contemplative, artist, or saint -- the inner inviolable core, the single eye.

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls -- woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.

What is the answer? There is no easy answer, no complete answer. I have only clues, shells from the sea. The bare beauty of the channelled whelk tells me that one answer, and perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions. But how? Total retirement is not possible, I cannot shed my responsiblities. I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island. I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be. The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it. I must find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life. I can at least practice for these two weeks the simplification of outward life, as a beginning."

-- From ''Gift From the Sea''by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Hurd Orchards

Last week I visited my sister in Rochester, NY and she scheduled us for a luncheon visit to Hurd Orchards.  When we arrived we entered the sweetest little store you can imagine.  Baskets and dried flowers lined the roof and fresh apples, pears and quinces were piled everywhere.  They also sold fresh flowers cut from their fields right behind the store.  I couldn't get over their perfect orange dahlias!

Our lunch was a maple-themed lunch.  As you can see below they had decorated with a maple theme and all of the dishes served had maple elements.  I think my favorite part of the lunch was the spinach salad served with a fresh pear with blue cheese and walnuts drizzled with a maple-apple dressing (above right corner).  My sister loved the homemade muffins with pear-almond jam (directly above left).

The photo below does not do justice to the amazing, huge flower arrangements.  The red maple leaves and the gigantic dahlias were breathtaking!

I was truly impressed by the care and attention given to every detail of our lunch and the store was adorable. If you are ever near Rochester it is well worth a visit to this amazing family orchard.    They grow over 70 different varieties of apples and offer all sorts of different themed luncheons, including Appleblossom, Lilac, Peonies and Old Roses, and Blueberry Buckle Luncheons just to name a few.  But if you can't make it out there they also ship their apples and preserves.  Hopefully next summer we will return for another amazing, fresh feast.

“And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart:

Your seeds shall live in my body,

And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,

And your fragrance shall be my breath,

And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.” 
- Kahlil Gibran

Wyoming Baptist Church Sketch

Today I went sketching with Robin and Jeb in Wyoming (a suburb of Cincinnati).  I had a lot to do today and I felt agitated when I was sketching.  None of my lines were right and I had to erase a million times in the beginning because my proportions were all wrong.  In my defense the church had some funny angles, but nothing too crazy.  Somehow, instead of a drawing the happy, white church before me I ended up infusing it with agitation.  Funny how that happens some times.

"What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside you." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

Hand-carved Stamps on Furniture

When we bought our house we inherited some pieces of furniture from the previous owners including the rustic shelves in the basement (shown below).  For twelve years now I have wanted to paint these shelves and I finally did it!  And not only did I paint them but I stamped them and added cupboard doors to the top shelf with matching stamped curtains!  Sometimes I get a vision in my head of what I want to do and come hell or high water I am going to do it.  This was one of those occasions. 

I began by priming and painting the shelves with a white semi-gloss.  While waiting for paint to dry I worked on coming up with a design in Illustrator.  (For those graphic designers out there I used the polar grid to draw the seven petaled flower and it worked great.)  After printing out the design I transferred it to the Safety-Kut carving material.

Next I carved my design into the Safety-Kut.

I then cut the designs out to form my individual stamps.

Below you can see I rolled out the paint onto plexi-glass and used my brayer to roll the paint onto my stamp.  I used the same acrylic semi-gloss paint that I used to paint the white base of the shelves and I had to keep rolling fairly often because the paint would start to dry if I let it go too long. 

As you can see below the stamp gives a rough effect.  I wasn't so sure I liked it in the beginning and was very nervous to continue. 

But after I added the blue leaves it started to look better. 

I also stamped fabric for the cupboard curtains.  I used cotton and it took the stamp beautifully.

The hard part was making sure I stamped my design to perfectly fit inside my cupboard windows.  I ended up drawing the windows in Illustrator to scale which then helped me figure out where to place my stamps.  Even though I meticulously measured and used my specially-made template, it took me about four times measuring and re-measuring out from the prints for me to end up with a rectangle with the same dimensions top and bottom.  I was ready to pull my hair out.  Then my bobbin thread ran out and I couldn't unscrew the sewing arm.  At times like that I start to question my sanity but I just keep pushing through. 

I had to be extra careful when sewing the curtains to allow enough room for dowel rod pockets.  I carefully measured around the dowel and gave myself extra for the seam.  I always carefully figure it all out on paper and then somehow reality is never quite the same.  This time, after I sewed the dowel rod pocket I had a little too much extra fabric and was worried you could see the extra seam through the fabric.  But luckily it stopped right above the window.  

I planned on hanging the dowel rods from cupboard hooks both at the top and bottom.  I was a bit frazzled after my sewing experience and was not very happy when I realized I didn't buy enough hooks.  And on top of that the drill broke.  So after another run to Home Depot I was super thankful that George attached the hinges, cupboard hooks and magnetic closures.  I also want to thank my neighbor John for giving me these doors.  They have been sitting in the basement for a decade waiting to be used for some project and it makes me super happy to finally use them.

Below you can see a close-up of the final shelves.  The shelves are still full of pock marks, old nail holes, hinge depressions, and gloppy paint but the painting and stamping has breathed new life into these old shelves.  When we attached the final door and stood back I was grinning from ear to ear.  

As you can see I went a little crazy with the stamping on the piece of furniture shown below.  This was another inherited piece from the previous owners.  Luckily I had painted it white years ago so all I had to do was stamp it.  If I had to do it again I would probably only stamp the top. 

I also ended up stamping a bench we have on the back porch.  It is dangerous to have a wet stamp in your hand!  You start to wander around the house looking for anything that might take a stamp!

I don't know why I started obsessing about painting the crappiest piece of furniture in the house.  I think I liked the idea of it being crappy because I wasn't afraid to ruin it.  I started off wanting to try rosemaling (the art of Scandinavian folk painting) and decided it would be easier to carve some stamps since I had all the tools from my printmaking projects.  Although I didn't know how the stamps would work on furniture it was a good experiment and I am happy with the rough-looking result.  This was also a test project because I would like to do some folk painting on our basement stairs.  Give me enough time and the whole house will be covered in joyful folk designs!

“Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: What you will discover is Yourself.”  ― Alan Alda

Wise Temple Sketch

A couple weekends ago a small but intrepid group from the Cincinnati Illustrators decided to brave the heat and sketch Wise Temple.  I first noticed the amazing architecture of this building when my dad and I sat on its steps and sketched City Hall a couple months ago.  The building is wrapped in two impressive lines of cornices and has two slender minarets with windows that make me wonder if a person can climb up and look out.  According to the website, the building was built in 1866 at a cost of $263,525 and is described as being built in a Byzantine-Moorish style.  From the photos on their website the interior is just as impressive as the outside, if not more-so. 

The architecture of downtown Cincinnati never ceases to amaze me and I don't think we will ever run out of interesting subjects to sketch.  You can see everyone's sketches here on the illustrator blog.

Maple Helicopter Block Print

I am so excited to finally share this print with you!  It has been over a year since I took a walk and came across these beautiful lime green maple helicopters in my neighbors yard.  I clearly remember looking down at the helicopters, being amazed at their perfect composition, and thinking that I would make a print of them some day.
 

I began working on this print three months ago and it has been quite a journey.  I knew it would be more difficult than my last print because I wanted to use color.  I decided I wanted to have the option of printing a background in a different color, but also not wanting to carve the background away after printing that color.  That meant I had to separate the background from the foreground and print them separately. Below you will see what I am talking about.

I began by sketching my subject to size.  The print is 26''x 30'' and I chose this size because that is the size of safety-kut's monster sheet.  (I wanted to work larger but I didn't want to tile it like last time.)

After finishing the sketch I transferred the image to the saftey-kut by laying it down and rubbing the back side with a credit card.  The image should be reversed as you can see below.

The next step was to carve the wavy background lines.  I forgot to take a photo of that part so you will have to imagine it.  I then cut the helicopter shape out from the background as you can see below.  Technically speaking this photo should be two photos down because I had to print the solid shape of the helicopters first.

Below you can see the wavy line background that was printed first.  Sometimes people will print the background and then carve it away but I wanted to have the option to change the color and to make prints with or without the background.

After letting the wavy background prints dry I printed the green background of the helicopters.  I use oil-based ink so it took at least a week for the first round to dry before I could move on to this step.  I also had to be VERY careful with my registration.  I knew it would not be easy so I tried to carve a little extra white space around the helicopters.

The final step was printing the helicopter detail on top of the green layer.  I was super nervous about my registration but it all worked out remarkably well!

Below is a video of me pulling a print.  Although it looks like I am doing it by myself my infinitely patient husband George helped me burnish and pull every single print.  I cannot even put into words how grateful I am for his help, support and love with this crazy printmaking project.  When I told him I wanted to print three colors and I had to cut the plate apart and we had to perfectly align everything he didn't even flinch!

As you can see below I made some prints with the wavy background and some without.  I also made some prints with and without color behind the helicopters.

I ended up with the four variations below.  The fourth option was made by painting one of the black and white prints with watercolor.



I had to wait two to three weeks for the final layer to dry.  I think it took so long because it was ink on top of ink.  And the very last step is to stamp all of the prints with my chop mark.  It is a bit nerve-wracking to stamp the prints after putting so much time and effort into them, but I think the chop adds a nice finished element to the whole piece.

Below are some close-up photos I took of the prints.  Sometimes I end up liking the photos as much as the prints.

The last two photos are close-ups of the watercolor version.  So far I only painted one this way and I liked the way I could control the gradients of the greens.

If you are interested in purchasing a print visit NessyPress.com.