BAMBOO & LANTERN WEDDING INVITATIONS

Above is a picture of the first 25 that were completed...well, not really done but painted! They need to be cut, scored, green paper and vellum attached with sparkle ivory brads, purple circle attached to the outside with cute sticker and ribbon! Whew, glad Minh and her girls are dealing with most of that part!

Working on invitations is repetitious work. It takes lots of self control for me not to change or "embellish" the original design. They must look uniform, and oooooh it's so hard to do it over and over exactly the same! The little dragon fly to the right has some glitter on his wings. The lanterns also have some bits of glitter.

Minh is worth it! I'm so happy she and my bro Mark are getting married. They are super cute and super perfect for each other. I'm so excited that I have gained an new sister!

GREETING CARDS

These are hand drawn cards I made for my MIL. I thought they would be handy quick greeting cards she can pull out for any occasion. I made three airplane cards especially for Peg to send to my Mom. Mom loves airplanes and requested I make them. My Mom's are cute!

My new favorite detail to add to drawings/paintings are those little jewels, I put one in the center of the aqua colored flower below. So classy! Just a little bling, yes please. :)

And of course the "man" card. For the men who need a greeting card but really? What do you give a man? :) FISHING LOURE what else? :)A tiny bit of glitter added to most of the rest of the cards. Glitter on the wings of the dragonfly, teeth of the bat, horns of the giraffe and dots on the cherry blossoms etc......

MORE TREES

I did this painting (above) for my friend Karen. It was her birthday last Tuesday! Happy Birthday Karen :) I really had fun figuring out how to paint a rocky or rugged terrain. The green tree with the polar bear (left and below) was done for my friend Margaret. Her birthday was Monday. Happy Birthday Margaret! She loves polar bears. I like the way the tree looks twisted. I'm still trying to figure out how to work with color. I have new watercolors, M Graham & Co. which include quinacridone colors. Quin gold and nickel! Awesome! Yes, I'm an art geek!

WHIMSICAL PINK TREE

First painting in a series of trees I plan on painting. I like the pink balls on the tree and of course the glitter! I made this one as a baby shower gift for my friend Cary. Turns out her nursery is blue and orange. Opps! She still likes it, thank goodness.

DRAGONFLY CHRISTMAS LIGHT BULB

My project for this Christmas! Funny little dragonfly magnets.

I used the large and small size Christmas tree light bulbs, pipe cleaners, marbles, wire, beads, sculpey clay, glass paint and a glue gun.

The ones with thick furry pipe cleaners on the bodies look very "pretty". Others have the metal showing for a more clean look. Some have the clay eyes which were time consuming to sculpt and others have marble eyes painted with glass paint. Originally I wanted to bead the wings but attaching the wire to the metal light bulb was tough! So I went with sparkle pipe cleaners.

I made 40 little guys in all. My favorite ones are made with the smaller version of the Christmas light bulbs. So cute! I added magnets to the back....some people wanted ornaments but I thought this year I would try magnets. My SIL did get an ornament version:

PATCHES FOR PURSES

These goofy little characters are for the purses I'm trying to make. Well, I don't really make the purses, Minh does but I embellish some of them. I use fabric paint and permanent markers. I'm super impressed. It all actually works better than I thought it would. The colors are fabulous and blend well.

BLUE DAYZ IV

More blue stuff. This is the "real" BLUE DAYZ IV. I guess I skipped BLUE DAYZ III. All fixed now. Left is my son Andy's ratty old shoe that he wears all the time. It's falling apart, it must be very comfy.

We've had a great summer so far. Baseball, swimming, parks, movies, berry picking, parties (thanks Tina for the great birthday party!), a garage full of boys, and lots of camping. I thought for sure I would do all kinds of drawing on the camping trips.

No such luck. The camping trips this year have been so much work, some of the sites were strange. During our stay at Detroit Lake, Oregon, Andy's tent caught on fire. Horrible and scary to hear your son yelling at four in the morning, "Fire! Dad, Fire!" They had a citronella candle burning. No one was hurt but we were wide awake for a long, long time. Also, strangers came in off the lake and wandered into our site all day. Our private bathrooms became public because we gave up trying to get all the people back on their boats, while explaining that our site was private. It was not a good trip. The last lake we went to must have had a yellow jacket nest near by. My brother drank a bee and every time one of the little suckers would buzz near me, I would wail about and trip over something. Usually my four year old nephew, poor guy.

The redeeming quality was my brother and his family were right there with us through all of it. Nice to have them in our lives.

The boys got a kick out of the bug who snuck onto my sketch book and got squished when I closed it, only to be discovered the next time I opened it up. As you can see to the right. He kind of left a good impression. ;)

Below is Andy eating a slug on our one good camping trip at Paradise, Oregon.

He's didn't really. :)