Manchester

With you in thoughts .

Week end post

If you feel yourself as a lightworker, this video is a gift.
I hope it helps you as much as it helped me, every word resonates with me, a miracle. It explains so much of my negative feelings of the past weeks. Gratitude with a capital G!!

May you be happy,
May you be well
May you be safe
may you be peaceful and at ease.

The capability to admire the smallest manifestations of Life brings depth and meaning to our lives.
Be well and breathe deeply.

Hello hello!

April is quite over and i didn't take time to wave at you. I was taken in a whirlwind of  activities and decisions to take because of my aging parents, the coming months are going to bring so many changes in our family, and most of them are hard to accept.Plus there is so much to do in the garden, and i had not  much energy to face all this, so time passed and here i am, a bit under the weather i acknowledge.

Spring is here, full of bird songs and flowers but  after a warm beginning the temperatures are now really cold even if  most days are sunny. Perfect weather to work in the garden in fact.

And every day i have some lovely visitors:

This funny woodpecker:

I am particularly happy with this picture, it is the first time i can photography a jay, they are so shy!

Hiding in the branches.

  

If you look carefully, you will see its mate, hidden behind the leaves.I was so happy to photography them together! 

I can't resist to share some pictures of flowers with you, they bring me so much joy!

The wisteria, one of the first splendor of spring.

This white rhododendron bush in my mother's garden, white flowers always move me, don't know why.

There is so much beauty and mystery in the heart of a flower.

I  hope spring brings you warmth and a renewed energy and i wish you all peaceful and happy moments wherever you are.

Sunny monday

Bright sun and warmth on the hills, a day like this is a gift. I worked in the garden this morning, a lot of cleaning to do at this time. Flowers blooming everywhere one looks.
White violets.

My favorite photos are close-ups, especially close-ups of the hearts of flowers and the complicated heart of hellebores fascinate me i acknowledge.

This camellia, perfect mandala.

I can't resist to share this quote from Eckhart Tolle :"Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness." E.Tolle  A New Earth

I realized recently that i never showed you the stamps i make with foam, they are very easy to do  and i use them in many works.
I first draw my pattern on paper then transfer it on the foam with tracing paper. I cut the pattern out  and lastly glue it down on foamboard.

I don't create only animals or vegetal stamps. I like to make abstract patterns too.

I use them a lot in an altered book where i express my love of animals and nature.

If you want to give a try at handmade stamps, mixed media artist Tracy Bunkers published an excellent book  some years ago: "Print and Stamp" 52 ideas for handmade, upcycled print tools"
where she shows how to print and stamp with ordinary stuff we have at hand: rubber bands, garden knilling cushion,paper clips... My next step in creating handmade stamp is to teach myself how to carve them. More to come!

I send  you peaceful thoughts friends, may you be well and at ease. Namasté

Hello

March is quite over and it's been a strange month, full of ups and downs and i chose to keep in mind only the things that lightened it: the visit of a dear friend i hadn't seen for almost three years, and a nice trip in Brittany last week during a warm and sunny day with another friend.
This is the bay of  Cancale and in general one can see the mount Saint-Michel from there but this day there was a light fog so, no view of the mount alas.

This  little town is especially known for producing oysters and everywhere around Cancale, one can buy the famous oysters  stored by the producers in big warehouses.

But instead of going to Cancale that we already visited several times, we headed toward Port Mer, a lovely village close to Cancale and this was a pure delight!The beach is small and circled with big rocks, typical from Brittany.

The light fog made the seascape magical!!

Mimosa blooming , love their delicious scent!!

Because of the fog, it was difficult to know where the sea ended and where the sky began.

With pine trees everywhere, rocks and such sun, we could have been on  the south coast of France when we were less than two hours from our place in Normandy!This day was definitely a beautiful parenthesis.

On the creative front, not much happened this month, just some sewing. One day, i felt the urge  to sew a labyrinth in a textile book i began some months ago and it took a moment before i understood why this urge: because of difficult choices i felt as if i was at a crossroads and couldn't choose which way i would take. Sewing didn't bring the answer but was soothing and i am grateful for that.Looking at the picture now, i realize that the two scraps of fabric i added probably represent the obstacles i have to face, but when i  saw them, i didn't know why i absolutely wanted to add them.

I will end this post with small hearts i saw last month , a small project i had in mind for a while; i needed the hearts to hang on branches i painted in white and hanged on a wall. I acknowledge i do like the result. For the hearts i used  my favorite piece of white bed sheet and stamped on it with acrylic paint.

I wish you peace wherever you are and i will let you with this quote from Louise Bourgeois:
"The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair". So true!
Be well friends!

#ARTifacts

End of february, it's time for a post about ARTifacts, Seth Apter's project that will last during the whole year.
I am done with the box that will hold the files i use to document my creative life . Last month i showed you the first steps of the transformation of the cardboard box, here is the result:
Front :

Back

I used handmade stamps and metallic paints. Below, the file and the tag where  i write about my creative experiences of the month.
 First, january file .Front cover

The insides

The january tag 

For february i used the same system of file and tag, but i added to the file some photos i made during the month; some landscape pix and others of the sewing project of february, small hearts i cut in white fabric.

For the technics, i used collage, Masking Tape, inks and metallic paints.
Back cover

February tag

I really enjoy documenting my creative work and i noticed it  has an impact on my inspiration and i tend to procrastinate less since i began to work at this project.
Seth Apter posted on his blog photos the participants sent him. If you would like to see the pictures it is here. You won't see my work, i haven't sent him any pictures yet because the box was not finished.
I am a bit of a slow worker.
May you be peaceful and at ease.

30 Day journaling Project

11th of february already! It is time i show up and give some news  of what's going on on the norman front. After a quite difficult month of january with some personal stressful issues, february began softly and brought its lot of solutions and happy endings and even some nice surprises (sigh of relief!) including , guess what?......Some snow! Rare enough in this part of the world to be seen as a real treat! Of course it didn't last  but anyway, i had the pleasure to discover the field blanketed in snow this morning and it made my day.

This year i registered again to 30 Day Journaling Project by Lisa Sonora. Every day some prompts arrive in my email box  to ponder about ; it is an excellent way to avoid the blank page anxiety and at the same time  taking a moment every day to answer one or more of the prompts can create a discipline . To do so i made myself a small book .

This is the front cover, made in an upcycled book packaging. It ended more busy than i wanted but i like it anyway. techniques used: Stamping,collage : dried flowers, images from old book and some drawings . Gesso, acrylic paint and inks for the background.

Front cover with a handmade "ribbon". I like to make "ribbons" with strips of an old white bed sheet. In general i put paint and stamping on them but this time i sewed just a line of black stitches, the cover was busy enough.

I made the signature with a paper lightly  yellowed with age and in the corner i pasted birds photocopied in black and white; i made pale copies and used colored pencils to give them an ancient feel  not visible on the photo  alas.

This is the back cover.

In case you would like to join in, you can still do it and here is a link to an excellent blog post by Lisa Sonora "How to start journaling- 3 things that make your writing easier".

I hope you're having a nice week end where you are, thanks for visiting.

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