This week I started playing with backgrounds, and as soon as I put down the colors I knew what type of picture I would paint over it. I could see the beautiful white and grey hair of a woman set against the background. There’s something about that kind of silver hair that really makes a statement to me. You see an older woman like that and it just gives her a strong, competent vibe.

As I was painting, I was thinking about a poem of mine called “On Trial” (from my book A New Dish and also New and Selected Poems). The poem basically talks about how differently you might feel from day to day as you make your way through the battles of life. Sometimes you’ll feel strong and youthful, other times you’ll be tired and feel every year of your age.

Specifically, the lines I’m using are: “Some days I’m an old woman, with a lifetime of memories past, and sometimes, I’m a child, with a smile that will always last.” I named one picture “Sometimes I’m an Old Woman” and the other “Sometimes I’m a Child” to match the lines of the poem.

I painted each picture with the idea that you wouldn’t really know whether the woman was young or old. The beautiful silver hair wouldn’t tell you, and her face wouldn’t either. She could be young or old depending on how you saw her.

When it came time to add the lines from the poem, though. I hesitated. I really wasn’t sure how I wanted them on there. Sometimes I write them or stamp them on, but that didn’t seem right for these pictures. So I’m not sure. For right now, I decided to do it digitally and play with it before putting the words on there permanently.

Both pictures are for sale at Fine Art America.

I must be looking forward to Memorial Day, because I’ve been making all kinds of red, white, and blue things this week.

First, the paintings. I made this one I called “Freedom Flag,” which has the preamble to the constitution in the blue part, with special papers and words in the red and white:

Then I made a house (which I swear has to be my favorite thing to paint next to the strong women pictures and still life) in that same style, with the words “life” “liberty” and “pursuit of happiness” in among the clouds. There are layers and papers beneath the stripes and stars in the house as well.

There’s two things I’m loving about mixed media. One is that it’s so much fun to uncover the picture from the layers below it, and the second is that after you’re finished, there is so much to look at afterward. The closer you look, the more you see.

While I was on the patriotic kick, I also made this little house.

I took a dollar store house I had, and covered it in music paper. Then I whitewashed over it and painted the stars and stripes. I wanted it to look “rustic” but I think I might have gone overboard. It looks a little sloppy to me.

Gen wasn’t impressed either.

Covering the dollar store house was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. It was messy and hard to get the paper where I wanted it. But, naturally, that won’t stop me from trying again. I do love to make those houses.

Both paintings can be purchased as prints or edge wrapped canvasses at Fine Art America.

We’ve been having tons of thunderstorms and terrible weather lately, but I’m happy to say that the glass mushrooms I painted have held up! The paint hasn’t budged (so yay for Martha Stewart’s paint product) and the glass has all stayed glued properly together. Love that. Of course, now that only encourages me to make some more. That, and DH says he wants to see a “whole patch of mushrooms” on the ground because he thinks they look cooler as a large group. You don’t have to ask me twice.

I always try to follow the contours and patterns of the glass when painting, and this time I went a little too crazy on one of the bowls. I painted red flowers (over a red flower pattern on the glass) and it looked really stupid. But oh well… I did like the rest of them. One mushroom top had hearts around the edge, and the other had swirls. I used each as a guide on what to paint, and just chose colors I liked regardless if they really went together or not. (I’m going for a whimsical look on these and a lot of color and pattern will help.)

Just as I did before, I painted the dessert cups and bowls. I also had one small vase that I used.

Then I glued the bowls to the dessert cups.

I went to the Dollar Store again, and found some more glass beads for just a buck a bag. Aren’t they pretty?

I added some randomly to one of the mushrooms.

And viola! Another set complete.

But the true test is to see what they look like with all their little friends.

I may move these to another part of the yard, where there is grass instead of bark. I think they look better on grass. Plus, that blue one really bugs me, so I may take it inside again and redo the paint. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m leaving them be and searching for more glass.

I’ve been busy this week gluing more glass (bwa hahaha – more and more glass!), but I won’t show you that because I really don’t have anything that you haven’t seen here before. I do have a few new paintings this week, so I will give you a peek at those.

I did a few new mixed media pictures, some of my favorite subject (still life), and some of the “strong women” portraits/characters I’ve been painting.

I called this one “Brown Eyed Girl” and picture her a beach somewhere warm. The colors in the background remind me of a beautiful island somewhere.

This one includes lines from a poem I wrote called “With Every Breath.” The picture has a fruit bag in the middle for texture, and many other layers and special papers.

I called this picture “Good Blessings” because of a fortune I included that says “An unexpected visitor will bring you good blessings.” Her pendant also says “blessings” on it.

I also have a couple still life, the first one is mixed media:

and the other two are older pictures I did long before I was interested in mixed media. These are acrylic on canvas:

Of course, if you’re interested, any of these can be purchased as prints or edge wrapped canvases from my website at Fine Art America.

I’ve been seeing these really adorable glass mushrooms everywhere. I don’t have a picture to show you, but I’ve seen them at specialty garden stores and craft fairs. They are colorful but small, and whenever I’ve seen them they’re usually grouped together with at least ten or twenty of them. The only problem? They are expensive. A small one will run anywhere from $8-12. So to put ten or twenty of them in a group somewhere in the garden? A little too pricey for me.

I’ve been playing around with making my own, and while I could probably sculpt them out of clay or even pour some out of concrete, I decided to see if I could reuse some old glass pieces and make them that way. (Cuz I’m addicted to gluing glass together. Ya know?)

I found some old dessert cups and small bowls at Goodwill for 50 cents each. Then I spotted this Martha Stewart paint on sale at Michaels for just 99 cents a bottle. So I bought a couple colors.

I squirted some paint inside of the cups, and put on a healthy coat.

Then I did the same with the inside of the bowl.

On the outside of the bowl, I painted some spots…

… and a little green edge.

When both pieces were dry, I turned the dessert glass upside down and added glue to it. (The same kind I use for the glass garden sculptures.)

Then I secured the bowl to the dessert glass.

The finished product was pretty cute. So I decided to experiment with some other colors and dessert cups.

I did some blue sparkly paint with green on another one, and added the green glass beads that I had left over from the other garden sculpture I made a couple weeks ago. I also painted an orange one and used a bit of sparkly paint to jazz it up.

Once I put them in the garden, I really liked them. Since I have a lot of green but not a lot of flowers (on a count of my clueless-ness at growing things) they add some nice color. They’re cheap enough to make so I might do a few more and experiment.

I’m working on another mixed media painting this week, and yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m totally hooked the medium. Remember when I didn’t feel comfortable with it? Now, I love it so much I can’t even remember what I did before it.

Anyways, first comes the papers. I collected some I really like for different reasons, and put them on a canvas. (Don’t you love how you can see the dog treats I have in that cup? My dog always seems to find a way into my blog in one way or another. I keep the treats there because she’s always by my side when I’m painting.)

I’ve been painting a lot of “strong women” pictures, but this time I wanted to do some flowers. Here’s a secret about me: I love flowers. I love them so much, but I can’t grow a thing. At least I can paint a few.

Teal is one of my favorite colors. Can you tell?  I also added yellows and orange.

To finish, I added some black around the borders.

To finish off, I wrote the words “faith love hope joy faithful kind” on the rim.

I also started to sell my artwork. This one can be purchased as a print or edge wrapped canvas.

Happy Easter everybody! I pulled out my Easter decorations and this cute little Easter tree that I love, but noticed that it’s a little thin on ornaments. What to do? Add some felt Peeps of course!

The supplies were very cheap. I got felt and ribbon at JoAnn’s for like 50% off, and I already had the stuffing. (A little stuffing goes a long way.) So all the materials cost less than $2.

I cut out Peep-like figures from two pieces of felt. (One front and one back.)

I sewed a piece of ribbon (made into a loop) to the inside of the back Peep.

Then I sewed both pieces together.

Before I closed it up, I put a small piece of stuffing into it.

Now it’s time for the eyes! I used a brown fine point Sharpie, and drew two eyes and a nose.

And… volia! Peep finished. Doesn’t it look cute on the tree?

I was at an estate sale late last year where I found all these cool gold glass items for super cheap. That big bowl you see was just a quarter, and the other pieces were between ten and five cents. Add to that, a few gold drinking glasses I found at Goodwill and you have all the pieces for my latest sculpture.

I was thinking this one could go inside our house. We’ve had the same thingy on our fireplace hearth for quite a while now, and I was looking for something to replace it. For some reason, we do have a lot of gold in our room. It was entirely by accident. We have some cool gold beads on our lamps, and a few of our pictures are in goldish frames. So I thought the sculpture would fit right in there. (Now you’re all picturing me living in a 1970s house, aren’t you? I promise it’s not… although it is hard to describe.)

Anyways, the sculpture was done in the usual fashion. First, I dry fit the pieces together and then glued. That big bowl made a good base.

What would a craft project be without my dog sicking in her nose in? (Literally.)  I know, I know… I’m a bit obsessed with my dog, but she cracks me up whenever I’m doing something like this because she has to be in the middle of it. Plus, that face says to me, “Why are you paying attention to these pieces of glass when you could be throwing a ball to me? Hmm?”

Back to the glass…. more gluing, and…

…. viola. Finished. I let it dry for two nights and then brought it inside.

As you can see, we don’t use our fireplace. So I’m putting this on the hearth for a while. If I get sick of it, I can always move it to the garden or somewhere else. My husband said this looked like a gold tree. Wouldn’t that be nice? To have a tree that produced gold?

At night I put a couple of those plastic tea lights (you can get them in a 3-pack at the dollar store) and lit the sculpture up. Hard to see on this picture, but it actually looked really cool. Plus, it was cheap! And my fireplace isn’t so boring anymore.

Spring has finally sprung! The weather has been just great this past week, and that makes me think of one thing: gluing glass together. Okay, maybe two things: gluing glass together and making corned beef and cabbage. It was St. Patty’s Day on Saturday after all! So while I had my traditional Irish dinner boiling away on the stove, I popped outside to make a few glass sculptures.

First, I wanted to finish one I’d started last year. Remember this sculpture? Here’s a picture from where I last left it:

After I made it, the weather turned cold and I never got a chance to really finish it the way I wanted. I liked the “glass within a glass” look and wanted one more layer on there. Good thing I’ve been collecting vases and glass all winter! I continued the green theme and added another vase.

Then, I had this big piece of glass that used to be part of a long candle set. I glued that on, and a candy dish on the top.

I liked the way it looked, but still wanted something more to jazz it up.  So I went to the dollar store and bought a package of green glass beads.

I added a thin layer of glue around the edges of the glass.

Then I placed the glass beads on one by one. (It didn’t take long.)

I put some around the two middle layers, and also the top.

And viola! Finished!

But I wasn’t done with green glass. I think it was the ghost of St. Patrick sitting on my shoulder, urging me on to do one more. I gathered some more glass and got to work on a second piece.

I glued the edges, and with this particular glue let it sit for a few minutes before I secured it in place.

For some layers, I put glue on each piece. Then, I pressed the pieces into place.

I glued layer by layer, until I had the look I wanted.

Once again, I got all the pieces from Goodwill, estate sales, and rummages.  I have this piece on my porch right now, and I like the way the light hits it.

It’s funny how the papers you put down on a canvas can influence you when you paint it. For this one, I really liked the music papers to “I Love How You Love Me.” I also had some heart scrapbook paper, and a page from a Robert Browning poem.

Naturally, the color that popped into my mind with those papers was pink. As in, love and hearts and romance…

But after the base layer, I started thinking about a field with flowers in it. LOL! So that’s where the picture went after that. I added paint layers and flowers, and had the vision of a girl walking through a field, all confident and strong. I pictured someone who had just “been through something” and decided that she was walking away from her negative past and into a bright future.

I thought of a line in my poem “The Difference Now,” where I state “I make the definitions, and throw yours away” and changed that to “I make the rules, and throw yours away” and wrote that on her dress. I also stamped “faith” at the bottom.

It’s hard to see the writing on here, because the flash of the camera hit it at a funny angle, so here’s part of it scanned in.

Of course, I had to get Genevieve’s approval, too. It’s kind of a tradition now. She gave it the sniff test.