Beelieve

Blues through blue eyes

Winter blues week is over as of yesterday with the first day of spring but I have one last post.  This is a mosaic of all the sweet spring blues in Pajama Girl's room including a look out the window at the blue sky.  This was a fun week of blues, especially when I am still trying to catch up with everything.  Thank you m.heart for this idea.  I still have to catch up with everyone's blues and look forward to doing so soon.  For now, I am off to the cage!

 

I carved my own stamps!

I totally forgot to tell you.  I carved my own little rubber stamps and now see what the fascination is all about.  I picked up some basics last weekend while visiting my mom.  Just local craft store type supplies, nothing major and finally had time the other day to play.  My inspirations to try these were the wonderful Maya, just look at her fabulous stamped images!  Drool, drool!   And the amazingly talented Geninne.  Geninne has lots of "stamp carving 101" basics as well as some gorgeous art...she is one very talented gal!

well, here is my first stamp!  (note the blue ink for blues week)

 

Then, I was not wild about the face, Ki-ki is a bird of many expressions! So I created one I could add a face to.

 

I confess, sometimes I end up in odd places of the house to get good natural light. Toward the end of the day I hit the spare bathroom on the west side of the house.  These I took on the floor, explaining to Pajama Girl how we can add our own face and legs to Ki-ki with this stamp.

 

with that said, a face starts sneaking across the floor as if I would never notice!

 

 

I noticed!

Value

Value is a word with several meanings and the name of this painting of mine.  It stems from experimenting with paint and paper. I usually use canvas, and usually not such strong "values". Thus said, i apply this definition of "value"

"6 a: relative lightness or darkness of a color : luminosity b: the relation of one part in a picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness"

This photo is not great, taken last night at dusk in the brightest room I could find.  I will get a crisper shot when I can but wanted to get it posted soon after my previous post.  It ties in without explanation.

Blue Fridays

Join me by wearing blue today!

I recently received an interesting email that had some powerful pictures which I chose not to post here.  They were of 2nd Lt. James Cathey's arrival home from a few years ago. They are beautiful pictures but tears will instantly fill your eyes and your hearts.  Along with the pictures came a message from the "silent majority".

"Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the 'silent majority' We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once 'silent' majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked 'What can we do to make things better for you?' is 'We need your support and your prayers.' Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday. "

I am pretty silent on many topics here, it is mainly an art blog but life is expressed through art and if there were no feelings, there would be no art...it is that simple.  If there is a chance to take a better picture of a piece I did to go along with this, I will post it soon after.

I will end this post with some brilliant quotes from Abraham Lincoln.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."

I will not be silent here today.  Today I will proudly wear blue...today and every Friday.

 

Play, play, Play

 

I played a lot today in between my domestic goddess duties.  I made a new banner, spiffed up the background...spring cleaned if you will.  I also played with all the photos from my "blue paint" day.  I tried one of those flickr toys at Big huge labs, but again I must have picked the wrong one to do because I did not see a post button or code, only this button to go see all my silly paint play which I was going to post....until I messed it up.  I went back into flickr to change the setting so no one else can the photos anymore there...what was I thinking?  They were blah without the slideshow because they are justs a series of photos with no titles, etc.  Well, wouldn't ya know it ruined the slideshow and I can't fix it! 

here are a few pictures from it and my experiment with blue paint and papers.

 

 

 

 

I experimented with 4 or 5 different types of paper to see what held up well with thicker paint.  I used a great dollar smoothing tool to mix and spread my paint.  It is late, I am off to bed, so tomorrow you will see one piece I made into something!

so I played with the blue paint...

 

because it is still blues week.

Blue paint calling me to play

 

I must obey!

Blue mosaic for winter blues week

 

Was having fun on Flickr this morning and found some lovely blue items for m. heart's "Winter Blues Week".  The images I have selected are ones I found apropos as we transition from winter to spring. 

Speaking of "transition", today I hope to actually transition away from cleaning/organizing and into some art!  I am long overdue for my hungry creative psyche!

*evening update~  If you click on the picture it will take you to the flickr page for these lovely works of art.  I did not realize the credits did not post with the picture when I posted it.  Thank goodness no one has mentioned it yet!  Here the are:

1. pretty blues, 2. Vintage blue flower pin with stem, 3. metal blue chair, 4. birdcage necklace blue, 5. key to winter, 6. bird cage xmas decorations (blue), 7. Tell Me Blue birdy tags, 8. Blue Felt Necklace., 9. blue and white seed details, 10. Robin egg blue, 11. velvet hat, 12. Robin's Eggs Stitch Markers, 13. Blue House, 14. mr blue bird, 15. Nepal - Kathmandu - Blue door, 16. Ol' Blue Eyes Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Blue

 

It is the start of "Winter Blues Week" with m.heart.  I am not sure how many blue posts I will have this week but it is a fun way to count down to spring.  I am showing these sweet forget-me-nots from last year.  They are one of the first little flowers that abundantly appear in May.  Not too much else goes on up here before these and we are still covered in snow.  May seems like a long time to wait to see flowers and after traveling this weekend to my hometown I witnessed a land with no snow, warm sunny days and Robins!  Yes, I saw Robins so it is Spring somewhere.

See and read more about m.hearts challenge here:

The trip to my mom's was a nice little getaway. Pajama Girl got to have another party with grandma and I got to relax a bit.  Pretty uneventful but did actually get to go to a large book store and sit on the floor and just look at books with no interruption.  A luxury for me as we have no large book stores around and usually I have Pajama Girl begging to go someplace else.  I ended up with quite the bagful and delighted with all my new finds.  I was also able to hit a large craft/hobby store and picked up some supplies for my next venture. 

Blue will not really be my mood this week but I was a bit blue to learn while I was home visiting a dear high school friend of mine was there as well visiting and we had no clue about our timing.  She tuned in to my blog too late and we were both besides ourselves regarding this discovery on Sunday.  I had felt her energy there and was talking about here with another friend right down to the point of wanting to call her to ask her a question.  Mary K, so sorry we missed each other...I miss you much!  Tell your dad I still laugh about the broom or the mop or whatever it was that had us in tears from laughter that day many many years ago.  This forget-me-not is for you, Mary K, and we will never let this happen again!