Abundance

"...Then the Peeps!"

Abundance is a nicer way of saying "too-muchness," which is often how I feel during this time of the year. So in the midst of the Abundant Happenings around here, I took a breather this morning and spent it with Kimberly making ATCs together. The morning that began with me feeling resentful and supremely put-out was transformed into a laughter-filled moment of grace and friendship. Imagine that! As soon as I shifted into the present moment I wasn't able to hang onto my irritation! We munched on her daughter's homemade raw (and totally delicious) chocolate, nibbled at grapes, radishes, and other tasty things while we chatted and managed to produce some lovely cards. So I felt the abundance of being with a good friend sharing our thoughts and creativity together. Here's Kimberly's card for me:
She picked out the card of the feet that I made, pictured in this post, that says: "I'm not your guru, you are." Of course it was perfect because I was thinking of her when I made it!

I took the stamp that I carved at our ATC Make and Swap Group last week and printed it on a crumply paper bag. Then I made a series of three cards with that as a background. I found that I fell in love with using my Prismacolor pencils to fill in the spaces inside the rectangular forms. The original stamp is 1x1 inch, so I kept turning it and repeating it.
"Glow...You'll Need Light:"
"Creating a Shared Intention:""The Benefits of Chanting:"And finally, a card about the beauty of lemons, "Tart Counterpoint:"

Sylvan's Showcase
Here are some of the watercolor paintings that Sylvan brought home today. They came in this large folder, also painted and constructed by Sylvan:

His favorite is this Green one, in which he "made the green myself:"

I like this one, it's the manger where Mary had baby Jesus. The blue light coming from the left side is Mary:

Hatching!

Grandma Trudy's Memorial Azalea, above


Oh My! Our little Sharon, the tiny game bird sized chicken has six of the tiniest most adorable chicks, hatched right underneath our front porch! We only discovered them yesterday; see here for a post about our discovery of the nest. I was digging a hole for a lovely dwarf azalea to be planted in honor of Jake's grandma who died, when I heard some tiny peeps...At first I wondered if it was just more bird song, then followed the sound and laid right down on the porch to get a good listen. Sure enough! We don't know when the first one hatched, but we surmise it may have been 3 days ago. Here is Sharon and one little Peep, just to the left of her head:

She hasn't left the nest since Thursday. We began to wonder if she was getting hungry and thirsty, and have utilized the creative minds at this address to contrive a watering set-up: a PlayMobil trough that is lowered to her on an orange piece of yarn, then filled by a turkey baster. (A big concern of mine is chicks who are too new to know not to drown in their water!) Here's a photo that includes a chick, a mama, and the improvised watering trough:

You can see in the pictures that Sharon and family are just visible between the edge of the porch and the side of the house; when it rains, Sharon gets damp but the babies are toasty-warm beneath her. It's hard to get photos because of this unique nest location, but we'll keep trying. Peeps are usually blurry in photos because they don't stay still much! Here is Sharon, fluffed up and a little annoyed with the paparazzi:

While it's hard to get much done with all of this peeping happening, I do want to tell you that we'll be carving our own rubber stamps this week at the Rockport Library on our Wednesday night ATC group! We'll start with a little demo at 6 and everyone will go home with a piece of cardstock with all of each other's stamps on it! This month I will be facilitating, as Robinsunne will be absent (and sorely missed). Come prepared with your ATC supplies and, if you have them, bring carving tools (linoleum carving sets work well, as do fine woodworking tools). Check out what you can do with a simple hand-carved stamp. Below is a background paper, followed by an ATC that I made using it:
"The silver rain, the shining sun, the fields where scarlet poppies run" (above) is a line from a verse used for before-meal Grace. I don't have the author just now.

Interested in some wild pictures of colorful sea slugs? Click here! Thanks, Carrie. My favorite is the white-ish one with black stripes, with a little peplum on his/her bottom!

Blossoming

The apple blossoms are just lovely right now and I wish you could smell them. Lately we have been having these dramatic skyscapes that remind me of when I used to live in Portland, Oregon. Puffy white clouds in some areas, other clouds are dark gray---the perfect background for the bright yellow-green of new leaves.

We have a chicken, previously mentioned in this post, called Sharon. She is a very tiny chicken, we don't know what breed, but in subtle browns and golds. She is a free-spirited chicken, often not roosting inside the henhouse with the others. Her partner, the small rooster George, seems OK with it. He has other lady-friends like Alice, who he keeps company with when Sharon is away. Yesterday Sylvan discovered (almost two weeks after seeing Sharon the last time) that she has a nest full of eggs underneath our front porch! We don't know if she has had enough conjugal encounters with George to make the eggs viable, but we will keep you posted. Here is a picture:

Last night I was having a moment of overwhelm, the usual things like money and healthcare, and I decided to stop feeling lonely and sad and just sit down and make some cards. It turned out to be a great way to manage my thinking. Soon I was relaxed and calm again, enjoying the perfect moment that I had to myself, in a quiet house, at my art table.

"Not Just for Laundry," picturing some ServiceWomen reading Martha Stewart in Iraq:

"There is a Way to Fly for Joy," below. Did you notice that I actually used some of the beautiful origami paper, finally?Remember, leave a comment on the blog and your name will be added to the pile I will draw 4 names from on June 1st! You still have some time. Last night I fell in love with something Ravenhill made and pictured on this post, using a sweet bluebird fabric. It might take a moment to download the picture, but it's worth it! Go take a peep!

In the Garden and Other Places

"I'm not your guru...You are."

This is the week of Jake's class' play "The Music Man"---good old Americana, full of goofiness, and cheesy romance! The middle schoolers did so well, even with the smoochy parts (hidden demurely behind a parasol!). The exciting news is that our boys were "extras" for the big scenes, Jonas is a trombone-player in the Boys' Band! Sylvan is adorable in his costume, overalls with a button down shirt, bare feet, and a straw hat; especially endearing when he mouths along the lyrics with other characters.

I have had only a little time and energy to make cards this week. Yesterday was a big push to get the garden planted...finally, after feeling like I needed to relax (well, actually I was working more at the library) after my semester ended. So I planted kale, chard, salad greens, cukes, brussels sprouts, peas, and nasturtiums. So today I am sunburned and sore, but feeling virtuous again. I will get a picture soon, when there are things popping up!

Remember, leave a comment and have your name entered in the ATC Giveaway contest! This is my thanks to you for reading. Imagine my little cards getting to take a big trip to somewhere in this big world! I will draw four names at the end of May, yours could be one of them...

A Happy Mother's Day....

Such a happy day it was...I have beautiful cards, poetry, and a new climbing rose bush I will try not to kill. And three sweet boys in my life.

The weather looked like this:

We spent a relaxing and fun day with friends at their lovely home. Our breakfast table looked like this:

With vintage china from the 1940s---so gorgeous!

The moms made ATCs with the kids while the dads cooked up a delicious meal of eggs benedict with smoked salmon, pepper bacon from Morse's Saurkraut, delicious fruit salad, and mimosas. Did I mention the fellas also made blueberry scones?

Here are my two ATCs of the day, backgrounds by Robinsunne:

If you look carefully at the card on the left you can see that there is a little plastic flower charm. It is a homemade Shrinky-Dink. (If you were a child in America in the 1970s-1980s, you may remember these things: plastic that had pictures preprinted, usually superheros or cartoon characters, and you baked them in the oven and they became tiny little charms.) Yes, homemade Shrinky-Dinks! We learned this at the Saturday ATC Make and Swap at the Rockport Library from, who else, Robinsunne!

Here's how to do it. You need #6 plastic, which is not recyclable in Maine. Usually what comes in this is things like bakery items from the grocery store (yuck). I was hoping it would be salad greens, but no, that is #1. So you take a piece maybe about an inch and a half square and draw a little something on it with colorful permanent markers: Jane made a beautiful leaf, I made a "J" and an "S" charm for my boys, you can put a flower, symbol, pattern, whatever. You can draw on both sides of the plastic, like I made the flower on one side and polka dots on the other. Slightly round the corners of your shape...otherwise they are too pointy...or not, if you like pointy! Also, after your design is drawn on, you can use a small hole punch to make holes in the charm...for earrings (I am wearing some right now, thanks to a talented young friend and her mom!), for sewing onto your ATC, or sticking brads through, etc. This has to happen before the next step.

For the next part, you will want to have something to absorb heat. Robinsunne had two aluminum pie plates, the one on the bottom was upside down, the one on top was right side up. Also have some pliers handy for picking up the hot plastic. Then take a crafter's heat gun (we think the heat guns that take paint off your house would probably be too much) and turn it on, holding it above the charm. Watch the magic! The charm will curl up and you'll be thinking: "Oh no! It's curly and ruined!" But it will flatten out in the next few seconds. Then take the pliers and pick it up and put it somewhere to cool! You can also use a toaster or try a hairdryer. This #6 plastic seemed odorless, but I'd recommend ventilation anyway.

So start scavenging. Make friends with people who like to eat those bakery goods from the grocery store and help them recycle! This was wildly fun and the potential is great. Really. You should try it as soon as you can, you will love it!

5 Minute ATCs

I decided to challenge myself: could I put a time limit on my creativity? How to be more intentional, thinking of my 5 minutes as a type of practice. Like those writers who say that they just sit down and write for a certain amount of time each day, whether they think they have something to say or not. On the card above, I got a great idea from Robinsunne to use that air-drying Model Magic (in terra cotta) to print a stamp into. You ink it up a little, then imprint it into the soft clay; when it dries it's like a little medallion. My kids have been trying it too, and somehow I keep finding bits of it that are snipped up in strange places around my house. So I just gather up the bits and think of ways to recycle. Above and below, these are some 5 Minute ATCs.

(Do you recognize the origami paper from last post in the above card? I still haven't been able to cut into the paper, the closest I came was cutting up the squares above which appeared on the packaging. And the background paper, that Macaroni-and-Cheese-in-a-box Orange, somehow always surprises me by looking great on a card.)

Above is one more 5 Minute ATC. Do you recognize my handcarved stamp, on the background? And the vellum is from the cover of Peter Sis's book Tibet: Through the Red Box. The tea label says: "A Relaxed mind is a creative mind." I wasn't feeling that relaxed, but it was my wish for myself at that moment.Finally, this is a detail from a Secret Project I have been working on. "Angels Fly...because they take themselves lightly." Hannah may be able to guess who this is for. And I promise to tell you all about it later, just in case the recipient is reading this!

All Through May the Comment Pile is Growing!
No, I didn't mean Compost Pile (though that is growing too), I mean the pile of names I am gathering for the Thank-You-For-Your-Comment ATC Giveaway! Any time you leave a comment during this month of May, even just a little hello, I will add your name to my little pile of slips. At the end of the month I will be drawing 4 names and sending ATCs to folks who have been kind enough to say hello or leave an encouraging word!