6-22-16 ~ A Little Bit of Everything

This week my body has been consumed with Poison Ivy.  Monday will be 2 weeks of itching and places are still coming out. I took Prednisone for a week and am now depending upon Benadryl to do the trick. I have had to stay as still as possible in the house so turned on the AC in my living room and bedroom and spent most of my time in the old blue chair. I did a bit of everything trying to keep my mind off of the itching and worked daily on my Etegami. It was an art filled week, but I managed to turn a pile of lemons into some delicious lemonade.

Let me start with the culprit. Just looks like a week. In Florida a block from the Atlantic all I new were pretty flowers, cockroaches, scorpions, mosquitoes, sea gulls, sand pipers pelicans, and alligators......not Poison Ivey. Well, I know it now?

This is the culprit and it is right beside the front porch step in Buddy's

 herb garden.Fortunately the bug man who comes monthly to spray the house

is not allergic to it, so he pulled it all out and hid it.

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The Story of My Magical Garden
I am linking up with Art Journal Journal (In My Garden There Is) and Cheeky Challenge. (In the Garden), and Creative Tuesdays (Pond).

Several years ago, my family won the lottery and in our large back yard lot I decided I wanted us to build a safe place for children to come and visit. It had to have a goldfish pond like my church had when I was a little girl and one with a marble seat all the way around it so the children could sit there, dangle their feet in the cool water, throw in their pennies for good luck, and watch the goldfish play. And, then you, Alexandra (Sunday Sketches), I thank you for all you taught me in your classes and loving to try to put a little bluebird named Alexia in all of my drawings. They add a very special touch. Every Sunday it was the happiest time of my day when we went to the Episcopal Church, Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. It was sort of like a home a block from our home. I also had to have LOTS of colorful flowers just like Bethesda, some seats where they could sit and rest, also like Bethesda and even a swing set for a bit of flying fun. As you can see, the children have come and look to be having a grand old time. Once again, we have my "inner child" coming to the surface. I am a child at heart. I do not want to leave my happy place...my garden and goldfish pond.Wouldn’t it be Wonderful if you could win the lottery and then create an area like this at your new home?

Here is my second watercolor from my gorgeous Seeing Flowers book I wrote about last week.
I did try use stippling on the pod of the cornflower.Alexia is here.
I want to thank my blogger friend, John of Sinbad and I on the Loose, for introducing me to stippling.His work with birds is out of this world.

This is the cover I created for my Doodle Journal.

Here is page 2. These are all words and phrases that

hold much meaning for me. Since all the paper is tan,

 I decided to add some color to the piece.

Page 3 ~ A collage of little doodles and some pictures....and lots of stippling practice. It is hard to do.  Last week I saw one Stephan Stark's  page where she shared with us some spectacular and colorful doodle patchwork. I fell in love. She even showed us the process she went through. I thought it was such a cool idea, and since I had already started a doodling journal, I decided to divide it into 8 rectangles and just go for it. I did not do a rough draft. like she did  I arbitrarily gel penned colors and in particular, the flag with the red, white, and blue stripes in that order. I looked on the internet to see if there was one, and there was... the flag of Paraguay. FYI...there are 37 flags with these colors.


This is a digital copy of a watercolor card I sent to a friendwho had lost her son.
I've decided I am not gong to buy any more cards but instead will paint them.

Last but not least are all of my studies this week painting following the art form of etegami. Thank you, Carol from Creative Harbor, for introducing me to this method of watercolor painting.These are all post cards I did this week, and they are in the order as I painted them. I was curious to see what my name would look like in katakana, so I have written it on the cards. Am trying to make me stamp with the symbols for "genie".The stamping is always in red.

 How the background turned out blue in the photo I do not know. 

The background was white.

In addition to Art Journal Journey, Creative Tuesday, and Cheeky Challenge, 
I am linking to:

Paint Party Friday

Sunday Sketches