challenge results

The weather has prevented me from working as much as I like, but I have managed to get a few hearts done.

I made a heart pocket from the Purina sign. I cut it with tin snips, which is a little difficult as the tin is pretty thick. I bent the hearts a bit and drilled holes in the sides. The wire is flexible, but is still a little hard to work with. It was laced around the sides and a rusted baling wire was used to make a hanging wire. The red is still fairly good on the sign, but the white has just about all rusted away. There is green on the other side of the sign. The two sides of the pocket are the red and rusted white and the green is on the inside.









Another hanging heart that I made is a green heart made from the rusted Folgers coffee tin. I cut smaller hearts out of tin siding and layered them on the green heart. Rusted baling wire is again used for the hanger.

Challenge

Today was a perfectly beautiful day. The kind of day that makes you want to get out and do something, just anything to be outside. When I get outside, I want to either work in my garden or do something with my hands. I really couldn't do much in the garden today, so being artistic won out.

I decided to give myself an art challenge. My challenge was to find as many items from my stashes that I could make into hearts. Some of the things that I got out were pieces of tin, boards, screen, rock, cloth and paper. I also found a piece of Styrofoam that
was cut out of our door when we put in the doggie door.



I have an old Purina sign which is painted red and white, but the white has turned to rust. I found a piece of metal that used to be white, but now is all rusted. It looks like a kitchen grater, but it's way too big and heavy to be that. I have wire that I pick up around here. I pick up rocks that I cut hearts and crosses out of, so I threw a flat rock in the mix, along with some quilted scraps, some new fabric and scrapbook paper.




I cut out hearts from the old Folger's coffee can. Some of them will be just plain hanging hearts. Hearts cut from an old Purina sign will be made into a heart pocket. I don't know yet what I will do with the Stryofoam heart yet, but it will be done up all fancy, I think. The screen will be a challenge! Right now the hearts cut from door screen look more like butterflies!





In the next few days I will be putting different things together to make this collage of items into hearts for Valentine's Day, or just for something fun.

gray days

I have always disliked cloudy, gray days. I tend to have a bit of SAD, I think. This has been a cloudy and dreary day. Today I decided to see the beauty in dreary days.

The first thing that I should like about cloudy days is that sometimes they bring much needed rain. It hasn't rained today, but it is supposed to Fri. or Sat. Rain brings grass up for the cows and donkeys and I appreciate that! The picture of the windmill is pretty, I think, but it doesn't show what was really going on. This picture doesn't show the darkness of the rain clouds and the weather that was going on. I really wanted to show the dark clouds, but they show up more as a blue sky background. My blue lacy dogs enjoying the rain that came after the picture that I took of the windmill with the rain clouds in the background.


Today, as I was going to the mail box, the sun was peeking out of the clouds for just a bit. How beautiful it was, just causing the clouds to glow a bit. Wish I had the camera with me!

At first I thought that I would post something to brighten up the day. Then, I thought, that if I am going to like gray days, then I need to not worry about brightening them up! I have a few pictures that I think are just beautiful and just like the day, they are gray. Hope that you enjoy them.


A beautiful, old, gray tree stump.












An uprooted tree with the rocks still in them.















A pile of puppies that are called blue Lacys, but like greyhounds they are really gray. They are known as blue lacys or lacy dogs. They were bred in Texas back in the 1850s.
















And, last but not least, a picture of an altered art cross that I did that is done in beautiful grays.

tip of the day

I will be posting tips for everyone. They mostly will be things that I have learned by experience NOT to do-- things along that line.

My first tip of the day is: Don't wash anything with a wool blanket! Not even a rag! You will never get all of the lint out it!!

Betty

new to blogging

This is my 3rd attempt at putting up a blog. I think that I may be successful this time! I tried blog.com, which was a total failure because for some reason I could never get them to send my activation email. After numerous attempts to rectify that, I deleted that blog and went to Word Press. There I found that I had to download the program and that sounded like more than I wanted to do. A friend suggested that I try Blogger, so here I am.

I still have a lot to learn and am not deleting my WP blog as I think that I can be more artistic with WP and since this blog is going to be about art in my life, I think that the blog needs to be as pretty as possible. It will, however take me a while to get the WP blog up and running.

My blog will be my thoughts about art and life. Life will include things that occur as I go through my daily life. Some of that will be art and some of it will be things that I think are important that I want to share with the world. I hope that people will enjoy my blog and follow me as I go along.

The picture is of my garden this spring. I love gardening and it is art that I create with plants. I'm not totally responsible for the beautiful garden. Roy often gives me objects to put in my garden. But, the good Lord helps me a lot. In this case, he placed the wild bluebonnets and the verbenas in the garden. Also in the picture is my dog, Abraham.



Betty