Sunday, March 24, 2024

Odds and Ends form 2023

Hey, 

Still here. Been awhile. No problems, just staying busy, but not feeling very chatty.  But I'll catch you up on some of  other things I did in 2023.

My last post was in July 2023 and I had posted an update for 2022/2023 in  February 2023. But what did I do in the other 9 months of 2023?  Well, that's a bunch of stuff to write about and a lot of it was hobby activities I don't usually mention. Basically 2023 was a random collection of small new craft projects, unfinished older projects and several all digital projects, things like photo archive management, digital fabric designs, and formatting and printing photo books. 

In February I was sorting, organizing and cleaning up stuff in my craft room and got completely side-tracked on a spur-of-the- moment mixed-media project to use up an overabundance of collected security envelopes and some painted canvas.



 

 



And while I was at it I made a few more books.








 In March I finished a collection of Mixed Media collages that I'd neglected for a very long time.






 

In April I finished the Plaidish Quilt I started in 2022.  I love the colors, it makes me happy every time I see it.


 

By May I'm busy with gardening and digital projects, continuing to do acrylic painting in sketchbook every day and doing a few other bookbinding projects.

These are painted canvas paper thin sketchbooks.

 

And my last "big" project for 2023 was another spur-of-the-moment project that took about 6 weeks and also came out of a "cleaning things up" effort with all my art supplies.  I call it my Palette Paint Transfer project. You know all that excess paint that ends up on palette paper, or in my case also on big pieces of freezer paper that I put under artwork and I save all those papers. ... just because I might find a way to use them... well, I used them.

And this is what I made:



Thanks for reading.

Aileen

Sunday, July 23, 2023

So Many Charms

It's been awhile.  But I've been busy. Sitting down and writing about what has been keeping me busy seems like one task too many, even if it's something I want to do.

Working backward from today seems easier than starting in March.

So most recently I've been making charms. It all started with one little pack of evil eye glass beads I got for no specific reason at all.  One thing led to another and a few weeks later I have a dozen+ Charms hanging in my house presumably protecting me from every possible 'thing' out there. I've got 9 different color evil eye beads, gemstones for all the Chakras, and various medalions all hanging out together doing whatever they are suppose to do. 

I really just like them because they are fun and easy to make and pretty.


 

That's all for today. More later about fabric designing in June, gardening in May, quilting in April, and bookbinding in March.

Thanks for reading.

AIleen

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Happy February!

It's 71 degrees here today and it shouldn't be. It should be between 30-40.  I miss winter. 

But it is still February so instead of painting Christmas trees and snow I painted a bunch of Valentine Hearts.


 

And now It's also 2023 and I haven't posted an update in a long time so this is a quick bullet summary of what I did in 2022, besides grow marigolds.

So what did I do last year?

Some crochet: Another Project Linus Crochet Along blanket.

Some more crochet: This time tiny baby aliens with my own mods. I ended up making 4. They are a lot faster to make than their big brothers.

 

Started a new quilt: I saw these Plaid-ish quilts all over Instagram and loved them. The pattern is free and I have more fabric than any one person ever needs. I did finish piecing the top but I still need to quilt and finish it, hopefully this year.

 

Gardening: Lots of porch gardening, in addition to the feral marigolds.  The Celosia is my new favorite flower. They bloom and they stay 'bloomed' for months! I named this one Groot. It's just too obvious. Right?

Lots of different color Coleus, several Celosia of different types, Red vine, Morning Glories, and a Poinsettia.


Lots of watercolor art: Experimenting with paints, brushes and methods.



 Swatching all the watercolor paints I have.



 

Some bookbinding: Call it an art journal or a junk journal? I'm not sure? But it is just a collection of papers I'm painted.

 

But almost every day just filling this giant book with abstract acrylic art.


This is the first 100 pages of that big book of acrylic painting experiments.  There are also videos for the other 200 pages on my YouTube channel.


That's it for today. Not sure when I'll be back.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen


Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Something about the last five months. Marigold flowers and bees.

 Something? What do I talk about today?  

The Bumblebees in my garden? They love my Mutant Marigolds. I call them mutant because I don't know what else to call them. I love marigolds, they are such an easy flower to grow, produce continuous flowers for months, and importantly are deer resistant. Deer just don't eat them, unlike almost everything else I've tried to plant.  

 This is a little bee video, not sure this will work.


So I planted one of the tall domestic varieties with the big puffy orange blooms one year (don't remember which brand) and collected the seeds. And I planted those seeds the next year and got the same flower, and collected seeds again for the next year. So by the time I planted the 3rd or 4th generation of seeds I expected to get the same thing but they started to change to something different. Eventually after another year or two this is what I have, my Mutant Marigolds that the bees adore. 

 


 







 



This (below) is a sleeping baby bumblebee. The little ones show up later in the summer and sleep on the flowers overnight. I read they get pushed out of their nests when there are too many of them. Sort of sad. Nature is harsh.


But I really don't think these flowers are mutants. They seem to be going back to the wild.  I found a paper that called it  Feralization.  But what do I know? I don't know anything about plant science.  I just grow flowers.  But I don't think they are done "going wild".  They keep getting taller. I've had plants over six feet tall. And this isn't even a great spot for marigolds because it does not get sun all day. What would they become growing out in the middle of a field?

Something else. A lot of other bugs love these flowers. 

Photo bombed by an inchworm.

 

 Something else maybe going wild? Probably not.

This is my catnip.


Thanks for reading.

Aileen

I'm sure there is something else I can post later.