Les Magasins de Fleurs

 

March is the first month in spring, even though we still have to wait a little bit for the spring equinox which will be on Friday, March 20. However, here in my corner of the world it feels very much like spring at the moment. Many trees are in bloom and the birds are busy starting new families. The air has this fresh fragrance that you only find in spring. So I thought today I stick with flowers and show you the beautiful flower shops in France, even though all these displays are from the fall season. 

Flower shops can be found in almost every town in France and what is so appealing about them are the beautiful displays that spill out onto the sidewalk. It's artistic and a lot of love as well as talent is poured in the designs. After all, it shall inspire and motivate you and me to stop and hopefully buy some flowers.

If I lived here I would probably spend a lot of money in one of those shops.

Of course the colors are perfect together in this display. Country chic.

My daughter was seriously thinking of buying this pretzel vase. Good thing the store was closed! 

Isn't this pure eye candy? It never looks that good if I try to arrange some flowers.

Even muted colors look fabulous.

The following display wasn't at a French flower shop but at a small gift shop in Greetsiel in Germany's Ostfriesland. I did like the beautiful arrangement of fall plants and grasses in the wicker basket.

I hope you enjoyed this short tour of flower shops.

Snail Shells

 

The other things I find in my garden beside bird feathers are empty snail shells. I usually pick them up and bring inside, hoping to one day use them in an artpiece.

The time had come when I was thinking about what to do with the second burlap cnavas. Just like with the bird feathers, I worked in a series and used very similar techniques. I first layed out a rough design.

I worked on 4" x 4" pieces of watercolor that I had painted with a soft shade of burnt sienna. After I had glued down all the papers and added some parchment colored acrylic paint I thought that it needed something else. So I picked one of my favorite stencils from Stencils Girls, mixed a shade of green that I liked and stenciled these plants onto the papers. Already it looked much better.

The pieces I wanted to used as background for the snail shell are paper towels that I accidentally colored a while back (I can't remember how that happened, only that it was unintentionally and I liked the outcome). However, when I glued down the papertowel, it almost completely disappeared. I wanted to bring out the texture, so I used some India ink pen (Faber Castell) in raw umber on the edges and "smeared" the color to the center. Much better. Some more gesso through stencils and I also added a small piece of burlap to each piece. Then I adhered them to the burlap canvas - I had to that first because I put some super strong tape on the back of the watercolor paper, but I had to do that before gluing the snail shells down, because otherwise I would not have been able to lay the paper flat for adhering the tape (I hope this explanation isn't too complicated).

Only after everything was fastened to the burlap canvas did I glue down the snail shells, using Aleene's mixed media adhesive which has a very strong hold. It had to dry 24 hours and then I added final touches, like the white framing of the papertowel using a white gel pen (Debra, thank you for writing about them in your last SITAR post) and some white gesso on the burlap. Done.

Here is each of them.

With these snail shells I'm joining Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.