The clever Easter Bunny

On a rainy day like this I remember last Sunday, Easter. It was sunny and pleasant, and yes, the Easter Bunny, clever little chap that he is, knew that even almost-14-year-old girls still love to go on an egg hunt. So he had hidden some chocolate eggs, chicks and bunnies in our garden for the girl to search for.

As I said, he was pretty clever and thought of some good hiding spots. There were eggs hanging from the pear tree...

a bunny hiding in the cat mint...

a chick hanging from the birdhouse...

and a bunny enjoying the view from the clothesline.

The girl found them all

and even got some help from the cat.

How was your Easter?

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Spring Paintings

As I mentioned in my last post, I painted quite a bit during my break from blogging. It felt really good to either feel the paint on my fingers or the paintbrush in my hand. I enjoyed playing around and trying new techniques.

"She let all of her worries go"

This painting was created as a result of Jeanne Oliver's "Creatively made" ecourse that I enjoyed thoroughly and where I learned so many new fun techniques. This class gave my confidence a big boost and for the first time I dared to paint faces and people and stick to them even if they looked anything but perfect or beautiful. It was freeing and I happily played around.

In the following painting I again tried a new technique painting the face after I had watched a video by Mystele (actually three videos) that had inspired me to no end. To my big surprise, this painting got sold within 24 hours after I had listed it in my Etsy shop. 

"She remained true to herself"

Now, who doesn't love mermaids? In my imagination mermaids always have red hair and there's something melancholy about them.

"She always missed the ocean"

And, of course, I couldn't stay away from the owls. Here's a 4 x 12 canvas featuring the entire family. I have heard that the owls are nesting again, but since I haven't been at the lake recently I still don't know where the nest is.

"The Owl Family"

I've started a new painting, or better say the background of a painting. I'm doing another ecourse, Juliette Crane's "How to Paint an Owl" and so far I'm loving it. However, I don't really like this background, it is far too busy for me and I'll probably paint it over again or at least parts of it.

Since it is Friday and I have missed so many weeks of it, I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday - so good to be back.

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I'm Back!

Geeda having her "wild five minutes"

A month has gone by since I last posted here - a rather long break, but much needed. However, I really missed blogland, and I am glad to be finally back.

First of all, I want to thank all of you who left such encouraging and understanding comments on my last post - you are such wonderful people, and I really missed you. It feels so good to connect again and I hope I'll catch up with your blogs soon. Many of you I visited during my breaks, not always leaving comments, though. I still felt connected with those of you who are also on Facebook, so I was not completely "out".

A lot has been going on here in my little corner of the world. I discovered sure signs of springs

and captured little bits with my camera that made me happy.

The Geek built a new computer for me,

it's super fast, but I had to say good-bye to Windows XP and embrace Windows 7 which I am not so fond of, but oh well. It's okay, and by now I'm used to it.

I also painted a lot

and made a bunch of journals and mini-journals which are available in my Etsy store.

So. There is one BIG thing going on in our life that I cannot tell you about right now. Hopefully in another three weeks or so, although I can't wait to share this with you. It consumes quite a bit of my time, which means I might not be in blogland on a regular basis - but I will be there.

For the time being, I'm enjoying the awakening spring. My garden certainly is in full spring mood, the French lilac is already blooming and sending out its lovely scent. I'm pulling weeds, cutting back, removing plants that didn't make it. The purple clematis is climbing up the pear tree, it was really early this year. Fortunately, we got a lot of rain in March (while the entire winter was VERY dry) - just the right thing urgently needed by all the plants. Everything is exploding right now - beautiful.

What does it look like in your corner of the world? Are you excited about spring? Enjoying autumn? Please tell me.

Blog Tired

It has been over a week since I last posted on my blog. This is quite unusual for me.

Since I started this space in July 2010 I have enjoyed it so very much. Sure, sometimes I didn't quite know what to write about, but that lasted for about a day or two and then the ideas were flowing again. Nothing to worry about.

The best part of blogging is connecting with other bloggers. I've found so many kindred spirits here that I have hardly found in "real" life. There is inspiration galore, opportunities to learn, to take part in challenges - the list is endless. In short, blogland has been a great place.

However, I have felt a weird tiredness over the past few weeks. I used to blog so often, and currently I write one or two posts a week. This week, I haven't written anything. I wonder what is going on, whether I just need a little break. Is this only temporarily? Or is it something bigger?

There is a lot going on in my life at the moment . First of all, the Geek had surgery last Thursday and that was on my mind a lot in all the weeks before. It went well and he is very perky, recovering from the three hours surgery surprisingly fast. He still is in pain, but for that we have those lovely pills...

January was very busy in my Etsy shop, and I am thankful for that. I had several custom orders and sold lots of Valentine's cards. It caught me by surprise, I have to say, I had thought that after Christmas things would be very slow, but I actually was way more busy than before Christmas. It's good to see that people want to show their love for other people, no matter how. February was exceptionally slow, and currently it's picking up again with custom orders for St. Patrick's Day. I'm doing a happy dance here.

There is a lot more going on, but I don't want to bore you with all the details. The outcome, however, of all of this is that I've lost my mojo for writing my blog. It's not that I don't have ideas - I actually do, and I know that I will put them in here one day, but just not yet. I want my blog posts to come from my heart and be honest, and at the moment I feel I can't do that. Everything is just blah, and to write only for the sake of creating another post to keep this blog going without my heart in it? No, I'd rather not.

So I think I might take a little break from my blog - but as soon as something crosses my mind that I want to share with you, I will. I know that I will be back, I just need to get rid of that pressure that I am putting on myself for no reason at all.

But please tell me - do you ever feel like that, and what do you do if you're blog tired?
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Faces - Again!

It's still February, and I'm still busy with the 29 Faces for the month. I keep painting and drawing, but I am a face behind - not too bad. I don't have a name for the girl on top, I call her "red cheeks", I obviously had too much water on my brush along with the red color.

I was in a devilish mood with this one:

and this girl is not in a good mood either.

Meet Mary (she looks a bit like my neighbor):

and Clara:

And those of you who remember the boy with the funky hair (I finally decided it's a boy) on the cover of an altered composition book from last Friday - the journal is done and it's in my Etsy shop now.

I'm linking up to Paint Party Friday and Sneak Peek Friday - artful and inspiring Friday, I love it!

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A Visit to the Nursery

My friend Jo and I spent a lovely morning together yesterday. As usual, we started out with breakfast at our favorite little cafe in Graton - they serve excellent coffee there and the scrambles are delicious as well.

The latte is served in real bowls, no paper cups here. That's the way I like it.

After that we were ready to visit one of our favorite nurseries - I know, it's only February, but we both love to garden and just wanted to "look".

The nursery always displays their stuff so nicely - our dreams could take off!

One day I will have a little pump like that in my garden!

I was good - I only bought a beautiful columbine and a small trellis that you can put into a pot. But in my head there are many colorful dreams of a beautiful garden this year. Every year I can't wait to get the garden going. The calendula are beautiful and rich right now, and since we have unusually warm weather the peonies are already on their way out of the soil. I have been trimming trees and cutting back old and dead branches and twigs, preparing the way for new growth. I feel whole when I can work in the garden and feel the soil between my fingers.

Are you a gardener? What are you planning to grow this year?

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Tulips and Books

As usual I am late for Photo Art Friday (yes, I know it's Sunday), but better late than never. For this week, Bonnie asked us to share a piece of photo art where we use one of her textures and then use a layer mask to finesse the texture application. It was quite a challenge, but I think I managed not too bad.

I used Bonnie's texture "desert canvas" in blending mode soft light at 100% and then used a layer mask in PSE to remove most of the texture from the tulips and their leaves. After that the tulips received some of the texture back, but lighter than before. It wasn't that difficult after all, it just takes some time and I had a harder time to decide when I was actually finished.

Bonnie's challenges help me to learn using PSE more and more efficiently, and I am very happy about that. Recently I have also taken more "still life" photos which is new to me and I haven't practiced very often. It actually also helps me to take better product pictures of the items for my Etsy store which is important to me.

I am also linking this to Life in Pictures at Coston Comba Photography, a photo blog I have just discovered.
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