In search of peace

My youngest bought us the bone covering for our recent wedding anniversary, 17 years...yay us!

My son has a gift for finding fallen bird egg shells. He's also found 4 of the 6 small nests I have (above and below.)

Who knew tobacco flowers were so pretty?

My eldest girl painted me the birds for Christmas.

The God's Eye is from Mardi Gras.

I find myself creating little scenes like these ones, my life is turbulent and I need peace.

Is it an oxymoron that in this time of darkness that I find myself making happy spots? 

Self-medicating.

The black dog yaps, still, it never goes but so far I have it on it's leash.

My daughters surgery was due to be this coming Tuesday but it got postponed, leaving me in free fall. 

At least I've realized now that I don't have to keep falling.

YES, My home IS my nest and so I create these areas that I love and that bring the calm and peace I search for.

This one greets me and all our visitors at the front door....

Be well, be blessed.

Lisa

Ash and Ang

I'm officially a Bird Mama! I recently put my name down to foster baby birds in need of a little TLC until they are released back into the wild again. We finally picked up our first pair of birds yesterday, some thrush fledglings we named Ash and Ang.

Ash (on the left) and Ang (as in the Avatar!)

Unfortunately Ash passed on today after only 24hours with us. I'm not sure why, I guess that is just the way of nature. He had been attacked by a cat before coming to us and had bruising so maybe that was just too much for the little bird. Ang seems strong and eagerly eats the cat food I give him. I say "him" but I'm not sure if Ash and Ang are he's or she's! I hope to have Ang here for another 3 or 4 weeks until he's grown tail feathers and can find his own food. Right now he's being hand fed every 2-2.5 hours and requires a bedding change at each feed. I never knew they pooped so much! lol.

This beautiful red wire was rescued from a 1970's vacuum cleaner by my son. As he likes pulling electrical things apart we asked the second-hand shop if we could have any old electric things that they received that didn't work. They are more than happy to get rid of their 'junk' and my son's happy to salvage what he can! I am of course, very happy to receive gifts such as this! I am not sure if it is technically copper wire, unless there is such thing as red-copper wire but it's beautiful stuff. Very easy to use (watch this space!) and it just winds off the metal like wool. No muscle required!

At the start of the year I set myself an art goal to make plaster of paris bird eggs...and here they are! They are still in the raw stage here, I need to sand the eggs and then decide if I will make whole eggs or half eggs with a flat side for gluing. I'm thinking of collaging them with tissue paper or sewing pattern paper, this is still very much a work in progress!

Last but not least...I received word that Kim's book has reached Debrina's safe and sound! YAY!. It's always a worry when we set such precious things loose in the postal system and I think we all breathe a collective sigh of relief when another book makes it safely to it's destination!

Pulp Redux update and a very cool nest!

Photo Mandy Hauge, Whakatane, NZ

Look at this fabulous Plover's nest that Mandy Hauge posted on her blog for moi! I am seriously impressed and just a tad envious that she gets to find some wonderful treasures! Thankyou Mandy it made my day to see this on your blog! I really have to encourage everyone to go on over to Mandy's blog and check out her art. No kidding not only is this lady one seriously talented photographer she also does incredible paintings, bird cage sculptures and collects cool things like mummifyed rats and bird skulls. You've just got to visit!

I've also been busy working on my Labyrinth book for the Pulp Redux collaboration. I am really loving the way this is coming along although it is still very much a work in progress! If you havn't been over already then make sure you pop over to see the progress on everyone else's books too. We've also had Lisa of Mud Hound Primitives join the collab which is very good news for us! If you havn't already been by her blog I suggest you visit her too!

Hot off the press! My freshly complete Woven page. The photo below shows the pages 'bones' which are kebab sticks stitched onto the page. Below that you can see an 'entangled' page which is not yet finnished. I left the tails that tied the sticks long so that they would tangle. The beads that you can see on the photo above move along and I love the way it feels when you move the beads along and really interact with the page.

The two pages flow over the edges and into each other which may result in another 'entanglement' but that's ok with me!

And last but not least...the Paper Swap partners have been announced on the Woven Letter's blog so if you signed up make sure you go and see who your partner is!

A new lino cut nest.

I've been having fun with a new print! I cut it and did these first prints today to test it out. I like this print a lot more than the first nest print I did (which I still like...just not as much as this one!) I was trying to achieve finer lines and that weaved look because I don't like the 'colour book' look that some lino cuts have. This one does look at home here in my VD! If it looks a little familiar it's because I used my photo of a nest (that's been copied a lot of times for collages) as the base to draw from.

The yellow is paper is painted paper with indian ink wash, the brown splattered paper is patterned by string soak in coffee then left to dry on the paper. I enjoy these patterned papers more so than the straight black on white ones...however I think this b&w ones will look great photo-copied onto tracing paper. So many opportunities to explore!

I tried to make the most of the lines and ridges that appear in the background of a lino print. This is the first time I have really considered them while cutting the background away from the nest, I think the resulting cut is a little mini work of art in itself!

Today is my graduation day from my art course...I have officially finished 4 years of study and am now at a new point in my life. I will have my diploma soon and now I need to work out what to do with it! I have ideas of course but I must say I feel a bit like a little bird about to fly from the nest for the first time! It's a big wide world out there and this next journey is about finding my place in it and realising some of the dreams and aspirations that I have been holding onto for a while. Watch this space:)

True Bliss is...

I am so happy! Lots of precious bird's nest and nesty things have come into my life this week. I wonder if it is possible to actually be much more content? The first great bird thing to happen this week was the little, sweet nest my wonderful son found for me. I am not sure what sort of bird it is from but it is so delicate and small! I have seen one of these nests before that a teacher had found at the school. I really wanted it! but I was pleased that it would go into a class of young children so that they could learn about nests and hopefully grow to love birds as much as I do. That was about a month ago and everyday when I go past the spot it was found I think of that wonderful nest...so to have my own one?? Wowee! I was playing around with a photographic collage/still life idea and below is one of my attempts. I think this photo or one similar will end up as a collage image for real one of these days. Above: A wonderful nest, magnolia seed shells, Native Kowhai seed pods, small pinecones, moss on a stick. I actually have all these items on a bench near the kitchen so I can admire them:)
The second great bird thing to happen this week was the arrival of a parcel from a friend in Christchurch. She said she would send me some feathers...by some I thought she meant 10 or so...BUT what arrived was around 200!! No kidding! All sorts of duck and chicken feathers in wonderful colours. I photographed them of course and will post them later with the collage I did using a few of them. I was pretty happy by then, 2 great bird things in one week...but then guess what? Today while I was out taking photos of Tui's (and there were wax-eyes yesterday) and feeling really blissful. I found another nest! The Tui's put on the best show singing and chortling and flirting with each other (honestly, those boys sure know how to fluff a girl Tui's feathers....I was almost embarrassed!) and I was feeling super lucky to be allowed to watch. I wandered around for a bit and didn't notice the nest at first, the Tui's had my full attention but then something caught my eye....a thrush nest! And not just any ol nest but a nest with eggs!

My photography isn't wonderful ..but to be fair, not only were my hands shaking with excitement I was also perched (bad pun!) up the tree on skinny branches with my hair tangling in the twigs! I got such a buzz to see the nest. I'm sure that I can tweak them a bit when I get them printed and it will be all ok. I was going to see if I could take the nest home (usually I only collect fallen nests but this one seemed old at first) when I suddenly spotted 3 precious gems inside. Wow! At first I felt really bad.What if the mother bird didn't come back because of me? What if my fascination was going to come at a big cost to those not-yet-hatched birds? As I walked away half excited at my discovery and half filled with worry I said a quick prayer that this nest be blessed. I thought about it all morning but was so relieved to go back this avo and see the mother Thrush sitting in her nest. Wheeew! It was back to the excitement then!

What ever your bliss is, I hope that my happy vibes rub off onto you and your week is also filled with wonderful and inspiring things!

Winter Hedge- AB and Poetry

Nest photo copied onto tracing paper, Poem by Ruth Dallas (see below) Leaf/ink rubbings, Small cheque book calender page, string, childs playing card, scrap handmade paper and brown paper, twig, buttons.

As part of the 'Off the Page' Round Robin I get the chance to work on other people's Altered Books. This board book arrived in the mail the other day with the theme of 'Poetry.' I already had the poem chosen and the page came together very quickly even though it wasn't pre-planned. I love the way it turned out!

Here's the poem by NZ poet Ruth Dallas.

Winter hedge

How like shells they are, these deserted rain-bleached nests

half filled with small black leaves;

the green leaves that summer- long sang like waves

have left the now as shells on sand

are left for anyone to find.

To lift them from the tangled boughs

of theses deep sleeping hawthorn trees

would be like taking shells away

from all that gives them colour-

sea, sun and sand.

How sad they seem

and faded when you take them home.

Marvellously as they are made

with moulded earth and moss inlaid

with woven bark and straws and

warm with thistle-down

half their charm- even when the trees are bare

is in them being where they are.

p.a.p.e..r.!

This is a page from my visual diary. You can see the embossed leaf paper (which I made from the paper from an expired cheque book) and the paper I made from serviettes and rose petals. While my computer was in the shop I had my birthday and DH gave me the most wonderful bunch of roses so I decided to re-use a few! Oh, I cut out a few birds eggs too!

Above: A selection from my paper experiments! The yellow paper is coloured with marigold dye and I'm pleased with it's intensity. I pressed a broken sheet of paper onto a green sheet to get the marbled edges. It also means it's green on one side and yellow on the other!

Below: These leaves are trapped inside 2 sheets of paper. I'm curious to see what happens to the leaves...will they decay without direct light or moisture? Will their organic-ness result in the life span of this paper being shorter than the rest?

This is so much fun! I just love the texture, the feel, the look of hand made paper! I am keen to do some ink/lino cut prints on some of my own paper and experiment with sizing it so it can be written on. I've bought the lino and already have cutters and ink so watch this space!