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

Eye Candy

Autumn-ness at McLaren's Falls, Tauranga. My kind of eye candy!

Autumn Treescapes

I was really looking forward to 'recharging' my batteries with a walk around Yatton Park last week and after several days where things kept coming up I finally made it there last Friday. The top photo is my favorite, the way the light falls on the trees trunk and the way it seems to go up so far it could reach the sky...

I couldn't help having a play around with a few of the photoscape filters, the result below is the combination of about 3 of them.

Next post: Circles and Dots- Featuring Mick Mather's  'Reinventing the wheel' series and a revist of Robyn Gordan's (Art Propelled) Spots and Circles post and some rusty bottle caps. Watch this space:)

Camp Week

This week has been school camp week for my two youngest. It's been awesome...hikes, sun, a waterfall and Autumn leaves...what's not to love about that!

The photo above was taken on the way out to the camp, what a treat to see these colours starting to show on the roadsides!

The photo below was taken on private land near the campsite. We had to get permission to take the kids down (down litteraly! What a walk that was!) for observational sketching. Drawing like this was a new experience for most of them and it was really interesting to see what they produced. I just took photos!

Coming soon:

Alicia's Caudle's Pulp Redux book "The Museum of Forgotten Things" is at my place and I've nearly completed a page in it so if your following our collab's journey make sure you check back here soon.

The winner of the ICE celebration giveaway (last post) will be announced on the 23rd...you still have time to enter if you missed it, see post below!

Take it and Run! I've stumbled across a fantastic site which I can't wait to share. I was so enthusiastic when I commented the blogger asked me if I wanted to contribute to one of his projects...I'll share all soon I promise!

It's begun....

It's begun! Autumn is on it's way! The first tantilising tell-tale signs of my favorite season are appearing everywhere... berries, leaves and rusty, earthy colours!
I took myself for a walk Monday morning after watching an inspiring documentary about National Geographic's Top 10 photos of 2009. The dedication and skill is certainly something to admire! My camera  has a RAW function which I have been ignoring  (oh...who was it that asked what I use?? it's a Nikon d40x) and I finally decided to flip the switch, loaded my editing software and go and photograph in RAW. In part that's where my problems began! Software that didn't work resulted in my not being able to see my images off the camera or it seized my computer all together. Back in the too hard /irritating basket! Yesterday I downloaded and trialed a few different free photo editing programmes  that allowed me control over my image and then converted them from RAW to JPEG. I settled on one called Photoscape which also has lots of filters to play around with. Here's a couple of images with the Anitquing filters applied...

I have to admit I quite like the way these look although it was time consuming, I wonder how they print out? This effect could look quite good on the right image in a collage!
Below are the originals as well as a few other pics that I took. I actually took about 30 photos but the rest are waiting for conversion.There must be a quicker and easier way to do this? Perhaps I should be taking a better look at the NEF (RAW) + JPEG button on my camera...

Just look at all those spider babies in the nest below...I was brave!

I've also been spending time on Lisa J's book for our Pulp Redux collab, researching my family history (yes that is relevant to my art...more on that later!) and scouring second hand shops for bargains. I came home one day to find a lovely gift from Deborah Eck of Dryadart. Deb was my partner in Lawendula's first paper swap. I love those chickadees! Thanks Deborah for the lovely nesty surprise!

 

So, that's a quick round up of my art week. It dosn't look like much when you put it into a few photos and words...but it represents hours, moments, fragments...who knows where this is actually leading? What discovery is on the verge of being made? I'm just going to follow the road...

Photo Friday- Autumn 2009

I enjoyed looking through the many (and I mean many!) Autumn photos I took this year in the search for 'just one' to post here. The photo friday theme this week is "Autumn 2009". Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year! You can see the other entries on the Photo Friday website.

Autumn Inchies

Hand painted paper backgrounds, recycled bird images from encyclopedias, words from NZ house and garden (mostly advertising text.)

20 inchies for a NZ Mail Art Swap, Autumn themed. NZ Mail art is now international and just based in NZ so if you want to join let me know and I will get an invite sent to you:)
Autumn for me is about delicious warm colours- orange, copper, browns, deep reds and the rusty tones of the them all mixing together.

The birds were making a real racket in these trees! One of the trees had berries that were obviously considered to be very delicious by the wide variety of birds that had congregated there. Little wax-eyes, native Tui's and common Thrushes are 3 that I spotted. (Unfortuntely with my zoom you will have to take my word for it!)

Happy Autumn or Spring to you wherever you are!

A good day...

It's been a great Monday! The kids all got back to school without a hitch and after a bit of housework I was left to do what I wanted...well first off I wrote myself a TO DO list which was a bit adventurous for one day but I did tick a couple of things off and so that's progress! Below are my treasures from a quick trip to the op shop just before I picked the kids up...

The container is a bit kitch (I think that's the term for a bit trashy!) but I adore it because it has birds on it...and not just any bird but NZ native birds. For $1 I am very happy! It actually has a blue plastic lid but I didn't put it on for the photo. Opps! The enamel bowl has nothing to do with the bird bucket, I just liked it and when we go on a real camp it will be well used! The fabric will be used to make cushion covers as soon as I have time! Winter will probably result in lots of sewing now that I have finally acquired a sewing machine! Last but not least is a gardening diary book which was in bad condition but at 50c I am sure I can make use of the imagery and the intact signatures. So those are the 'scores' I made and that in itself would be enough to make me happy...but my good day didn't stop there...I got my flower press out of the cupboard to retrieve some leaves I pressed about 3 weeks ago (remember my hat full of leaves?) and they're looking lovely!Almost to lovely to use...

The green leaves are marigold leaves, I was just playing to see what they came out like:) I have a paper making set/sieve/tray so I am thinking that some home-made paper might also be on the cards...look at the wonderful embossed print I discovered when I lifted the leaves! What a great surprise! I am not sure what I will be able to do with the paper (it's soft tissue/serviette paper) but I have kept it of course!

Last but not least...anyone for a bit of Bacon? These are my recipe cards for this months recipe fat-book tip in swap. I gave fun painting the paper for my bacon strips!

It's no longer Monday, I ended up saving this in draft. It's Tuesday now and I have been out collecting leaves before the council mows them or the forcasted storm destroys them...they're all so pretty and there are so many red leaves at the moment! As always...watch this space! Hoping to tour the globe later tonight...I've missed my blogging friends!

Honey...I'm home!

After a lovely break away from the 'norm' we're back home again. DH is back at work and I am back to my course. The kids have a week left yet so good thing mine is extramural! Our trip was wonderful, only part of me wanted to come home again! Autumn is a great time of year to travel, towns such as Cambridge have a lot of trees (and I hear an up coming Autumn festival...sounds like heaven to me!) and are so pretty to go through right now. Otorohonga is always entertaining too...this corrugated iron kiwi is just one of mean NZ icons proudly flaunted through-out the main town area. The main attraction for me though will always be my mountain.... Mt Taranaki...beautiful, magestic and so inspiring! It just so happens that Moody Monday's mood this week is "Inspiration" so I think I will have just the image to post for that! Oh...and one last thing! I came home to an email letting me know that I sold my collage..(number 13, Takahe for anyone interested) so naturally I was very pleased to see that!

A short break from collage...

Just a short break though! I have gotten to the point where I've only got 3 tags left to make for my AB and it's over to the next artist. It's been nice playing around with the paint again after a break away from it even if it was just to paint backgrounds! There's something quite mesmerising about watching the colours merge together. Even more so captivating (in my opinion!) is AUTUMN. Every day I am getting that little bit happier as I watch the trees change colours. I decided to go to a reserve I hadn't been to in quite some times and take photos of the trees there. I will share a sample of them here because it's being out amongst trees like these and making these discoveries that really gets my creative juices going. This is where I find my bliss. I hope you will enjoy it too! Oh...and incase your wondering if this was a really tall tree I stood beneath or if I was laying down beneath it, it was the latter.I was blissfully ignoring the rest of the world laying on my back in the Autumn sun...gee...hard life this photography lark! lol

Eventually I started to look down the tree, at the mossy bumps and little crevices that caught the leaves that once fed it, the lines and valleys that tell this trees stories as much as any of the emerging wrinkles on my face. I must admit to being much more fond of the trees! Just because they're called 'crows feet' doesn't make them any more appealing! Haha. Enough of that though because look what hidden treasure was waiting for me when I looked at the ground...

A tiny, tiny tree! Perhaps I just witnessed this trees first Autumn? It's red leaves seemingly out of proportion for the size of it's delicate trunk...it's these discoveries that makes me feel s so grateful and makes me feel so alive.