Weaving

Tonight I taught my group about weaving after reading a tutorial about using cardboard to make portable looms on gingerbreadsnowflakes.com.  I didn't quite do it correctly but it came out well enough!  This is my square, it has some stripes, nothing too fancy.

Garden Friend

Found this guy sitting on top of the air conditioning unit outside and was worried he would get sucked in and die! Since the a/c was off at the moment, I took some pictures of him close up, then relocated him to the garden.  (I put him in with the weeds and ivy that is overgrowth from someone else's garden, so he can eat that first)

Isn't he cute?  I have some other, grosser pictures where you can see how slimy he is, but I just love the one above, he is cheesing for the camera.

Playing with buttons

Working on a mixed media project, doing some demos for clients, and this is what happened today.  Buttons, beads, embroidery, and some cool b&w fabric.

Recycled Planters

Did some work on the patio today.

I have spent more money on the garden than I had anticipated, but I think I've stretched it further than last year.  I made planters out of tin cans, twine, and beads I pulled off of an old necklace and hung cheap flowers in them.  So I guess hanging these flowers really only cost me what the flowers themselves cost me, and it was $2.99 for a pack (of four plants), so ... what you see in this image cost about 75c.  Not bad.  I have five of these hanging around, and then the leftover three marigold plants were put in an aluminum bucket I got at a flea market.

Mostly I am trying to do the actual plants for as cheap as possible because of my tendency to kill things.  I bought some plant food today so I fed my plants, which I will try to do every Friday.  But almost everything in the garden has been started from seeds or are super cheap (like the flowers).  Because all of the sprouts I started in April died while we were out of town, I am starting from scratch outside - but the spinach is already sprouting, so I have hopes the rest will follow suit soon.  This is why I'm doing it cheaply... okay, so all of my sprouts died (except the peppers), I'll just start over, no big deal!  I don't mind the "wasted" effort, because the process is the fun part for me, not necessarily the product

Yesterday I put up the solar powered lights and last night it was so pretty...

I can't wait until we're finally finished and I can take pictures!

Professional Nerdiness (I love charts)

Because all of my hours are volunteering, sometimes I feel kind of low.  I keep a very detailed chart of my progress but tonight I made a graphic to show myself getting closer to my goal as a way to stay motivated.  I also calculated the percentage of the hours I've completed towards my two licenses - I am almost finished with 30% of the hours I need for my state license, and have finished more than 50% of the hours I need for my national registration!

Luckily, I married an engineer.  Everyone ASSUMES he is the nerdy one.  But I am an ARTEEST.  Obviously that makes me cool automatically, right?  Coolness came when I bought my first canvas?  Or pastels?  Right?

This chart is so awesome, and it just keeps getting more awesome.  You can get so much information quickly and easily (well, YOU can't, because you can't see the headers).

The graph just makes the info look pretty, like at a fundraiser, I can see the totals rising.  I hated the color schemes so I put awesome retro wood paneling on it.

NOW YOU KNOW HOW COOL I AM.

Coming soon... art?  Maybe?  Sorry for the intermission of art making, I am going a little nuts.

Bee

I don't know what happened to this bee.  It was dead but in perfect shape.  I couldn't help getting some really close pictures because, well, how often can you get this close to a bee?