Sun Flare Photos

Capturing sun flare has become quite the voguish pursuit for photographers these days.  It wasn’t long ago that these “over-exposed” photos were considered throw-away! Now, however,  all over the blog-world I see beautiful photos with sunbeams bursting forth from every conceivable angle.  I took my oldest out in the front yard (I know, not very exciting) to try and catch some flare.  It was 4:48 to be exact. 

It was tricky trying to move around, up and down, side to side, trying to catch that perfect starburst pattern of rays.  I would see it in my viewfinder, but then when I snapped the picture it wasn’t there!  One thing I do know is that I love natural lighting, even if I don’t quite get the hang of it yet!  I picked my favorite one and entered it in I Heart Faces “Sun Flare” contest this week! Here are the rest: 

‘I Heart Faces’ Sun Flare Contest Entry

Here is the photo I’m entering in the ’sun flare’ contest! I Heart Faces is a photography blog where photographers of all levels can enter weekly contests.  There are great photography tutorials and tips on the site as well. 

This was my favorite sun flare picture out of all of the ones I took yesterday.  I’ll post the rest in little while, but I had to post a single picture in a single post as part of the guidelines for the contest.

  It’s probably not a very good submission since it doesn’t have a whole face showing, but I like it anyway!  We’ll see!

Artist’s Palette for Dolls

After my recent adventures in oil painting, my daughter’s “daughter” ( my grand-doll) wanted to give it a try

I grabbed some cardboard and set out to make a doll sized artist’s palette.

I drew a shape that resembled a palette onto the cardboard with a pencil and then cut it out carefully, using my exacto knife for the hole.

Then I brayered it with some Distressing Ink to give it a more wooden color.

Next I took some acrylic paints, squeezed a little of each color on a piece of scratch paper and then mixed a bit of heavy gloss gel into each color.  Without the heavy gel your colors would just be flat dots of color, but the gel gives it volume so that it looks like real oil paint would, sort of lumpy.

I took the globs of each color and placed it onto the palette with a small brush and let it dry. Sorry these pictures are so dull.  I did this project in the evening and the lighting was not very good.

Now Zoe has her own paint palette! Her favorite place to paint is on her bed…

It’s always nice to have another artist in the family

Autumn Decorating

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any of you bloggers ever had a post ready and then forgotten about it?

I had this one ready two weeks ago and just now remembered it.  Since this isn’t really a decorating blog, I got caught up in other projects.  Well, here are a few of the little autumn touches I’ve put around our home this year…

The clear lamp is filled with autumn leaves and acorns…

…and lots of little pumpkins and berries are placed along the mantel…

These two frames by the back door are often getting “change-outs”…here they display two pages of fall foliage from the magazine clippings I used in my autumn paper doll project recently…

Pumpkin made out of leaves in the office… it’s all the fall decor my husband can handle in his office…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The antique sideboard in the entry, dressed up with flowers, wreaths, pumpkins, and art book displaying John Everett Millais painting “Autumn Leaves”.

The piano decorated with fall garland, pumpkin, acorns, turkey feathers (compliments of my turkey huntin’ father-in-law), and an old Victoriana occasion calendar….

                                                                  

Coat hanger in the hall holding a fall wreath, and some nice big pumpkins sitting around…one is spiffed up with some floral picks and brown ribbon…the basket did have some assorted gourds and a couple of fall books, but the little people of the house seem to have emptied it.  Here’s what it usually looks like…

Various sizes of pumpkins displayed on my canister shelves in the kitchen…

Magnets on the fridge made from real pressed leaves…

Shelf on the second level, visible from the school room, with another wreath, faux pumpkins, and an art book of Grandma Moses’ paintings displaying a harvest scene…this shelf is a decorating headache, honestly.  I never can make it look very good and it’s hard to reach.

There it is! My decor stuff is not new, but I arrange it a little differently each year.  In fact, the wreath in the hall is 10 years old, but I pack it very carefully for storage and, amazingly, it still looks pretty good.

Thanksgiving is only a week away! I should be making a grocery list, not blogging

Acorn Tea Set

Here is our tiny tea set made from acorn caps.  We took it out into the garden to take some pictures…

We thought it looked best perched atop a flowering plant, for you never know when some fairies might pass by in need of refreshment…

Fairies probably like sweet tea, too, so we put some real sugar in the sugar bowl…

Miniature Acorn Tea Cups

One of my daughter’s favorite picture books when she was very young was Miss Suzy by Miriam Young.  It’s a very sweet story featuring a squirrel who lives high up in a cozy tree-home. This is one of our very favorite bed-time stories, right up there with Miss Twiggley’s Tree (which, coincidentally, features a woman who lives in a tree-home) by Dorothea Warren Fox. 

One of the cute things this squirrel has in her tree-house kitchen is acorn cups to drink from.  I recently decided to try and create some tiny tea-cups out of the numerous acorn caps we’ve collected on our neighborhood walks.

First, I had to carefully cut the cap in half, since I wanted to glue it on a flat surface.

Next, I made a small notch in the rim for the twine to slip into when gluing on the “handle”.

I used super glue to get the twine to stick quickly to the cups.  I think you could probably use an air dry clay to make the handles if you were doing this with kids.

I also sanded down the pointy bottom the acorns to give them a flatter base which looked more like a cup instead of a funnel.  These are so cute! They look just like little tea-cups.  I can’t wait to wrap up some boxes of peppermint tea in brown kraft paper and attach these tags!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A tiny tea cup and an itty-bitty sugar bowl…

I painted these cups with some acrylic paints…

And if you think these are cute, just wait until I show you the complete fairy-sized tea service my daughter and I designed and assembled from our remaining acorn caps… coming up next!  Stay warm 

Photo of the Week–”Reaching for the Sun”

 My Morning Glories still think it’s summer and continue to cast out long thin tendrils in all directions, reaching up toward the warmth of the sun.  They will be in for quite a shock tonight as the temp. gets down into the 40’s.  This photo would have been so awesome without those power lines! Oh well, I still love the clouds and the colors of the sky.  Hope you’re having a wonderful week!

Millais: Portraits

I think it’s high time I beefed up my “Art Book” category on this blog. I’ve had one solitary book in this category for the past 8 months!

I’m going to divide  my collection into two categories: art books for children and art books for display and reference.   

The first book I would like to share with you is one for display.  I love to have beautiful art to look at in my home.   The easiest and most inexpensive way I’ve found to do this is to buy used art books and set them up on various book stands around the house.  This makes it easy to change out the art displayed around the house to correspond with special occasions, a specific artist, or a style of art that we are currently studying.  An even more economically feasible way to display art in your home is to buy art calendars right after New Year’s. They are usually 50% off or more and you can display different pages throughout the year without using the calendar pages at all.  I have a stash of art calendars that I keep for just that purpose.

Now for the book I want to recommend.  Every fall I display Millais: Portraits by Funnell, Warner, Flint, Matthew, and Ormond, in our entryway.  John Everett Millais was a renowned Victorian portrait painter of the mid to late 1800’s.  I found this book used and in excellent condition. The painting I have displayed is titled “Autumn Leaves”, painted in 1855-1856, and I display it every fall.

This book is a rare gem in that it is completely clean in terms of images.  It has many full-page prints of his paintings in deep, vivid colors.  I should probably mention that, though I scan the pages carefully before I recommend a book, I rarely read through the lengthy, plodding  text of most art books.  Occasionally,  I will peruse the pages looking for information on a certain painting, but that’s it.  I buy them for the pictures, not the “expert” critique that’s included.   

                                                                                                                                                                       

Here are some more of John Everett Millais’ paintings that are included in this book.  I absolutely LOVE his work!  If you ever come across this book, or another book of Millais’ works, I highly recommend it.  He was an exquisite portrait artist and his paintings are lovely.

“I Come By The Blood” Postcard

 

 

Photos of a “Website”