Tuesday, October 16, 2012

What have I been doing?

Thank you for asking ;)!  And, for visiting!   Well, this is always a busy time for me.  I love, love, love Fall and so I spend as much time as I can outside getting the garden in shape for winter, but also planting pansies and violas in my many pots scattered thoughout the garden.  They look so fresh and wonderful though the fall and then they mostly survive winter.  In March, I go out clean up the pots and add some fertilizer and they flourish all though Spring!  I just love them. 


I must say that I'm a sucker for black flowers, violas, tulips, iris, anything that comes in black!  There are those who think I'm crazy, or at the least, weird, but it can't be helped.  This lovely little black viola came inside the porch with me and just needed to be put in a vase with some orange marigolds.  And, then it just needed it's picture taken!  Which brings me to the other things that have been keeping me busy, which are changing my house over from Summer to Fall.  I love to decorate the house for Fall.  In October I add in Halloween fun because I love Halloween.  I don't like gory, ugly Halloween, but I love vintage Halloween and cute/pretty witches, and jack-o-lanterns, which I think are my favorites!  So, that's what I did the beginning of the month and since then I've been adding new Halloween items that I've been making.  You see, not many people who don't know me really well know that I love paper arts.  My daughter is the real paper artist in the family, but over the years I dabbled in it and lately I've become hooked.  I've always loved tags and now they are all the rage.  So, I've been making tags and shadow boxes.  I haven't take pictures of all of them yet, but I do have some pictures of a shadow box, called a Configuration by the wildly popular Tim Holtz (I'm a fan!). 


I've done a couple of  these boxes in the last year and this is my latest one.  The boring part is covering the box, but once that's done I have so much fun creating the scene, or arranging the different pieces.  My sweet husband had the idea to use little skulls for feet!  You can see them peeking out at the bottom of the picture.  We found a little mesh bag of them at Michael's and they worked perfectly!  Here are a couple close ups.







I'll be taking pictures of the tags and the other little shadow box and I'll show you what other things I've been keeping busy with. 

As for my beading and wire and metal work, I'm working on the blog hop that Therese and Christine are hosting on the 25th of October, so you'll be seeing that and maybe some other things before the blog hop.  I never know what I'm going to decide to work on!  But, going back and forth keeps things interesting, I think.

I'll be back soon with pictures of other Halloween goodness!

6 comments:

  1. Hi Maryanne,
    Those are very pretty flowers. I enjoy Halloween too and that is a very cute Halloween art piece.
    Looking forward to seeing what you have done for the Challenge I just know it is going to be awesome just like you.
    Therese

    ReplyDelete
  2. Such beautiful flowers, love natures colours. Fall is my favourite season as well, but here it is all too short. Love your Halloween pieces.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad I am not the only one who loves black flowers. Dark Irises are my favorite, but any bold-colored flower is better to me than pastels.

    Your Configuration box is even more amazing in person. Your photo shows nothing of the scale of it, but I can attest that it's impressive. Looking forward to out art studio evening.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Maryanne! Gorgeous flowers and gorgeous shadow box!!! I love it. It's as impressive as the one you showed me last month!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your shadowbox is AMAZING!! I wish I had tat kind of skill and imagination with paper. I'm a HUGE fan of the scrapbooking aisle and always stop there for the Tim Holtz stuff. . but I use it all for jewelry-making. I love that you've made such a pretty decoration for Halloween with those supplies. I can't wait to see more!
    I do have a question about the tags though. I've been a fan on Tim's blog for a long time and he's always making tags. I know this sounds like a dumb question but, What is the point of the tags? Are they purely decorative art, something you display? Or is there some other secret paper-artist purpose? I've always just kinda wondered about the tags. They're cool and all, I just never knew if there was more. Sorry for the silly question.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love what you've done with the shadow box - it's so cool, and those little skulls are perfect for the feet - very clever husband! I so wish we had Michaels in the UK!
    Black flowers are among my favourites too - those little violas look stunning with the marigolds - I tend to grow them with in containers with grey foliage plants and white flowers, giving a rather monochrome look, but they really zing with that bright orange - I need to re-think the gardening now!

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear from you! Let me know you've been visiting.