Bumble-Boo Handmades

There is a fresh new shop on etsy that i suggest you visit: Bumble Boo Handmades. You will love the dear buttons, the book marks, and now the prints, of this very talented artist's original illustrations.

Her penwork is exquisite and her subjects are designed with a sensitivity and detail that proclaim an enormous natural talent when you consider that she is still a struggling student at art college. She manages to harmonize contrasting yellows and blues, reds and greens, in her beautiful watercolor and guache illustrations, available as professional prints. The images on her little pins are perfectly composed little vignettes, that are often very sweet, but seem to have a hint of humor, too.

You are invited to take a walk through Bumble-Boo's growing gallery and enjoy, and of course, keep your Christmas list in mind. One of the most humane things you can do is support the arts and buy homemade!

Book in Hand

So much fun to make a book. My alphabet book is hot off the presses. Here is the C/D spread--our Dog, keeping an eye on our Cats. As i said, the subjects are all to do with my family and where we live, to make this book personal to my preschool nieces living far,far away from us. And i even enjoyed taking all the photos of letters from local signs and such.

Howdy, Boehner!

I know nothing about the men. I just saw an uncanny resemblance.

New Beads. Blue Beads.

Nice new set of Indigo Roswell beads. And some Xmas sock monkeys.

Sweater Time

I love fall because i love wool sweaters. I have nothing in my closet like these hoodies by Enlightened Platypus on etsy, and i would never wear a sweater like this, but i can sure enjoy looking at them. They are constructed using recycled wool sweaters. Many other color combinations are shown in their shop, deserving of a peek.

Braided Tree

Check out this nice little tree. It is a green walnut that we had to chop down because it was dropping big dead branches onto the neighbour's truck. A number of suckers emerged from the stump and i braided three of them. This was maybe three or four years ago now. It's a perfectly shaped little tree right now, but i hope i'm around when it is twice as big so that i can see how this trunk turns out.

I'm quite pleased with the popularity of the minty Frosty snowman beads and zipper pulls, but i've run out of white glass. The shipment should come in on Tuesday, so in the meantime i'm trying to come up with some other, non-white, seasonal beads. I like Rudolph, but it took me too long to make--i don't seem to have the patience for half-hour beads.

alphabet book

I love the idea of making books. I do enjoy writing, but managing images seems easier and more pleasurable somehow. I've illustrated a kids book and made a bead calendar, and now i'm making an alphabet book.

It is expressly for my two preschool nieces in Canada. All of the letter images are my photos. That's been neat because i look at my collection of isolated letters and know exactly which local signs they came from. Today i'm trying to get all of the photos of the words that my letters represent. Since the nieces are in Canada, and we are down here in the southwestern states, i'm trying to use images that reflect how and where we live. It's meant to be quite personal, so for instance "S" will be a photo of their cousin Henry on his skateboard, since that is his passion. And "D" will be a photo of our dog. It's a lot of work, but the final product should be pretty darn cool.

I'm using shutterfly.com, a site i've used before and been very happy with the results. Hint: if you sign up with them, they will soon try to entice you to make a book project by offering you nice discounts. :-)

Mint Brothers

The fresh, minty, cool snowman triumvirate: Wintergreen, Candy Cane, Peppermint. Get yours today! I'm selling the beads loosely and will also be selling them pre-made as zipper pulls, eventually.