I made this with my favorite Citra-Solv paper and some real dragonfly wings that I found while walking in the woods last summer.  Two wings were just lying on the path.  I have no idea what happened to the other two.  The wings are now encased in acrylic medium, so they should remain protected forever. 

You may be wondering why this is a swarm?  It is a swarm of memories.  Sometmes I find I'm overtaken by them.  Are memories real or not real?  They only exist in our heads.  It's a facinating question. 

Last week I managed to get my hands on some washi tape; Japanese masking tape.  It 's marvelous stuff!  It comes in many colours and patterns and is translucent.  I stuck to  solid colours to begin with, even though there are some lovely patterns available.  I've been experimenting with it by making some little gift tags.  I can tell I'm going to have to get some more because I always seem to want a colour that I don't have.  I've discovered that you can't draw on it with charcoal pencil.   Other than that, it's fairly straight forward fun and quite addictive.

The word for Illustration Friday this week is "layer", and this was just an invitation for me to play with my sweater paper again.  This sweater, which I scanned into my computer, is full of layers!  After staring at it for a while, it looked like a landscape with water and shore and trees.  Actually, if I stare at anything long enough it starts to look like a landscape. 
I've made this into a little ACEO.  So if you collect them, it's in my shop.

I have boxes and boxes of photos of my kids when they were little and I've always meant to turn them into paintings.  Well, this is the first.  The children weren't really pink and green...but I do think Christopher's hair was special.  This little painting is now in my shop!
My other news is that my All Buttoned Up piece will be published in Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine! Woot!  That's a first!
I can't remember which month, but  you can be sure I'll let you know.

When I saw that the Illustration Friday word this week was "sweater", I instantly thought of all the wonderful sweaters my Mom used to knit for my kids.  They have now been out grown and I will never be able to part with them but I'm not sure what to do with them.   I decided to put a couple of them into the scanner and make some sweater paper.  Then I had a complete artist block.  I finally came up with this little ACEO which I call sweater town.  Hopefully, now that I've done this one I can think of more things to do with my lovely sweater paper.
Since I spent an embarrassingly long time making this, I won't get it inot my store today...but hopefully tomorrow.

A few years ago I was an avid gardener.  I had a large perennial garden which I had created from scratch.  I spent a lot of time with my plants and when we had to move...well... let's just say, I was not happy.  Our new home was meant to be temporary and since I had invested 7 years building my last garden, I was not inclinding to start again.  Luckily, I still had my dog, who required walking every day.  I began to realize, as I walked and walked, that I did have a garden and it was everywhere.
So when I recently came accross this quote from  "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett it really resonated!  I love the idea that we create our own worlds out of our perceptions and thoughts.  Sometimes we have to loose things, in order to find them.
If you like this piece, it's now on sale in my shop: )

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Reverse is one of those words which at first seems so literal but then, when you think about it, so many things come to mind.  At first all I could think of was backing my car out of the driveway, but then I started to think about reversing patterns,  writing backwards, mirrors, time travel.  Oh My!  How could my first ideas have been so limited?  The idea which really stuck in my mind was that it is the element which is reversed, backward,  that goes against the current, that is often the most interesting.  So don't be afraid to take a step backwards.

This is an original ACEO, which will be on sale in my store in a day or so. Right now it's time for the Super Bowl!