Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Spring Now, Please!

You know you have cabin fever when ice fishing sounds remotely entertaining!
I have cabin fever, and no I don't care how bad it gets I refuse to go ice fishing; I will go insane first!
Ah, that feels better....

It's been a long cold winter here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
and I think I am in need of some spring.
Since spring will not be coming here any time soon,

I decided to share some of my spring themed creations I have been stockpiling.
I was going to wait until early spring and unveil them on my Etsy store and Lollishops but I can't wait, any little glimpse of spring I can get.... I'll take.

These first two pieces were inspired by a poem I wrote called Robin's Nest,

Here is the poem.

and here are the pieces it has inspired.
( click on picture for larger view)

Spring Garland

A mixed media assemblage comprised of paper clay, wood, twig, yarn, ribbon,

hand painted, fabric, beads, buttons....you name it's in there.

I really like this piece, it even has the first stanza from the poem on it.







This piece made me think back to when I was a kid and we would vacation in Traverse City, Michigan and visit our Grandma Grace.
She lived along the west shore of Grand Traverse Bay.

I would spend hours on the shore line collecting small pieces of drift wood, pebbles, shells and whatever else I could find to make picture collages.
Gracie and my Mom would give me pieces of scrap cardboard and Elmer's glue.
I was in heaven and so were Mom and Grace;
now they could play cards without interruption... for a little while anyway.

I guess this is what started my love for mixed media and collage.
I have always admired the works of others, but never considered this a creative outlet for myself as an adult until recently.


Thanks Mom, thanks Gracie...




This next piece I created when I was invited to participate in a show called "My House"
that was hosted by Three Pines Gallery in Cross Village, Michigan last spring.

The show was inspired by Sarah Fishburn's book "In This House"
which you can check out here at Sarah's site http://www.sarahfishburn.com/

Sarah is an amazing artist and her website is bursting with beautiful art,
information and inspiration. It is well worth the trip!


This is the piece on its base, the house wraps around the tree that holds Robin's Nest.
I am not going to go into great detail about this piece because I want to dedicate a blog post
to it in the near future, so here are just a few pic's for now.





This is the base alone,



and this is a view of the house's exterior.


and a gallery shot.




Moving right along,
what would a glimpse of spring be without blooms.
Here are few that are new to the garden at Blooming Ideas.

When I first sculpted this flower my intent was to create four different blooms and use them to decorate a round mirror frame, which I still plan on doing.

But, when I gave the bloom to my husband to make a mold for me he asked if I was making more tassels/ornaments and I thought hey that would be cool too!

So here are the first few blooms fresh off the vine,


So springy, I am addicted to making these.
We will be adding these to our product line in March!

Well I am off to make some more Bodda Blooms (bodacious)....
I hope these images of spring brightened your day,
I know they did mine.

Mary



2 comments:

Cindy said...

Boda Blooms are cute! And ice fishing...agree with ya there...nu uh. LOL.

c

Mary Wadsworth said...

Thanks Cindy.