Connections

Life inspires art. When in an artistic slump, my best advice is look around you for some handy inspiration. After the wicked tulips arrangement for my table, I remembered the wonderful crow, pumpkin, and sunflower candlesticks, so out they came. Staring at them over breakfast, I decided they would make cool beads. So I made some. I call them Harvest Totems.

When I didn't have much time for glass this week, I decided to act upon an article I had read in the latest issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors about stitched paintings. The article was by Kelli Perkins, so I had to go check out her blog, Ephemeral Alchemy . Then I got some small watercolor paper trimmings out and a set of black markers. The first try was sitting in front of this blog, sketching from the palm silhouette photo from Hawaii. I took artistic license with the watercolors.


No stitching yet, but it was so fun that I had to do another. This time I tried the rose carved pumpkin also shown here in a recent post, and blended it with the Harvest Totem bead concept to add a crow perched on top. I had given no thought to the background before diving in, so that took a little brainstorming. Once I had the idea of the full moon, I had to include the Japanese rabbit in the moon. This thing is just snowballing. Now, what can I do next????? Maybe I'd better try the stitching part.