Getting Ready for Spring!

Happy Monday! Well, actually it's already been pretty darn spring-like here in North Florida!  The weather's been beautiful!  I've been taking a break from jewelry design the past couple of months to play with book arts and art journaling, but it's time to spend some more time at my jewelry bench again (I finished this Springy beauty recently).  My first spring arts festival is just three weeks away! I don't usually start up again until late March, but this year, I finally have the opportunity to participate in the New Smyrna Beach 50th Annual Arts Fiesta. New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona, is a great arts town! Every year, I've looking longingly at this show, but up until this year, it's conflicted with our annual student government conference. This year, our SGA schedule changed and the Fiesta dates moved back a weekend to February 25-26, so I applied, and yippee, received my acceptance letter early last week.

Last night as I was trying to find a hotel room, a sneaky little piece of reality called the Daytona 500 smacked me upside the head.  It's the same weekend! Those of you in Florida or even remotely interested in NASCAR know what that means: about 200,000 people descending upon the Daytona area. I couldn't find a hotel room within a 100-mile radius for less than $200 a night! Thankfully a sweet art friend who lives in Port Orange, just a skip away from New Smyrna Beach, came to my rescue.  Now to get busy creating new work! 

The Impact of Your Words...and a Passing Moment

I've been a writer for as long as I can remember. When I was in middle school and high school, I wrote long letters to myself as well as poetry filled with the typical pre teen and teenage angst. I had dairies full of those words, though I have no idea what happened to them through my moves. I don't write many long, "deep thoughts," type of posts here on my blog, but I have been moved to share a few. I guess the two that have been the most revealing and most moving have been my post about losing my mother and what I've learned from it and my post about Franklin Fung Chow.

I shared with you before the holidays that Franklin passed away, and since that time, several of his friends have reached out to me, having found my story about him here on my blog. Today I received a letter that left me standing in my kitchen with tears running down my face. They were sad tears from the reminder of the loss of Franklin, but they were also happy tears to learn just how much my words touched both him and his friends. This letter was from Lois, Franklin's next door neighbor of 30 years:

"Dear Ms. Warren,

I'm sorry to tell you that Franklin Chow passed away in November. He had been ill since July 2010, and in January 2011 moved to the San Francisco Bay area to be near family. Franklin and I were neighbors for 30 plus years. I was one of the friends who worked on cleaning out his apartment preparing to be sold. In all of the stuff he had, and Franklin was a bit of a pack rat, I found and read your letter. I was very moved by the letter. It is such an accurate description of my old friend and is so beautifully written.

On January 8, we had a memorial service at the church where Franklin had been a member since coming to D.C. I read your letter at that service. As I read, I would glance out at the assembled group. There I saw smiling faces and nods of agreement as others recognized the friend they knew in your lovely description. Afterwards a lot of people spoke with me about your letter; some even asked for a copy. I've given the original letter with the photograph and the drawings done by your daughters to Franklin's brother Roger. I've kept a copy for myself and shared copies with others. I consider finding your letter amongst all the other stuff in Franklin's apartment to be a miracle.

I'm enclosing a program from the memorial service. Thank you for writing such a beautiful letter. It touched a lot of hearts the way Franklin had touched yours."

When you send your words out into the world, you often never know the effect they will have on others. I know that my family received a rare blessing that day we met Franklin, and even in just a brief exchange, he made a huge, lasting impact on my life. I'm very grateful and very touched that, just as I've kept the things he gave us (still in that little pouch in my purse), he kept the letter and things I sent him as thanks, and they've lived on to touch the hearts of his friends and family.

When I thought about including one of my photos with this post, this is the first one that popped in my head. I'm not exactly sure why. I think that maybe it's the simplicity and openness of Olivia's little hands holding out those flower buds, like sharing a small little gift from the heart, just as Franklin did with us.  You can read my original letter to Franklin here.  Thank you again, Franklin Fung Chow, for blessing my life.  I know you are looking down on us from Heaven above, smiling that same sweet smile you had as an angel on earth.

Project 365: January 25-31

January 25: Took the girlies to Chick-fil-A for dinner. Have you ever noticed the pretty yellow flowers on all the tables?

January 26: My yard is currently in need of some work, but it is producing some nice sweet dandelions. Does this one remind any one other than me of Horton and Whoville?

January 27: Sarah taking a twirl in the back yard. I love the movement in this shot. :-)

January 28: We went to Gainesville this weekend to visit my former student and sweet friend/adopted daughter Courtney (I have quite a few adopted daughters!). While there, we visited the Florida Museum of Natural History and its beautiful butterfly garden. This particular beauty was rather attracted to Sarah's bright purple shoes and hot pink laces. It crawled all over her foot, and she eventually had to swing her leg to get it off of her. It was rather attached!

January 29: Another shot from our weekend visit to Gainesville, this one of a pretty little camelia in Livvie's hand. This is at the Dudley Farm, a great little place to visit!

January 30: We pass by this cow pasture on the way to taking the girls to school every morning. Some of the cows are more interested in having their photo taken than others! When we pulled up to the fence, there were three black cows right along the fence, but they took off right as we pulled up. This brown gal, however, gave us a nice pose. The sky was really hazy so I added one of Kim Klassen's wonderful textures to this shot.

January 31: Sarah and Olivia participated in the 2nd and 3rd grade music program tonight! Their class did a skit that included a salute to Steve Irwin. I love this little sideways glance Sarah gave me.

That's it for the week!  Click here to view other Project 365 posts.

Sketchbook Project Fun Journal: Day 20 ~ The End!

Well, here it is....my final page in the long-suffering Sketchbook Project Fun Journal. As a reminder, I started working in this journal waaaaaaaaaaay back in December of 2010, with the goal of doing a page a day in time to finish and actually submit it to the Sketchbook Project by the January 2011 deadline. Oh well. Such is life. I realized now that it's done, I'd have a hard time setting it free anyway! I have a few empty pages at the end where I'm going to write some notes on what I learned over the 20 pages.

On this page, the bottom half is actually a painted and inked up scrap of deli paper.  I used deli paper as my palette paper or just the paper below whatever I'm working on to protect my table.  I save most of them because they end up with such juicy color on them.  Below is a slide show of the whole book. You can definitely see a difference between my early pages and my later pages!

Art Journal Play

I've been making some long-stitch sewn books using Arches Text Wove 100% cotton rag paper for the signatures and decided that before I made too many using this paper, I better see how well the paper holds up to wet media. I'd say rather well!

This was a scrap piece of the paper left over from making my signatures.  I used Adirondack color wash spray inks, acrylic paint, pigment stamp ink, and Dr. Martin's acrylic ink (the yellow), and the paper seemed to hold up rather well.  I don't think it's heavy enough to use for a book cover--I'm using inked and painted watercolor paper for those--but it looks like it'll work great for the signatures.  I'll share some photos of the books with you as soon as I get around to photographing them!  Lately, I've just been sewing them, taking out the sewing, and then sewing them again just to get the stitch pattern ingrained in my brain.  As I was cutting one set of stitches out last night, Sarah came running over and yelled, "Mama!  What are you doing!? Why are you ruining you book!?"  All in the learning process, my dear!

Project 365: January 18-24

January 18: Sunrise over Heckscher Drive at Brown's Creek, taken from the parking lot of Chowder Ted's (in my pajamas...)

January 19: Power lines on Heckscher Drive at Blount Island entrance. I am very often stopped at this spot due to train crossings...which are an ongoing joke on my Facebook page.

January 20: We had a lovely day playing in the backyard...Olivia...

January 20 bonus shot: ...and Sarah

January 21: I had a book arts group meeting at the Island Art Association in Fernandina Saturday. This is a piece of the mosaic wall on the side of the gallery. The Island Art Association gallery is a must visit!

January 22: This is my "Mama needs a break to go sit and think and breathe" spot, right where Fort George Inlet reaches the Atlantic Ocean. It's thankfully only eight minutes from my house!

January 23: The tree from which last week's red heart leaf fell from. Even in the midst of changing colors and shedding its leaves, it's already shooting out new buds.

January 24: Did a little scouting with a friend during lunch today. I knew I needed a "big guy" to go with me, since this building, Public School No. 4, also known as the Annie Lytle School, can be a bit spooky and inhabited by things you might not want to come across, so I asked my friend and student Chris Lamm to go with me and give me a guided tour (knowing Chris as well as I do, I knew he'd probably been in many times...probably at night...). We couldn't get in since it was just freshly boarded up after the fire last week, and I was not appropriately dressed to do some climbing, but we're making a second attempt soon... Because as my photo below captures so well...

And no, Chris, I'm still not going  in the basement... :-)  Here's a little history on P.S. 4. I've been wanting to investigate for years (so yes, you are correct, I am not above trespassing in a creepy, haunted, old abandoned building in the name of a good photograph).

Thanks for checking out this week's shots! Click here for other Project 365 photos.

Sketchbook Project Fun Journal: Day 19

Happy Monday! One more page in my Sketchbook Project Fun Journal. The center rectangle of this is actually a baby wipe.  I use baby wipes to wipe my hands and stencils and such when I'm playing with other projects and straighten them out and save them if they have some pretty color in them. Funny that you can see the little bear face imprint just a little right of center!  I learned with this page though that the baby wipes are difficult to write on, so I kept it short and sweet, using a Sharpie paint pen. Before adding the baby wipe, I just smeared some paint around on the spread and then after gluing down the baby wipe, added some stenciling and some flower punches and some outlining.

We had a nice weekend around here. I had Friday off with the girls, so we played most of the day.  Saturday morning, I headed up to Fernandina to meet with my book arts group.  We practiced more long stitch patterns and worked on coptic a little more. I'm definitely hooked!  Sunday, we loaded the bikes on the back of the Trooper and headed over to the park to ride.  The girls took their first spin around the skate park and did very well!  I can't believe I didn't have my camera with me!  Next weekend...