Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all my friends who celebrate it, and happy Spring to everyone else! We are ready for Spring here. There was actually some snow yesterday, but it all melted and Mr Right had to do the season's first lawn-mowing today. Such is Colorado in April!

Juxtaposition

Imagine my pleasure the other day when I walked into Michael's and saw my "Draw Baby Animals" book next to my dear friend Barbara Lanza's "Enchanting Elves" book! I wish we could have been standing side by side ourselves, but our books will have to act as stand-ins. It is very hard to get books placed in Michaels and Hobby Lobby (my book is there too). This is the first of my four books to make it there!

Underwater Astronaut

Today was a very exciting day in Margaret's WAVE training. They were taken to the Scuba center to do the underwater training like real astronauts. Margaret had never tried Scuba diving, so she was very excited!

Here is Margaret's team: Kyle, Margaret, Mary, and John. They had to design some constructions that could be made with PVC pipe and then assemble them underwater. This taught them some very good teamwork skills, because you can't talk to each other down there! WAVE teaches the kids lots of skills that will be useful their whole lives: problem solving, teamwork, and leadership, as well as things like using the scientific method, etc.

The Scuba instructor, Gerry, gave them instructions beforehand. Margaret loved being able to breathe underwater, although all the kids had trouble with the pressure in their ears.

This picture is a little hard to see. They had a viewer that the parents could put in the water and look through to see what the kids were doing. I stuck the camera in there to take this photo. That's Margaret with the green scuba tank, and I think the other swimmer is Kyle. They managed to get their constructions together, although it took longer than the allotted time because the pipes kept separating. However, they were the last team in the water, so the teacher gave them extra time to finish because nobody else was waiting for a turn. Many thanks to Mr Peterson and Webber Middle School for setting up such a great program!

A Great Day

Yesterday I felt like such a lucky girl. I got to go to Boulder and spend the whole afternoon with two wonderful, creative ladies: Sharyn Sowell and Leslie Ann Clark. I was so excited when Sharyn told me she was coming for a visit!

We went to the Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse for lunch. Here is Sharyn, coming out with a full tummy! The teahouse is built in the traditional Tajikistan fashion. The parts were shipped over, and Tajik artisans came and put it all together. The tiles and painted ceiling are beautiful.

The food is beautiful too! This is what I had: Tajik Plov. It was delicious. I am trying to figure out how I can make it at home. Sharyn had a lamb kebab, and Les had stuffed grape leaves. Sharyn said it was some of the best restaurant food she had ever eaten, so I was so glad I had picked a good place!

Don't we look happy?

We spent the rest of the day on Pearl Street, wandering in and out of the cute boutiques and talking, talking, talking! What a great day.

Samples Galore

I think our postman must have had very sore arms by the end of this week; every day he brought me big boxes of samples! Oh dear, what will I do with them all? I donated a lot of the kitten themed things to the local cat rescue, for their fundraising auction, but the day after I did that, another box of kitten flags arrived!

I'll start with a couple of floor mats from Carson Gift. I visited with them at the Atlanta show, and they are so very nice! There are garden flags that match these rugs as well. I put this one in the kitchen. Thank goodness Mr Right doesn't object to having cute things scattered around!

Here is a very Spring-like kitten image garden flag, also from Carson. They have quite a kitten collection of my work!

I also got lots more coasters! These are from Legacy. These are the twelve images that are on my calendar I did for them, and they decided to make these nice coasters as well.

This floor mat is from Evergreen Enterprises. This is one of my favorite paintings. There is a matching garden flag from Evergreen, and it is also available as a puzzle from Karmin.

Here are just a few of the flags I did for Evergreen. I still need to take photos of the others. It is fun to see evidence of my hard work! It makes me feel like I have proof that even though I feel like I am playing in the studio some days, I actually am achieving something! Back to the drawing board for me now; I am working of fabric designs this week, as well as a new puzzle. Variety is the spice of my life!

Linkies

Gosh, I'm having a dickens of a time posting the links to everyone in the blog hop! I'm not sure why blogspot is being so stubborn. So I'm going to direct you to Brenda Pinnick's blog: http://www.brendapinnick.com/blog/. She has the entire list of participants. This was all wonderful Brenda's idea, and I'm so glad she came up with it! Lots of cool people have posted their inspirations, so make sure you check them out!

Sweet Inspirations

Today's post is about artistic inspiration, so I thought it would be appropriate to feature an image from my Sweet Inspirations line, which is available as wall art from Old World Prints, and as coasters from Highland Graphics. This is part of an inspiration blog-hop, so tomorrow I will try to post links to all the other blogs participating. I have never done a blog hop before, so I hope I do the links right!

I have posted before about how much I like the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady books by Edith Holden. I like both the delicacy and flow of her watercolors, and also the concept of this gentle lady keeping such beautiful sketchbooks of her surroundings. Look at the way the flower tendrils twine around the page. Isn't that pretty?

So I very much wanted to do a sketchbook themed collection. I think my art is not quite as graceful as Edith's, but I like the delicacy and vintage look that I achieved. That is the point of being inspired by another artist; what qualities can I include to make my own work better? What can I learn from a piece I admire? How can I apply those techniques or color palettes to my own vision? As an artist, every day for me is a learning process. I love the visual stimulation of going to shows. There are always artists and work that I admire, and that gives me the impetus to keep growing and developing in my own work. Every day there is something new and exciting to try and discover!