Thoughtful Friday 172

"In bleak and difficult times

you must always keep

something beautiful in your heart"

Pascal

Thoughtful Wednesday

"The great thing in this world is not so much 

where we stand, as in 

what direction we are moving."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thoughtful Friday 171

"I want to beg you, as much as I can, 

to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart 

and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms 

and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. 

Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you 

because you would not be able to live them. 

And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. 

Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, 

live along some distant day into the answer.


Resolve to be always beginning—to be a beginner!"

From Rainer Maria Rilke's   Letters on Love

Thoughtful Friday 170

"Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; 

the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul."

Democritus

Thoughful Friday 169

“To live content with small means.... To seek elegance rather than luxury, 

and refinement rather than fashion.... 

To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich....

 To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly....

 To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart.... 

To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, 

hurry never....

 In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, 

grow up through the common....
...........

this is to be my symphony.”



William Henry Channing

Art Fun

Saturday afternoon with daughter no.1 painting, and painting and making books!  

Index Card A Day June/July 2012

Tammy at Daisy Yellow is having another Index Card A Day challenge over the months of June and July and I loved this the last time so really wanted to be part again.  I am a little late in posting so here are lots altogether.  It's a great chance to try all sorts of different techniques and thoughts - usually done at the end of the day quite quickly and sometimes more than one at a time!

Encouraged by one of the prompts on Tammy's site  I went for green, trying all the different greens I had in pastels, pencils and crayons.  I also had a go at the Union Jack (another prompt on July 4th!).

Some inky blobs here and some oil pastel circles, a little 'create' in the genre of Traci Bautista

Lots of pastels here

 Pan pastels, washi tape and some doodling

Some acrylic credit card swiped backgrounds

Lots of fun - thank you Tammy.

Thoughtful Friday 168

"Nobody has ever measured,

not even poets,

how much a heart can hold."

Zella Fitzgerald

Little things

I've been looking longingly at Becky Shander's article in Somerset Life and wanting to try my hand at producing a little fabric book necklace and this weekend I had a go.

Wanting to display them on a different background meant I gained a visitor who thought I had got it just for him!

and I experimented with a few more lace colours and words like, Hope, Joy, Peace and Love.
These little books are made with lace folded over with some dryer sheets or muslin/gauzy fabric inside.  Little words hand stamped on other bits of material form the front with the addtion of some pearls, rhine stones and on one (and on Becky's original) a rusty safety pin holds it all together.  Then a piece of string sewn in at the top provides the chain - such a lovely idea.  One of these is going off to a friend tomorrow.

And all the time I had company with me of course!

I love Becky's work and hope you get a chance to pop over there and look too!

Thoughtful Friday 167

“We need, in love, to practice only this:

 letting each other go. 

For holding on comes easily;

 we do not need to learn it.” 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Thoughtful Friday 166

"Overcome the notion that you must be regular.

It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary"

Uta Hagen