Hearts Can Be Art...

Vintage photos- always a fan! When a friend posted some family photos recently, I was quite taken with them. This is her grandmother, married at 15 and then following her life's work as a mother and a baker in an Italian bakery. I thought the pose was so graceful and serene, and the photo very expressive. So I printed out a copy and made this Valentine gift to send her. A little lace, some pearls and other embellishments and this mixed media project came together nicely. Size-wise it can be hung on a door knob or drawer pull as a decorative accent. 

Another friend in a local sewing group shared her family photos, too. This portrait of her grandmother was so strikingly artistic. Quite often the people in old photos are staring fixedly at the camera with stoic looks on their faces. But this one looks as if it could have come from a modern-day photo shoot for someone's Instagram page! I thought it was uncommonly pretty, so again made a copy and put together this tag. Those rosy pearls are also a family treasure so I included part of the strand with all the lace and trims. These photo projects are such fun to make and a way to pay tribute to people from the past.

 And in a more current trend, this post card is one of several I made in Alisa Burke's online class titled Graffiti Love. We learned to play with paint layers and messy, expressive lettering and symbols in our art projects. There are ten affordable lessons in the class, and it's another source of mixed media learning and fun! I've just scratched the surface with this one. 

Green Acres is the Place To Be....

 

Farm livin' is the life for me. I had to hum that song from the old Green Acres tv series while making this peaceful quilt. The center is a beautiful painted image digitally printed on fabric. And the surrounding border blocks are the ones I made from scraps. I have stacks of those blocks, which I learned are called Switch Plate blocks. An apt name. Having them on hand makes putting together a quick quilt like this one quite easy. The only thing I needed was to piece square units for the corners. I showed another Cowboy panel quilt quickly made with similar blocks here. My husband Jack has claimed this pastoral quilt to hang in our home because it reminds him of our horse farm. We don't have big red barns here in Florida, but we do have green pastures and contented animals.

Here's one of those contented animals. Other than horses, our critters are rescues that have found their way here one way or another. This is Scooter. He arrived at our barn one October morning over a decade ago. Shivering and full of fleas, he melted our hearts. The vet estimated his age at the time to be only about 12 weeks old. So I'm not sure where he came from, or how, but we just love our Scooter. He has enough mixed breeds in him that we just call him a Florida Brown. What would be your best guess at his dominant breed? Would it surprise you to know that his DNA test results showed Weimaraner? It did surprise us!

Iggy, the Silver Tuxedo cat arrived after running out in front of our daughter's car on her way to work. She took him home and secured him for the day, but knew her two cats would not welcome a kitten. So we took him in. I shared his story and "baby pictures" in this post. 

Freckles the Quarter Horse is the one horse we have now. After Jack broke his hip in a fall two years ago (not horse-related he is quick to point out), we were unsure if he'd be able to ride again. The good news is that he is able to, and Freckles gets ridden nearly every day. Part of Freckles' mission has been to take part in competitions with the University of Florida Western Equestrian team. Student teams from several colleges draw for the horses they will ride in each class. The horses are loaned to the home team by various supportive horse people. The students love to draw Freckles as their ride, and he's been a popular guy. He's retired from that now that he's aging.

But he's still up for his daily rides in the paddocks at our farm.

Another resident of Oak View Farm is Abby. Abby came home with Jack from her mis-adventures as a drop off near the Interstate. Very thin, young, and needing some TLC, she's been here for nearly 10 years now. From time to time we discuss whether we need to down-size from our 10 acre farm as we grow older. But this crew is a big part of our consideration, and they love it here! So we all agree- we'll stay for now.