a little lime

My school holidays officially end tomorrow. I am back at school on Tuesday and I still have to work out menus for the term. Urrrgh! I have had a super-busy, but really, really wonderful break - the timing was perfect for our summer garden produce so I've been doing lots of preserving. I've also been experimenting with some more involved cheese-making and finally built up to making a hard cheese yesterday - my first cheddar is curing on the bench. Too bad I don't get to taste it for a couple of months. I saw this amazing quilled portrait on Pinterest yesterday. I particularly loved the scroll-y smoke streams, the little teardrop shapes, the circles, the EVERYTHING! Here's the drawing it inspired: I went mostly freeform and just kept building from the middle. I didn't worry about my colouring too much (don't look too close!), if I went out of the line, I just drew another line and filled it with a different colour to camouflage. Probably why some of the...

This weeks diva challenge was to draw inspiration from star shapes. Even though I don't draw stars a lot, I had fun with this one. So, here's the background story. Occasionally......ah....sometimes......o.k., o.k........a lot of the time I get locked into an idea and I can't just leave it alone. I don't know why I'm drawn to it or what the end result will be. This week I could not move past the idea of a connected 5 pronged star pattern. This was what I was doing or nothin'. And, ya know what I found out? 5 sided things are not so easy to work with so there was some frustrated hair-pulling along the way. Here's the end result: Can you see the stars? I actually loved the negative pattern created and chose to highlight that. I loved the way it varied from 3 to 4 petal flowers seemingly randomly - maybe if I drew a bigger sample I could see some consistency in how this happened. I've been playing with a fun curly bracket pattern and will (hop...

preserving, cooking, milking, catering for 70 at a family event afternoon tea on Sunday. Ah, the holidays......so......um......relaxing. This weeks challenge was a little hard for me to get into so I just did a quick one using on one of my favourite techniques. Suspended frames laced together. Side elevation. Should have shaded the top image more to give the appearance of each frame dropping further back, but, ah well. Maybe later. hx

Daylight savings ended today, so now begins the slow, inexorable slide into winter. I hate winter....the cold, the mud, the constant cycle of bringing in wood for the heater. Urrgh! But, I do love the food - lots of slow cooked meals and puddings. Oh, yeah! Paisley Mooka: This one has been in the works for a few days. When I do a heap of paisley together like this I find it's always a struggle to think of something different to put on each one. The shading was a hassle - it was done after I completed the drawing and is a bit inconsistent as a result. Next time I would shade the outline first before filling with pattern. Pretty sure I have told myself that before........but I forgot.....again!  Hope you're having a fabulous weekend! hx