Monday, February 25, 2008

Gift From the Sea Retreat at the Center

Saturday morning a few of us hiked in the woods and were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny day! Lois, who led the retreat, pointed out some animal tracks on the way...racoon, deer, and maybe a tiny mouse's little tracks on top of the snow. We heard birds high up in the trees and spotted two Red-headed Woodpeckers. We followed the path through the many kinds of Oaks and maple trees and ended up at a creek and a lake. Then we returned to the Lodge where the retreat was held.

During the day and previous eveing, Lois led the readings from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book and I led the book project with colorful pages cut and all ready to use. We worked on decorating the pages, with very subtle pastels. It's nice to prepare the pages with some color or decoration before writing anything...it just helps not to be intimidated by the blank page! Lois also had some shell rubber stamps and some brought things from home to use. After some of the "regular" attendees started writing some of the inspirational quotes and coming up with some creative ideas to add to the pages, it helped encourage others to find new things to put into their books. I also had a sheet of creative lettering for them to experiment with.

At the end, we drilled holes through the cover and pages of the book and did the stab binding with decorative threads and added various colored threads to finish them off. Shells and other embellishments were added too. We all sat together and shared our pages with the group which is so interesting as they were all unique with the different colors used, the way the pages were decorated, and the writing and the embellishments that were added inside.


Walking back to the Center

The Creek in the woods


Snow Mushroom


Lois called this a "snow mushroom" where the sun melted the snow around the bottom and left a little mushroom shaped "roof' at the top.

Lois thought these were possibly little mouse tracks in the snow...these were so cute!


The little tulle net bags contain shells and beach glass for the participants with the hand lettered tags and name cards colored with paste paper

Judy's book with pastels on cover with shells

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Dried leaves

I found these Pointsetta leaves and had to take a picture. Thought they looked so neat in a circle

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Beautiful Window


Beginning Stages of a Painting

This is a painting of a window at a store in Michigan I had taken a picture of. I'll upload the photo next.

Something I'm working on...

I still have words to add to the right side of the flowers. I special poem that I was commissioned to do.