My garden roses

In the studio today, I was admiring photos of the roses that bloomed in my garden this season. Although I have a mixture of English and American roses, I tend to love the English ones for their strong, intoxicating scent. They almost resemble a Peony. Maybe that is why I liked them, I use to have a luscious peony garden but unfortunately a hired a few men that didn't know much about gardening to help me around the place, and when I came home, I found they pulled them all out, boy was I mad.  They have lived in my garden for over 12 years, the peonies, not the men, I can tell you that!

  

                                                                       Like a pretty doll wearing a gown
                                                                                        of pretty petals.
       

 This yellow American rose I bought at Shoprite for 9.99. It didn't do so well in my garden, this was probably the only nice bloom I got all season.

  

               

 They smell heavenly especially when the windows are open.

                                  Beach roses smell very nicely as well.

            I will keep watering them and admiring them till they bloom no more...

The last song of the Cicadas

The sail of the Hummingbirds

The cicadas are certainly pretty loud this morning, making one feel, its in the middle of July, but in fact, its almost mid September, the sad end of summer. I know the pretty birds from the southern countries are flying back home very shortly. I enjoyed them so much this summer, I looked forward to coming home after a long day on the job, to sit by the pool and admire my flowers or when a hummingbird would appear. Some of them would fly right up to me, and stay there, gracefully flapping their wings with a kind, thank you for having them over for sugar water all summer.

I painted this old hummingbird feeder with red oil paint to attract them since my pine trees are so overgrown these days. I thought, will they see it? Do they just scent it? 

It really does work! 4 cups of water, and 1 cup of sugar. Boil and then pour into the feeder. At first I worried they wouldn't come and I tinted the water with red food coloring. But I found even without the food coloring, they still come.

So as sad as it sounds, I realize summer is coming to an end. But not yet..no I still have another few three weeks to pretend its still summer. All the bakery girls are closing their pools. I don't want to close mine.

Especially when my flowers are still in bloom

Not only did I come and enjoy the pool garden at the end of the day, on my days off there was no other place I would rather be, then to take my paints and sit under the shade of the umbrella and paint. It is such a relaxing way to spend the day.

But I had a lot of visitors this summer. 

The benefits of living in the country.

He stayed all summer.

Like my niece use to say when she was a little girl, 

"can I come back tomorrow?"

Pretty soon fall will be approaching.

A message from the past

Way back when, I wanted to be a writer. Now that's a real idiotic remark, because I AM a writer. It's strange how some clique's stick, when you are suppose to be published to be considered a writer, yet, if a person paints a painting, they are known as an artist, whether or not you sold a painting. I have to stop myself saying that I am not a writer, because I do write!!!
  I use to write a lot more in my younger years, especially the days when I stood ashore while my husband was out to sea. I had befriended a real strange girl like me, that also was into writing. How fabulous it was, to meet someone which you had something in common. I always felt like a fish out of water in this sector of New Jersey, because creative inspiration was hard to find. Since the town of Red Bank became the rage, it brought a lot of more creative people into town, that has been swell. But back in 1992, one morning, I received a letter in the mail, from Bonnie on an idea for a story. It had been a few years since I written anything, since my art work took up so much of my time, and suddenly, ZAP I was writing again. Just reading a page from her, prompted me back into writing. It was a relationship that lasted years and little strange stories which we mailed to each other using the postal service.  It was fun times.
  As the years passed, we got out of touch. She moved and married a high school sweetheart and I also got divorced, and went to another direction. Then one day, I just happen to be cleaning out a spare bedroom, and I came across all her letters. I had to count back in time and realized it had been since 2004 the last time we had contact, and I had a spontaneous thought, I wonder how my old writing buddy is. I had wrote her a letter, hoping she still had the same address, and a week later, I was thrilled, she still lived there, and wrote me back, saying how much she missed my letters and stories, and I missed hers too. She had enclosed her latest version of a new story.  And that was all it took, suddenly I was writing again.... 
  It is always so pleasant to get one of her posts in the mail.

Fun with PicMonkey

So it seems if you frequent Pinterest as much as I do, you'd see there is so many pins on quotes. Of course everyone loves Ecards. There are some real good ones, such as:

                                              

I really love them.  Some make you think, and others make you laugh. Sometimes it really does help when you're going through a crisis to laugh at yourself, which isn't always easy to do, that's for sure. Another great lover of mine is PicMonkey. Some days when it's so cold out, and you really don't want to go out, I spent just a little time chilling on making up saying on Pic Monkey. It really does make you sit back and forget your troubles, for a little while anyway.  There was a few things I was going through at the moment, and decided what better way to vent then to make something nice out of it. It really does make you think when you read them back and see maybe the point you want to make does make sense.

Hey, not everyone gets along the best all the time.  This is one I made up, because obviously I was really annoyed at someone in particular..hee

You know what I can't stand more then anything? Is when someone that has moved out, leave their junk! I mean, come on..am I a storage unit? It's getting a little ridiculous now when I think of how many times I have done this, had to spend days, weeks getting rid of stuff 'some people' leave in your house, and sometimes outside your house, etc etc!!!

 Please, if you're leaving, take the stuff with you,

Love, Me

Homemade Butterfly Soaps

                             Shea Butter Butterfly Soaps

I have always been a fan of Shea butter since my first sample of Frederic Fekkai Shea Butter Shampoo. I love the feeling of Shea butter, it is silky smooth and makes your hair flow like it was just dunked in a pristine lake. This past weekend I was tarrying around some antique shops down in Pt. Pleasant, New Jersey and came across the most loveliest shop, that was stacked with all these yummy smelling soaps. Since I am into candle making, I thought, why not try making my own soaps? I knew that instant that I wanted to make something with Shea butter and since my local craft shop, AC Moore had Shea butter milled soap block and using a 55% coupon, I was in luck.
    Today, I decided it was time to give soap making a try. After reading up on soap making online and a few tutorials on Pinterest, I decided to make it my own, with Shea butter, with lemon oatmeal for some added pizzaz.

First you will need:

*A huge block of Shea Butter milled soap ( the rest to use for other projects)

*the zest of 1lemon

*A pretty mold

*Instant Oats
* essential oils

                                           

Of course as a crafty person, you wind up collecting different materials here and there. I had this sweet butterfly mold from Hobby Lobby that I thought would make an adorable soap. My ideas were flowing, of pastel and shabby chic colorants, and packaging could really be sweet, but for now, I just wanted to get my hands dirty. Be careful not to use any dish ware you want to eat on later, for
you must keep this separate. I found an old dish with a chip I no longer use in the kitchen for this project.

This was my first attempt at soap making, so I really didn't measure any ingredients. Shea butter was lightly scented with mango, but I added lavender essential oil (100% natural), just a few drops for a relaxing additive.  But for how much lemon zest to use, I just improvised on smelling, on how strong I wanted my butterfly soaps to be. For this project I used the zest of one medium sized lemon. Cutting the buttery soap block in cubes, I filled up a small bowl. Then taking it to the microwave at 15 second intervals, mixing with a spoon each break, until the soap and milky in texture. It makes the kitchen smell lovely!

It was that simple, I added zest of a lemon, a handful of instant quaker oats, the oil, mixed well, then poured the batter into the molds, which I must suggest make sure you have them really clean, find a quiet spot and wait for the molds to set. It has been so much fun to do, I can't wait to see how they turn out.    They need to set overnight, not wanting to chance them messing up if they aren't totally dry.

                                        

                                                 

Decoupage Ideas

  Every few months I go through a new phase. All it really takes is a little inspiration, and you just never know when its going to hit. An old boyfriend once told me, "Diane, your like a Victorian woman, this isn't your century." I never forgot those words, and this was from someone I didn't even think knew me that well. I had asked myself, what kind of image was I putting out? I was wearing BCBG pants that night and a coach bag I bought at a consignment shop. Did I really look like an Victorian woman in sparkly sandals and a sequin neckline top? Oh yes, of course, I forgot, I was wearing a pin I inherited from my grandmother and a purse from 1982.

  But the truth was, I was like a Victorian woman. Back in the early 90's before Godey fashion plates were even popular, I was in anticipation waiting for the next Dover Publications mail order to come in the mail. This was the days before Pinterest (yes, now you know I'm ancient) and it was like finding an old friend again, to see that other people liked them too. I thought I was the only one. Even back in the 90's I was buying books from Dover and making my own stationary, cutting out the pictures and making decoupage boxes.  Decoupage was never a stranger though, back in the 70's I would go to work with my father, just so I could tag along on the construction sites and collect pieces of wood his men left laying around from framing the houses. I would take them home, cut pics out of magazines and shellac them in the rain.
  And as funny as it was, so many years later I was doing the same thing.
  Do people ever change?
BUT TODAY...
   I love searching for images I never seen before that are free to use.
They are out there, you just got to find them, and when you do, it's thrilling..that is if your an artist like me. The trouble is, you see the same free images over and over. I think everyone wants one that has never been seen before, and you think, Oh no one has used that one in anything, I have seen, that's always thrilling when it happens. But to be safe, whats the best option?
  You know what is? Taking your own pictures. That's right..and when they are yours-they are yours and no one else's! And you can do anything you want with them.
So for you, I am giving away some of my own pictures I took this summer at my close by beach town. It is a town full of pretty manors that still have a ring to the past in them. Besides flowers and having tea at midnight, I love houses of character and charm.
Free to use images:

Put these in your favorite editing program, and you can do anything you want with them, from turning them black and white, or daguerreotype type, or using them in a mixed media project, shrinking them miniature to adhere to an old bottle with lace and ribbon.

But whatever you do..be creative and most of all, have fun!

Seriously Sewing

                       Well I had gotten back into doll making from admiring all the cute dolls on Pinterest, going back in time, when I use to make dolls. I had lost most of all my old things in Hurricane Irene for my basement got flooded, but I was happy to discover, these sweet dolls survived. I  guess I made these in the mid 1980's.

                                  The fabrics were made from some old gowns that I had
shortened after a few fabulous parties..those were the days!! My motto has always been, "don't throw it out, u can always find a use for this.." Strangely, I wasn't really devastated when my basement was flooded. It was strange how I had been. I had thought, that was yesterday, tomorrow is another day :)

But 2 years ago, I really got into seriously sewing dolls from a friend at work that asked me to make a doll for her, before that I was just procrastinating about designs in my head..But Bernadette asked me to make a doll for her, and since, a new hobby came about.  It was a really fun project and she was very pleased at the end result, and I was too, because I discovered a long ago past time, was something I'd like to get back to and do again.

Since AnnaBelle I had made a series of other dolls for customers and friends

                                                                   

  

                                                                     

Kingsley came with her own little Box which is decoupaged with book pages from Beatrix Potter.

But I must say, my prettiest doll ever is a multi colored blonde haired beauty I named, Sara, after the Fleetwood Mac song which I was listening to one night while designing. She won first prize at the 2014 Monmouth County Fair. Of course you could only enter one doll, so the little black haired doll had to stay home. I let her get into the picture though!