T Stands For Mapping Herbs

 

Today you'll find me at my garden table for T.  Imagine my surprise when I walked out this morning and found it had rained in the night. 

I'm preparing to map out my herbs.  

 

On the table is a sheet of paper, ink pen, and my grungy WSU mug filled with black coffee.

 

The only thing I've drawn so far is the black tube that helps drain water from my "patio," a word I use loosely, and my two lavender plants, which should never be watered.  They get enough water when it rains because they don't like wet roots.

 

I'm so glad I was meticulous about plant markers.  There are several I am sure I wouldn't be able to tell apart from a distance.  Note the lemon grass in the white pot.  It was $14.00 (USD).

 

I want to thank my dear friend Erika who assured me tarragon overwinters where she lives in New Hampshire.  I know her winters are harder than where I live.  After buying and replacing tarragon three years in a row, I finally let mine overwinter outside.  It's in the large beige pot in the back row.  BTW, that is a composite plastic pot, not ceramic or terracotta.

 

It appears

 

my chives, which overwintered inside, don't really care for the outdoors.

  

Another plant that overwintered outside is in the large white pot on the left.  It is comfrey.  The pot on the right also overwintered outside. It is wild bergamot, also known as bee balm.  It is not necessarily a culinary herb, but is often used to make tea.

I have new sage and sage that overwintered indoors.  

I'm sure you can tell which is which.  On the right is my milkweed, which I planted from seed last year and also overwintered outside.

 

My airplane/spider plant is not doing well.  

 

It overwintered inside and will hopefully perk up over the summer.

  

The small white pot holds spearmint.  It overwintered outside.  The large white pot and one of the large gray pots hold basil, while the other one holds the Thai basil. 

 

Now it's time to drink my coffee and create this chart.  However, there is one herb sitting on my table near my coffee.

 

This is dill I planted three days ago.  It is already popping through the soil.

 

I've shown you mine, now it's your turn to share your T entry this week.  The rules are extremely simple.  Your drink related post may be anything from a photo of a glass, cup, or mug, to an actual drink.  You may choose to share a sketch or a digital, hybrid, or traditional page in your scrapbook, art journal, or altered book, as I have done.  Maybe you'd prefer to share a tag, or wow us with your photography.  You might choose a postcard or decorated card.  You might even draw an image on a used tea bag.  Or perhaps you prefer to review a place you visited, a movie, or book.  It makes no difference as long as it's drink related.  And don't forget that the more unique and outside the box it is, the better we like it.  Please tie it back here, and please link only to your T post, not your entire blog.  When you link, Bleubeard, the T gang, and I will be by to visit.   Bleubeard would also like to remind you that your photos may be taken any time.   

 

A few Herbs and Veggies

 

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. 

I have five places on my list to purchase my herbs and veggies this year.  I only made it two places the first day. 

I get my bulk seed at the same place every year.  The price is quite reasonable for all the seeds I get.  Basil, dill, and cilantro are reasonable.  The Thai basil is not.

 

I purchased two of every herb and four-packs of tomatoes and sweet peppers.

 

I also bought some single tomatoes, like Roma and cherry.

 

Here you can see both oregano and rosemary in addition to the veggies.

  

A different view of the same herbs.

 

You can see I've picked up the seeds and returned them to the sack in which they came.

 

There is sage and rosemary

 

and lavender.

 

I got a bit carried away snapping photos of the lovely, healthy herbs and veggies.

 

One final overall photo of the herbs, veggies, and seeds I purchased the first day.

 

Look what I found

 

on one of the rosemary plants.  What a fantastic bonus.

 

Thanks for dropping by.  I am so happy you chose to spend a bit of time here with Bleubeard, Squiggles, and me today. 

 

Honoring International Collage Day

 

I had planned to make something original for Collage Day, but I am still not well and have been trying to get my herbs either outside or planted when I'm not chilling in bed.  Instead, here are a few I've created in the past.

  Maybe you thought I would choose Food Fodder, a recent collage, as a collage of choice.

  Or this one called Tools. 

Instead, I'm going back to my early collages that are SO different from the ones I make today.  I created the following collages and many more (I filled an entire book, in fact) between March and December, 2008.

  Locked:  Pigment ink,  scrapbook paper, paper scraps, embellishments, magazine image.  

  Designed by Architects: scrapbook paper, hand painted paper, magazine images, mica powder added to silverware handles.

    Cry Baby: images from various magazines, computer generated text, and matching background design.  

  The Universe: textured handmade, hand painted background paper, cardboard mats spray painted green and gold, trimmed in gold ink, words and central image from a science book.

  Word: textured background paper, hand painted and stamped (by me) frame, focal image was part of a swap exchange, words are from a magazine. 

  Christmas Kitsch: adorable images fussy cut from a magazine, hearts cut from painted book pages, three tickets, shaving cream paper background. 

  The Ringmaster: fussy cut magazine image, fussy cut botanical book image, ticket. 

  Behind the Eight Ball: Images taken from four different magazines.  Rowboat and eight ball were fussy cut.  Possibly my favorite collage of all.

And finally I give you
The Collage Artist's Tool Box:  Scrapbook paper turned into a collage box, various supplies one would need to create a collage.  Just add glue and scissors.

Thank you for visiting today.  I am delighted you dropped by and spent a bit of time seeing these old collages. 

 

 

T Stands For New Mug

 

Today you'll find me in my dining room.

I'm celebrating with my new mug I won.  More on that later.

 

Sorry, the lighting in this room is not the best this time of year.

 

I have my metal straw ready for the new mug and a spoon for my salad I made.

 

I broke my croissant top as I was assembling the sandwich.

 

I made tuna salad for the sandwich and a new to me pasta salad that actually incorporated several leftovers from my kitchen, including peas and bell pepper. 

 

Of course, the real star today is the new mug I won.  Last month I called in my pledge for Springfest, 26 at PBS.  The Spice Merchant was offering a gift basket to that night's winner.  As most of you know, I'm a huge fan of, and donator to Public Broadcasting System or PBS.  This mug was part of the basket of goodies, which was valued at $240.00 (USD).

 

Victor Hogstrom, President and CEO of PBS Kansas called our names (Bleubeard and Dr. Elizabeth).  He laughed when he saw our names, then after calling them, made a comment about Bleubeard, but I was so in shock that I had won, I didn't hear what it was.

 

I've shown you mine, now it's your turn to share your T entry this week.  The rules are extremely simple.  Your drink related post may be anything from a photo of a glass, cup, or mug, to an actual drink.  You may choose to share a sketch or a digital, hybrid, or traditional page in your scrapbook, art journal, or altered book, as I have done.  Maybe you'd prefer to share a tag, or wow us with your photography.  You might choose a postcard or decorated card.  You might even draw an image on a used tea bag.  Or perhaps you prefer to review a place you visited, a movie, or book.  It makes no difference as long as it's drink related.  And don't forget that the more unique and outside the box it is, the better we like it.  Please tie it back here, and please link only to your T post, not your entire blog.  When you link, Bleubeard, the T gang, and I will be by to visit.   Bleubeard would also like to remind you that your photos may be taken any time.    

 

I've got a very busy evening, but will be by late tonight or early tomorrow morning to visit.

 

 

 

 

 

Second on the 2nd: Birds

 

As most of you know, whenever possible, I like my Second Look to somehow reflect what our current host at Art Journal Journey is featuring.  That means I had to look for something that reflected Birds as requested by Mia of Craftartista. 

Back in 2016, I was in an international swap with five other artists.  Each had their own theme.  Valarie Tups from Germany, who no longer posts to her blog, requested birds.

   This is the first page.  The bird legs are pen nibs.

This is page 2, the back side of the previous entry.

I started with images from a bird book and turned them into transparencies using packing tape.  I backed the transparencies with words taken from a Thesaurus. 

I even did a bit of stamping.  The egg on the left was a gift from Linda at heARTfully Inspired.

I used pan pastels on the background and gold pigment ink on black card stock for the stamped feathers.

This is page 3.  Valerie likes words on her pages, so I tried to oblige.

I combined three colors of pan pastels, then sprayed them with fixative, which darkened the background more than I anticipated.  I stamped to the left of "Field Notes," and added the names of the birds that are shown on Side 4.

More stamping.  I was surprised that the birds slid around on the background.  I thought it might be because of the fixative I used.   The bird stamps shown on this page were gifted me by Chris at Pear Shaped Crafting, another participant in this swap.

After I mailed the package, I worried that the feathers I used in this spread might be rejected by customs.  I know it's illegal to send them to Australia.

Words on the page.  Somehow I have trouble with that, but forced myself to fit words on most pages I created for Valerie.

This is page 4 and the Audubon accordion booklet I created contains pictures of each of the birds listed on the reverse side.

This is one side of the accordion fold

and this is the other side and the front.  I colored the cards using my handmade shimmering mists.  Please note that Valerie's photos are much better than my scans.

The booklet is held together using velcro.  The book can be accessed from either side by pulling on the glass squares.

The bird image was also gifted me by Linda.  Another real feather tied the pages together.

This is page 5.  I had some really lovely and rather expensive folded wrapping paper that I wanted to use for the background.  The folds had caused creases in the wrapping paper, so instead of trying to cut it exactly to size (I'm not very good at exact when it comes to paper), I simply folded it over card stock at the fold and used the same background for both page 5 and page 6.  After reading Valerie's blog today, I see this page held special meaning to her.

I tried for a bit of humor here, since I borrowed my friend Kathy's dies for this project. 

The cat was one Kathy had given me earlier, so I added some rub-n-buff to the cat to make it a bit different color from the cage.

This is page 6, and you can see I continued the wrapping paper background here.

It's impossible to tell, but this peacock is very dimensional.  There are several layers to it, but they simply don't show up on the scan.

Again, Valerie loves words, and this reads "Shake your tail feathers," although it's rather difficult to read because of the transparent letters.

This is page 7, and surely you knew I would include a bit of my wonky sewing.

The back layer is some of my hand dyed silk, the transparent eggs were also from Linda.  The "branch" is a stirrer stick I dyed using a furniture touch-up pen.  Dyed cheesecloth became the "nest."

I found the white die cut bird in my stash.  I colored it using Staz-on and alcohol.  My feeble attempt at stamping was hit and miss on the page.

I received permission from Valerie to show the completed tag and here it is in the pocket, something I forgot to scan.  This photo is from Valerie's blog, so please don't pin it without her permission.

This is page 8 and also the last page I created.

I had these beautiful birds in my stash that I had printed out when I had color ink in my printer, and simply had to use them.  The die cut cat was another that had been given me by my friend Kathy and was meant to tie the pages together.

I fear I could have done a better job on this page, because it is really lacking in something.

This is the front of the tag I created  for Valerie.  Our tags take the place of sign-in pages in altered books.

This is the back before I added my personal information.  The die cut oval was a gift, and the "brads" were stickles.  I used the ONE die I owned at the time to create the tag that I colored using Staz-on and alcohol.

Here is a portion of the competed tag with fibers and three silver feathers attached.

Thanks ever so much for visiting today.  I hope you enjoyed the swap pages I made for Valerie, whose theme is birds.

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Now it's time to share your own Second on the 2nd.  The rules are quite simple and everyone is welcome to join the fun look back.  All you have to do is bring back a post that you are especially proud of, or perhaps one you shared before anyone knew your blog existed.  It could even be one that holds special meaning.  Any post, any genre, any artistic endeavor is acceptable, as long as it's been published sometime in the past.  Then link below (direct links only, please) and Bleubeard and I, along with other Second on the 2nd friends, will be by to visit.  This link will be good until Monday May 4 at 4:00 p.m. my time.