Colour in our Garden!

Our "Cate-and-Jim" maple tree! (They gave out saplings as their wedding favours.)

I have always loved a tree I would see on a bike route. The owners circled it with pink cosmos and they always look so colourful and friendly around the tree. I have wanted to do this at our own house for awhile now. So tonight we decided to get started on it. Feeling a little bit like we are breaking a by-law of some kind (because the tree is on city property, though it's right in front of our house),we went to work.

Before. We circled it with string, thinking it would help guide the digging up of the grass.

We put down a fabric barrier. We tried putting in a wooden edger, but no luck.  We will have to look for stones later.

It was nearly dark when we placed in the seeds. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so that will help to encourage their growth. I can't wait to see if this works!

Sacred Ground- Finding Colour in Life

Our Sacred Ground art journalling group met in the last week or so. We used collage and the theme of Finding Colour in Life. Here are the pages! If you want to take a closer look, you can click on each photo and it will enlarge a bit more.

I really enjoyed creating this page!  The continuous line drawing of myself and my daughter is symbolic of the twists and turns that life has been. The amazingly beautiful colours of the florals, sunset and rainbow - those represent the surprising joys that have intertwined with the unexpected twists and turns!  Trees...I love trees!...and the city line of Vancouver remind me of God's strength and creativity. The journey of "finding colour in life" has been like finding hidden treasure, unexpected and refreshing.
S.R.

 I had no visual plan when I started, it is interesting now to examine the images and “read” what is (apparently) colourful in my life. For example, the two Romanian women represent friendship/kindred spirits. The chair and coffee cup is “alone time”. The framed small Japanese flower is trusting  my own perspective. The open blue door is discovery, adventure, trying something new. The train is travel. The woman reading National Geographic is “incongruity”.
J. M.W.G.

Whenever I think of colour, I think of flowers. Their fresh and vibrant colours take my breath away. I wanted to have lots of flowers on my page and unusual combinations. I used paint chips, circle cutter, scraps of paper and leftover negative die cuts. I used large letter stamps with acrylic ink for the title and distress ink for the background.
S.J.S.J.

Thank you, friends- for sharing your pages in this post and for adding colour to my life!

Sacred Ground

Every three weeks or so some friends come over to work on our faith journals. It's a visual art journal combining art and faith. Tonight we met and our topic was one of my favourite authors, Frederick Buechner. We listened, we laughed, we shared meaningful quotes, and we got a little bit done in our journals. Just a little bit.

I persuaded them to watch my Hawaii slide show from just before Christmas. Some of the colours and textures made me catch my breath as I viewed them again after a break of not seeing them. Maybe it's the grey skies and the rains that I am immersed in these days that make the colours stand out so vividly. Maybe it's just sharing it with friends and having them notice things I had not noticed before.  It's a bit surreal to see these photos and realize I was there, and not that long ago. 


Maybe that's why I love taking photos. So when I am surrounded by grey and rain I can remember the colours I drank in not that long ago...and anticipate colours to come. Sometimes even within the grey. 


Next time we meet our theme will be Finding Colour in Life, using collage. How perfect! 

First post

I told him I would learn to start a blog after I finished my Master's program in the late spring. I told him an hour ago and yet here I am. I am delaying my homework for the evening. It's winter. It's dark early. I'm in my new craft room that I have painted 'Deep Ocean'. The first thing I had to do was come up with a name. I wasn't sure what it is that I want to put in my blog. Maybe it's about art. Maybe it's the things I learn while being with kids. Maybe it's about what I see through the lens of my camera. Not sure. But I do love colour. And I do love life. And yes, I love finding colour in life. So here goes!