Budding Artists?

My boys have always liked making things and I thought I would showcase a couple of their recent projects that I thought were impressive. The top photo is my oldest son. He was inspired to make a tree house from an article in Family Fun magazine. He did a presentation on this tree house for his boy scout troupe and plans on making the structure even more elaborate so he can enter it into the Montgomery County Fair this summer, assuming we haven't moved yet. The second photo is of my younger son. He was inspired to do this mixed media work after watching The Art of Quilting video with me. The beads on the top portion represent a park and litter, recycling as well as natural objects, such as leaves and stones. The bottom is a close-up of a cut paper slug and leaves of grass.

Another Tree; Tree of Life ATC

I just love creating art with trees as my focus. They are so figurative. The picture above is ink and colored pencil Tree of Life ATC for a swap on swap-bot. As I was working on the theme, I easily came up with a dozen ideas....my next theme for a series of art quilts? Hmmm.

Per usual I retain all rights to my images on this blog, copyright Penney Hughes

10 Earth Day Giveaways, Coupons & Freebies

* The Green Bag Lady is doing a give away on her blog through Friday, April 23rd, for her handmade grocery bags and is willing to ship internationally to the winner. If you comment, say Wylde Iris sent you.
* Another green bag give away on Bag Snob, but hurry, you must post a comment of the worst ecological thing you have done by the end of Wednesday, April 21st.
* An eco-artist giant giveaway at Modish.
* Drugstore.com is giving up to 40% off of it's green products.
* Safeway also has coupons for some of their green products and a free reusable bag with $40 purchase.
* Reynolds Wrap has a $1.25 off coupon of their recycled aluminum foil.
* Get outside and see the earth up close at one of the National Parks with free admission all this week.
* Enter a chance to win a sun resistant, recycled shirt by 5pm ET, Earth Day.
* Enter the environmental books giveaway from Non-Toxic Kids.
* Free kid friendly compost gardening class on Earth Day at the Silver Spring, MD Whole Foods. While you are there you can check out the green kitchen exhibit.

Spring Goddess & Mermaid Paperdolls

I am getting back into swapping with other artists on Swap-bot. I am participating to two paperdoll swaps using patterns from the beautiful Enchanted Gallery site. The link is for the paperdoll templates but you should really take a look around the site, the artist, Kimberly Crick's artwork is very lovely.
Now a couple of notes about my paperdolls. I pasted a cherry blossom fabric backing to the Spring Goddess paperdoll since the DC area in spring is all about cherry blossoms. Her head Botticelli's Flora from his painting Primavera. The blue sequins symbolize rain drops.
The mermaid's tail has purple and blue foil embellishment; the foil came from a Palmer Bright and Shiny Easter Egg kit. I love that stuff, if I can find some in the after Easter sales I think I will pick up another box. Her look is inspired by a picture of Crest o' the Wave from Loraine and the Little People by Penny Ross. Very Art Deco show girl kind of look, simplified.