Hello, my friend!

I’ve been wanting to redo parts of my blog for a long time and started playing around with it last night.

You’ll notice that I’ve moved from a 3 column to a 2 column design. As I get more and more into photography, I want to give the photos more space. Maybe even make them bigger in the future. And I also wanted to streamline the sidebars.

I streamlined a few of my categories that didn’t have much in them. The posts are all still there, and most are listed under a couple categories, so they’re still easy to find. I also foresee the possibility of a couple new categories and wanted to keep them as focused as I can.

That said, there’s a robust tag cloud at the bottom of the right-sided column with all sorts of topics that I use regularly. If anyone knows of a better looking WordPress tag plugin, I’d love to hear about it!

I also added a profile shot of me over there – I realized that I get irritated by blogs where I can’t see the author’s face. I think it’s especially a problem women have because of self-image issues and such, giving sideways shots and hiding behind cameras.

This is frustrating to me because as a self-publishing platform, blogging should be one of the places where we change the perception of what should be put out there (namely, everyone!), not continue to enforce stereotypes.

I’m not a bit selfie person (I don’t even know if I could say that word out loud without laughing – there’s so many words I “hear” on the internet that I wonder if people actually say out loud, or if I don’t hear them out here in Grand Rapids but I would in New York? Or maybe it shows I’m 37 not 17? I don’t know. “Squee” also fits here. I digress….) because I think, really, how many shots do you need of yourself? But whatever, there I am so that when you come to visit my digital living room, I’m not the blogger-behind-the-curtain.

I do need a new, better shot though. That one’s from a sunny day last summer, which is why I’m looking so serenely happy.

If you have any ideas on what would make Things Bright the blog better, layout or content-wise, I’m all ears!

There’s been a lot going on in my personal life. Plus I’ve spent a lot of time art journaling, writing, and building The Creative Notebook with Holly, our local art journaling workshops, so that I haven’t been able to give much focused attention to the blog this year. But I’m itching to get back into some general crafting, try out some ideas I’ve had, finish stuff I’ve shown you the beginnings of, and do a few series!

What do you want more of? What needs to go? What do you like best about coming here? What would make this an even better place to visit for you?

Those of you who actually take the time to comment mean a ton to me, so whether you are a friend, or a first-time commenter, being really specific about what you like here and what you’d love more of would mean the world to me and make this a better, more fun, and more meaningful conversation for both of us!

Please talk to me!

p.s. That’s me, 3 days ago, trying the jogging thing again. Keep moving forward!

Hello, my friend and a happy new week to you!

I have been enjoying the neon trend, so I picked up a pack of highlighters a few weeks ago. I wanted to see if I could do some color layering with them in the way I did with the tissue papers.
On a not-so-great day recently, drawing a grid and challenging myself to make different patterns in each seemed to be the thing to do!  Neon plaids and stripes, CMYK color layering, doodles, and even some scallops inspired by Rachel Castle’s work.

I was listening to my Michael Buble Pandora station, which is pretty much all happy times music with John Mayer’s The Heart of Life song happened to come on.  The lyrics fit the day, so I put them on the tissue paper in between.

This sun rays and waves sketch is copied from a doodle I put on a calendar once that I’ve always liked.  I’m thinking it would make a great summer scarf, don’t you?

Little gridded pages are reason #567 that I love art journaling – great for days when your mind won’t focus because each little box is such a mini mini exercise. And the result is a fun hodge-podge that’s fine in and of itself, but maybe has the seeds of ideas for other projects or other art, too?

Easy Tips for Your Art Journal Pages:
1. Try grids. Of anything you like. Sketches/doodling/zentangles. Or collage papers, favorite quotes, patterns, fabric swatches, a list.
2. Play with hightlighters. They can’t help but cheer you up!
3. Take a favorite doodle and blow it up to cover a whole page.

Have fun!

p.s. These pages are from the same stapled Daily Journal I showed you last week.

Hello!

I want to show you some pages from my smaller daily art journal books today.  I’ve been stapling 10-12 pages together to make journals for an easy, almost-daily practice.  Because they’re “found” papers, ie. papers I have around my house, they often have color or pattern on them already, so there’s no “blank page” syndrome with these.  And there’s no preciousness then, no “I don’t want to mess up this pretty notebook” feeling.  Their smaller size also allows for quicker layouts and simpler ideas than the larger dry media sketchbooks I often use.

This one starts with a little map flap and label that still waiting for an end date and some other info.

This is an antique textile pattern I found when I was searching for some free clipart for the art journaling zine I made for our workshops. It’s the second book I’ve put a pattern near the beginning in which to color. Sometimes it’s great just to fill in color while I figure out what I want to write or make, other days, it’s all I do.

I keep thinking I want to add, you know, more detail to this page, but I don’t know what.  Yet.

My current favorite quote,

“Many of our fears are tissue paper thin and a single courageous step could carry us clear through them.” -Brendan Francis  

Covered by tissue paper, naturally.  Which I taped in later.  I do that a lot – my stapler can only do so many pages, so if I want something that’s not already in there, I tape it in.  Penciled on the bottom it says, “Bakery paper from my donut at Sandy’s (local Grand Rapids donut shop) with Holly for our Creative Notebook meeting.”

Tissue paper again, this time a rubbing from a new book I got recently.  I’d like to do a lot more rubbings this summer, especially with the boys out on our walks.

I hardly have any washi tape because I rarely see a pattern I want to use over and over, but these Scotch decorative masking tapes that I found in my local grocery store are current favorites!

More triangle and mountain love.  It was a hard day. This is the phrase that came into my head.  I really love the design I came up with, if I do say so myself.

Just a peek!  More soon!

To Make Your Own Easy Art Journal:

1.  Gather 10 papers, 8.5×11 -ish papers. A4 in Britian, right?  I used paper from making bubble stationary like in the image above, old maps, graph paper, envelopes, tissue paper, old school paper, and tissue paper.

2.  Fold all the papers in half together to create a middle seam.  Staple with a long-arm stapler. Or, it you’re me and don’t have one, gently fold one half in half (which you can also sorta see in the image above) and quickly staple with your little office stapler. ;)  Yeah, I need to get a bigger one.  But hey, use what you have now, don’t get sidetracked!

3.  Fold into a book again, trim any paper edges if you wish.  Now you can either use it right away (yes!) or stick it under a few heavy books until tomorrow to really flatten it out and give you a great crease.

Easy, right?  Using old papers around the house is a great way to explore – zero pressure because you’re using what’s on hand anyway!

I’ve been loving all the art journaling and writing I’m doing lately, but I’m itching to get back to some other crafts.  I’m trying to make myself finish a lot of house decluttering first for spring cleaning and then put my crafty skills to use with some redecorating.  I need you all to text me every couple hours and say, “Go declutter some more stuff!” so I can get there I think! Ha!

Hoping your spring or fall are going well!

Hello, my friend!

Do you like to play with color and line? This easy art journal background technique is for you!

Super Complicated Directions:

1. Cut up tissue paper, preferably in a variety of bright colors.
2. Glue it to paper. Use whatever’s on hand. I was out of Mod Podge, so watered down some school glue a bit.
3. Play. Have fun. Try new things.

A few years back my Grandma Rogers (fellow left-hander extraordinaire and my crochet and knitting teacher) gave me some of her old craft supplies, including an envelope full of cut up tissue paper leftover from a stained glass craft when she taught little kids’ Bible clubs at church.  I layered them over sewing tissue paper in one of my art journals as a background. As of now, it’s still a background, but sometimes I like them just the way they are.

I was making something else and saw these papers laying on top of each other just like this and liked it enough that I just copied it into the notebook.  Raise your hand if the piles on your craft tables inspire you as often as the stuff you purposefully pick out?  Yep, I see you!

Then I made mountains because I love mountains and triangles and remembered the first time I saw the tissue paper layering technique in Elsie and Rachel’s art journaling class, which is the first one I ever took.  There’s some good examples of those pages here and here as I couldn’t find a photo of mine.  And there’s a current art journaling class from the ladies at A Beautiful Mess if you’re interested.

I made a house.  And was disappointed when it ripped, then realized these are supposed to be backgrounds anyway and decided not to worry about it.

I tried stripes.

Rainbow Brite showed up.

So did the sun.

I started arranging them with the idea of providing myself lines to write on.

More Rainbow Brite.  Or is it Lisa Frank?  90′s minimalism and all those black outfits with dainty teardrop earrings didn’t have a chance with me after the 80′s.

More stripes with page arrangement in mind.

Layering shapes.

Shapes and lines together.  These aren’t my favorites, but every idea led to another to try.

Sticking to one shape and complementary colors proved to be one of my favorites.

And then I did some experimenting with CMYK.  Or at least CMY.  The K will probably come in as black marker writing.

Like I said, if it rips, no worries! Just cover it with a photo or writing paper, or even more tissue paper later.  Whatever you like.

And more bright triangle love.

Tissue paper is cheap, everywhere once  you start looking for it (the bakery, shoe boxes, jewelry boxes, gift bags, postal packages…) and very forgiving because if you  mess up, you just put something on top, or start another page.

For me, it’s color play without the mess of paint.

Give it a go!  Or mail all your “I’m sure I’ll use this tissue paper again someday” stash to me! 

Happy Wednesday, friends.

Hello, friends!

Remember how I told you that take photos of bridges is my new favorite thing? I wasn’t kidding!

Long road trips bring you over a lot of bridges, but the rhythm of driving with three little boys means you can’t just stop whenever you want and most bridges don’t have shoulders to pull over on. So my special bridge photo technique? I just started propping my iPhone onto the top of my steering wheel, tilted up slightly. With my eyes on the road – don’t freak out, people!

I love, love, love all the angles and lines I got! That green against the blue sky? Yum! Even the little train bridges intrigued me because they’re all different from each other. But my faves are always the double green bridges in West Virginia. Those just make my heart swell – so many childhood memories.

As much as I love these, just wait until you see the big Ravenel tomorrow! It’s insane! I really need to get a book on bridges to learn all their different construction styles. I’m liking them so much, I think I could plan vacations around just trying to see new cool ones!

What’s your new favorite thing?

“Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.” ~Loren Eiseley

“If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”  ~Vincent Van Gogh

Granted, it is not hard to find beauty at the beach, but it’s hard for me to pass up a quote by Van Gogh.  Even with clouds rolling in and out all day, changing the weather from warm and sunny to cool and shady, it was a wonderful first day at the beach in South Carolina. I thoroughly enjoyed walking awhile, looking for shells and snapping pictures, while the boys built sandcastles.  I still don’t decorate or craft a lot with blue, but I am endlessly fascinated by it at the water.

I hope you have a great Friday!

Hello, friends!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about peacemaking lately. What does is mean, peacemaking? What does it mean to make peace? As one who desires, aches, for peace in her heart, in her home, in the world, and as a maker, it intrigues me. A lot.

I made this art journal page using a masking technique, placing painter’s tape along the bottom edge of my paper at different heights to create a city skyline. Then I washed the rest of the paper in water, gradually adding more and more until I got to the top. Placing paint along my tape, I then brushed the acrylic paint up over the water over and over until I was happy with how it looked. Later, when it was mostly dry, I peeled the painter’s tape back off.

I made this page weeks ago during a paint experimentation time. After the events in Boston, when I saw this quote in my prayer book, it seemed like the perfect background for it.

One of the reasons I picked the quote was not just the poignancy of it, especially lately, but because of the incredible, incredible juxtaposition of the words violence and imagination.

I then took the phrase that I’d highlighted in the quote and blew it up and gave it it’s own page. It’s its own thing to think about. I used a black Sharpie and white paint marker to write the words over a tissue paper collage I’d made on a tissue paper experimentation day. I guess I still need to show you the rest of those.  I thought the riot of colors spoke well to the ideas of both violence and imagination.

I intend to keep doing a lot more playing with color and meditating on the idea of making peace.  What are you making?

Last week brought historic flooding to Grand Rapids after having the wettest April ever.

This bowl of water outside of the Gerald R. Ford Museum is normally a concert seating area by the river.

The river crested on Sunday and you can see the difference in this photo between when I took Luke on Friday and when I took Brodie on Sunday.

How swollen the river looked under the bridges just amazed me.

These steps normally lead down to a riverwalk side walk that was completely covered by the flooding.

The 3 large hotels, including the Amway Grand Plaza were all pumping water out of their basements by Friday. According to the news, they weren’t leaking because of the rive, but the water pressure from the flooded river was causing the groundwater under everything to swell up and seep into the basements!  These were the pumps on Friday.

These were the pumps on Sunday. They were gushing.

Most of the bridges stayed open, as the water crested about a foot below the 25 foot flood walls, but they did close a couple that were lower than this one to car and foot traffic just in case, and a railroad bridge further upstream was weighed down with railcars just in case!

One Friday Luke and I turned and caught a gorgeous sunset over the waters.  This is looking from the east side of the river in from the of Plaze Hotel back across to the Ford Museum. Right in the sun you can see the flag at half-staff in honor of the Boston marathon bombing victims.

This is our own woods.  Not our yard, but the woods next to our yard that we treat as our own.  This is normally a barely discernible stream and marsh area.

Our leaky door which hasn’t been a problem for about 4 years rose to the top of the to-do list because the historic rains brought tons of water into our dining room.

Here’s to a new week, friends.

Architecture and ornamentation of the capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia, our lunch stop on our second day road tripping to South Carolina.

Hello, friends!

This is the boys and I (Joe had to stay home and hold down the fort) just before starting our road trip – notice the frost still on the back window? Yeah, we got rid of that! 

This kid even brought his art box! I put each of the boys in charge of different things and Jordan was our “Trip Activities” Coordinator.”  He took it seriously and actually had all the boys stop playing video games about an hour and a half in so that they could take an art break!  These boys.

After such a long, snowy winter up here with seemingly endless gray skies, snow, and rain, how could I not take a picture of our driving weather on Good Friday?  Blue skies smilin’ at me….

We only stopped at the best places along the way.

Easter buckets with sunglasses and bubbles with a bit of candy for the beach. (Who wants to pack extra stuff like baskets?)

The next day when I turned to check on the boys, I found that my heart-string tugging little artist was painting in the backseat of the car! I couldn’t believe it – through the beginning of the mountains, no less! (Brodie snapped this shot for me.) “It’s just the little pots with lids, Mom, and I’m cleaning my brush on the edge of the paper.” Goodness! I let him finish his self-portrait and then insisted all future painting be reserved for rest stops and rooms, not the car!

This is the beginning of many, many bridge shots.

Before I really got my technique down. Yes, I have a bridge-shot technique now.

I’ve discovered that I’m not only enjoying photography more and more as a creative pursuit and hobby itself, but that I LOVE taking pictures of bridges.

Maybe it’s back to the place thing? Bridge was one of my first few words and these green bridges in West Virginia were a regular part of my childhood, travelling back and forth to see my grandparents in Ohio and West Virginia.

Anyway, I have always loved bridges and now shooting them on trips has become one of my favorite travel activities. And a favorite way to collect “things” from a particular place. I see a compilation photo book of all my favorite bridge shots in the future.

For all those years travelling interstate 77 and seeing the gold dome of the Charleston capitol building from the highway, I’m not sure we ever stopped, so the boys and I took our lunch there on Saturday.

Across from the capitol we found a large museum that we’ll have to make it back to – I mean look – the cement is in a Tree of Life quilt block design!

I’m not sure what magic other parents use to get their kids to pose for photos during rest stops when they need to be running, but I don’t really try too hard. It’s not what they look like, anyway. They try, but they are always eager to get to the “crazy shot” where I let them pose however they want.

So they start beating each other.

Good thing we had some giant steps to run & do a Rocky on!

Turns out, we were able to step inside the capitol, so cool architecture photos coming up next time!

Taken outside the Capitol building in South Carolina.

“Courage is grace under pressure.” -Hemmingway

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” -Mark Twain

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.” -Victor Hugo

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” -John 14:27, in the Bible.

Courage to you, my friends, and a big hug. xoxo

Friends!

I have so missed you and being able to keep up this blog regularly! Adding art journaling workshop prep and school carnival prep to daily life, and then spring break prep, a birthday, all and sundry other life activities, and then Spring Break itself has just sucked me in whole!

But now we’re back home and I’m reveling in all the photos I go to take over break and the fun making that’s on the horizon.

Today is a major unpacking, straighten the house, put the thinking cap back on, get down to business kind of day! How are you? What have you been up to?

I’ll be back soon – promise!

Hello, friends!

It’s a bit quiet around here as I’m spending a lot of time getting a resource zine together for our art journaling workshop in Grand Rapids. That’s a photo of my own notebook made with a variety of scrap papers that includes all our workshop notes and zine-to-be info.

More tomorrow!  I hope you all are well.

Hello!

I have a post up today over at The Local Cook for Wendy’s 40 Days of Nourishing series.  She asked me to write up a post for beginners, so I talked about how art journaling can be whatever you want it be, and then dug into some of the things it could be for people who want to try it.

I think her first attempt at digital art journaling, and the thoughts behind, “I’ll Still Be Me When I’m Skinny” are incredible!

Head on over to The Local Cook and check out my beginner’s art journal post!

p.s. Journal notes: Jordan’s art + one my favorite phrases, often repeated to myself in black sharpie.

I cannot possibly tell you how much I love this page! I want it as art on my wall, I resonate with it so much!!

This is the work of my partner-in-crime and fellow teacher, Holly Bechiri, who is teaching the art journaling workshops with me in Grand Rapids.

I have had this photo opened in a tab for 2 or 3 days since I’ve gotten it, just staring at it and thinking it through, clicking over to it whenever I’m dying to see it again.

Official announcement coming tomorrow, but I’m so excited to tell you that we finally have dates for our workshops and that things are really coming together! We’re in full on marketing mode right now which is it’s own creative ball of wax to but sure. What a learning curve!

I have so much more to share, but I couldn’t go another day without showing this amazing work to you!

What does this work mean to you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts and musings in the comments!

Hello, friends!

These shots are from last Thursday through today.  I’m amazed at the end of every week how many photos I can take without even really trying!

From top left to right,

1-5
Super cool metal palm leaves in the Tommy Bahamas section in Macy’s at the mall that I’d love to replicate!
A gorgeous February snow that covered all of our trees!
Where we live ;)
Letters to My Daughter by Maya Angelou – recommended!
Art journal in progress

6-10
Jordan and “my group” of kids at a museum field trip outing
A volunteer showing how to work the antique 1880′s letterpress at the museum
Lots of gorgeous letterpress drawers and blocks
An antique Baltimore album quilt on display
Quilt close-up – I never get tired at looking at those wee hand stitches!!

11-15
The requested “light colors, pastels” for another school fundraising project. These ginghams from my mom and vintage sheets are all this bright girl has!
Working on salvaging good blocks from the donated cutter quilt.
One of my first quilt blocks ever made for charity, unearthed and now donated to a new cause.
Taking layers of old blocks, batting, and the still-good bow-tie blocks to make into pot holders.
Digging out spring greens for some new napkins.

16-20
Banging/resting my head on my sewing machine, wondering whose dumb idea it was to make pot holders (mine) and now have to sew all those little layers into binding! I was at a loss and had to call my friend over to come show me the mitered corners again – doing it on a quilt is so much easier than those fiddly little trivets!
Giving up on the potholders and sewing the spring napkins instead.
Finding a new-ish book on Makers at the bookstore and adding it to my list!

Like my profile says, “Daily life photos with as much craft, art, & vintage love as I can cram in!”

If you want to follow me, I’m thingsbright on Instagram, too.  A lot of these photos make it to my Flickr account, but not all as I’m working on refining how I use each social outlet.

I hope you’re having a lovely week!

If you read Things Bright regularly and are on Instagram or Flickr, leave your username or link in the comments so I can check out your photos and say hi!

“We each need to make peace with our own memories. We have all done things that made us flinch.” Surya Das

A few weeks ago I spent some time in front of the TV playing with old book pages and markers, circling words, drawing lines, and then later, tearing pages along folds and outlining the tears with the marker.  These pages were easy and fun to make and have given me a lot of background fodder.  I really liked how the glue made the marker (regular Crayola) bleed when I began to collage them on, so did more “washes” with the glue on purpose, leaving a bit of space for some journaling.

I was going to make a well fit-together puzzle, but then decided that was too perfectionistic and not really that fun for all the pieces I had, and began to layer instead.  The darkest red outline was also Sharpied and therefore didn’t bleed- something to keep in mind if you want a more stark background.  At the end, I made one more triagular piece and glued it on without washing over it to have it stand out.

Later I found this great quote and thought it went well with this background.  Dealing with what makes us flinch surely involves dealing with pieces of our lives and figuring out how we want to put them together.

Getting ready to teach an art journaling workshop has me thinking a lot about this, and how art journals are such a wonderful way for doing this – for literally making peace for ourselves and with ourselves.

Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music by Alma Woodsey Thomas

Paintings by Alma Thomas are added encouragement in this regard!

As you may remember, she began by riffing off of Matisse’s collages and turning them into her own way of painting. Now I hope to riff off of her paintings with even more torn collages in my art journal!

What about you? Do you want to fit all the pieces together just so? Or layer them all over the place?  Or let them dance out into the wind like the painting above?

Yay!! Our crazy quilt is finished!!

While we were off on our snowy weekend, Sue finished backing and quilting the quilt & got it hung up in the boys’ school to entice people to the raffle before I could get any more pictures of it. It was so fun to walk in and see! Jordan loves pointing out “his” fabric from a travel pillow I made him that’s in the quilt.

I loved, loved, loved sewing with other people and hope to do that more!

I’d never done that before and it’s so pleasant. Sewing is just easy enough to make for easy talking and quick enough to really get a lot accomplished while you do. Collaborating with other creatives and doing things with people face-to-face are huge on my to-do list this year, so I’m so happy Sue pulled me into this project. I got to meet and get to know other families from the boys’ school, too, so that was also great. Sharmain, who was ironing the quilt in this post even learned how to sew from Sue and made some of the blocks! Isn’t that rad?!

One other note before I stop gushing- we originally decided to do this quilt in color blocks because it’s also a texture quilt.  You can’t really see from the photos, but there’s lace, denim, shirting, velvet, ultra suede, rayon, and fleece mixed in with the cottons.  We needed a visual way to tie the quilt together with so many different types of fabric and colors and prints.  It worked out great and also made it really easy for us to split up the colors and plow through them between our get togethers.  A lot of the decision making is removed for you if you just group the fabrics by color, so that makes it easier and more fun to zip through more blocks.

And faster, which is great for a school project quilt – no matter how much fun they are, they need to get finished so you can move on to the next thing!

I loved playing with color so much in that way, I’m thinking I’d like to the do same idea, only have the stripe on a slant.  Although, as I mentioned yesterday, Alma Thomas’ paintings with bold dashes  now have me thinking along those lines, too….

And here’s some kid art for fun inspiration. Of course looking at kid art on the walls is one of my favorite things about PTA conferences! I like to try to guess who or what they are studying – the dots remind me of Australian Aboriginal art, but who knows?

And one more good thing – TODOAY IS THE LAST DAY OF FEBRUARY!!! YAYYYYYYY!!!!!!    

p.s. All the fabric in the quilt was from mine and Sue’s stashes. I am a terrible judge of fabric and thought we’d use almost all of it. We could make 3-5 more throw-sized quilts. Gulp.

Hello, friends!

I’ve discovered the painter, Alma Woodsey Thomas, and I’m in love!  I’d die to have this piece, Starry Night and the Astronauts, in my house!!

Two days ago I bought this wonderful Maya Angelou book at what has become one of my favorite shopping opportunities of the year, the PTA baked goods & book sale.  Unexpected, right? Inexpensive home baked cakes and cookies plus loads of books for 25 and 50 cents? What’s not to love there?!

Anytime I see a Maya Angelou book, I grab it, as she is one of my favorite authors. She, like CS Lewis, is like eating Thanksgiving dinner when most other reading is just junk food by comparison.

I’m loving this book, but am still absorbing it, so I’ll have to get back to that later. Of course I liked the cover on sight, but when I got home, I peeked into the back cover to find out who made the gorgeous mosaic and found  a whole new world in Alma Woodsey Thomas!

The Elipse, used for the cover of the book. I admit, when I googled her name and hit images and saw all this gorgeous, truly engaging artwork my eyes actually teared up.

This led to lots bopping around, learning what I could, and finding out that 2 of her pieces are in the Obama White House, including Watusi here, which is a riff on another favorite, Matisse’s The Snail.

Here’s a nice review on the NYTimes review  about the White House art, and a slideshow of art at the White House. It’s the hardest job in the world, I think, but getting to pick pretty much any art you want to decorate with is a pretty sweet perk!

I just love, love, love her work. Doesn’t this “Air View of a Spring Nursery” remind you of the Dutch aerial flower field photos, and the tulip farm I visit in May?

As Holland Cotter said,

“People couldn’t get enough of her. Why?  Her art was accessible. Her abstraction was never really abstract: you could always see the nature in it: flowers, wind. Her paintings were modern but part of some older tradition too, as close to quilts as to Matisse.”

Nature? Colors? Quilts? Matisse? Yes, yes, yes, yes!!

Anybody else want to copy Alma Thomas and turn some of this rainbow crazy quilt love into a Thomas inspired quilt? So many ideas!!

I love the heft of a denim quilt and have been looking for a way to make one look a bit more modern. Elysian Fields is quite inspiring in that regard.

Springtime in Washington

I’ve only dipped our toes in the depth that is Alma Woodsey Thomas. Not only her paintings, but her life is worth admiring and emulating, too. As an African-American woman she wasn’t even allowed to go into museums when she was a girl but became the first person to graduate with a fine arts degree from Howard University and the first African-American woman to have a solo exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. You know what she did between those two achievements? She had “a thirty-five year career teaching art at a D.C. junior high school. She was devoted to her students and organized art clubs, lectures, and student exhibitions for them.” So many wonderful years of inspiration to others and still working hard on her own art, having her first retrospective when she was 70!

Sadly, I can’t find her prints to buy anywhere, but I’m picking up this book of her work. Maybe two so I can chop one up for prints!

See and learn more at:

WikiPaintings

Smithsonian American Art Museum

And for those who like amazing cakes

Color Field

Paint chip collages inspired by Thomas - kid art lessons are the best art journaling fodder!

Headed out to this place again. Packing one handed’s proving to be a challenge.

Hoping to bring you back lots of good winter snow photos & no more sledding injury reports!

Have a great weekend, friends!