Sources Of Inspiration

 When the snow flies and the sun sets much too early, even I have a hard time remembering the many colors leaves can be. I'm sure I could find a few people who can recall walking with me in the Fall, and wondering why I would suddenly stop short and lunge for the ground! Did I trip? Was I having a seizure? No, I would spot a beautifully colored leaf and would grab it for later reference! Unfortunately, leaf colors don't keep past a day or two. BUT, (Reason number 87 as to why I love digital cameras...!) with my camera, I can freeze the diverse leaf colors in time and refer to them whenever I want!

I discovered most of these leaves last weekend, when the wind was gusting to 50 miles an hour and I had a yard full of leaves from trees that were probably miles away - that's why most of these are under plastic. I wanted to take the pics in the daylight, when the colors would be truer, but they were trying to take off!

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The most colorful and diverse tree in my yard has to be this Japanese Maple - I was disappointed when I first bought it - it had been mismarked and the leaves turned out a plain green in the summer and I wanted a red one. But once it matured, I discovered that its Fall color was breathtaking! The five leaves below all came from this one tree.

The two oval leaves are from a "Burning Bush " (Euonymus). Proof that I can paint a leaf PINK and it will still be realistic!

The underside of a waterlily pad...

Even a shot of my red Castor Bean...

And.... a couple of "my" leaves inspired by my Autumn finds!

The Quest For The Unobtainable

I bet you think this post is about striving for wealth, or power, or fame - something along those lines. Well, no, it's about my great creative ideas using hardware or craft items UNTIL I find out no one makes the particular items I have in mind!

Well, here's what I mean...Example #1~ I normally don't like to add "silly" stuff to my leaves, but when I first began, I thought the waterlily pads were sort of boring (especially before I started painting my pieces), so I found little ceramic frogs/toads to attach to them, and discovered they were really popular. Enough so that I had trouble finding more! I finally found a local florist shop that agreed to wholesale ceramic toads, snails and turtles to me (they were floral picks), and they worked great! Then the store closed, so that was no longer an option (yes, they even gave me the name of the company, but they ignored my emails). Well, I'd just look online! Oh sure, I found lots of frogs and toads on Ebay - unfortunately, they were either the wrong size, too unrealistic (like wearing clothes or playing instruments ), or "collectible" - i.e., expensive!

 

...So here I am, making molds of the critters, and casting my OWN amphibians in cement! Then I have to paint them...yes, it was a good save, and it makes each one even MORE one of a kind, that's true, but it is also more labor intensive!

Example #2~...When I was much younger, I was fascinated by greeting cards that had glitter and rhinestones glued to them to enhance a scene, a flower, etc. I especially liked the "dewdrops"- tiny clear glass cabochons that looked like dew on flowers. I even got to the point that I would lift all the cards with dewdrops out of the rack, because inevitably, some of the stones would get knocked off loose in the card rack, then I'd pilfer them! (Well, I knew no one was going to go thru them and glue them back on, and I couldn't bear to see them thrown away!)

Here it is, thirty (or so) years later, and I decide that dewdrops would be perfect to add onto my leaf pendants. Simple; I'll just go to the local craft store, right? Well..., not so much. While they had faceted rhinestones up the wazoo, none were smooth! Still, I wasn't worried - again, I was sure I could find them online! Surprisingly, that didn't seem to be the case either. I found only ONE online store that carries them, and first, they are slightly larger than I'd like, and second, they're acrylic while I really had glass in mind.

So here I am, buying little clear glass beads that I'm actually physically BREAKING IN HALF to achieve the look I want! Again, more time and labor!

 

Example #3~I wanted to cast little steel nuts {no Iron Man jokes, please....I'm laughing though -"nuts" is a funny word! :-) } 

into my small bird feeders so I could just buy rods with threaded ends to screw them onto. Guess what? No one MAKES steel or aluminum rods with threaded ends - they are either threaded the entire length of the rod (which is unpleasant looking), or not at all!

.....So here I go again, manually threading aluminum rods individually because NO ONE MAKES WHAT I WANT!!! hmph.

A Season Of Inspiration...

I'm sure that some of my friends and acquaintances can recall walking with me in the Autumn season, when I suddenly cry, "OOO!" and drop to the ground in mid sentence! No, it's not a heart attack - I just spotted a pretty leaf! There are so many colors and combination of colors on leaves this time of year that I have to collect them just to remember them all!

The Japanese Maple in my garden

Same tree...

Two leaves floating in the pond...

More out of my garden

Some fallen leaves I photographed so I can refer to the colors later

This is the back of a waterlily leaf - I paint some of the lily leaves I make with these colors - everyone probably thinks I make these colors up, but the backs of the leaves are usually quite beautiful!

New Stuff!

One of the few larger Gunnera leaves I have, painted in more Autumn -like colors. Turned out very well!
...And since the summer is staying very cool this year, and my Lotus hasn't thrown very large leaves yet, I wanted something to substitute for now. I came up with multiple waterlily leaves, which is still an aquatic theme, but larger (and more awesome) than a single leaf! This is the only one I had so far, it sold within an hour at the last show, so I will be working on others, along with the Lotus.