Lemon Tree Tales

Best of Friends

Fiona is now a little over 5 months old and is definitely a beloved member of our family. Fearghus is quite taken with her except when he's tired of running around in crazy circles. Last month we got back from another quick trip in the RV where Fiona learned how to jump on the sofa ... their favorite place to be while window gazing.

I think they were quite excited to be watching out for rabbits. Here they are waiting for a treat. Don't be fooled by their sweet looks of innocence, they both can get into trouble at the drop of a hat.

We met a few other cairn terriers during our travels. This little wheaten colored cairn is 1 year old Ellie and she loved running with our two. Don't you just love all the colors they have? Fearghus and Fiona are both brindles so their colors will change as they grow. Already Fearghus is more silver than what he was a pup. Fiona has more red on her back than at 6 weeks old but I believe that she'll end up being a salt and pepper dog.

Fabric Journal Pages

My doll friends and I decided earlier this year that we'd each make a fabric journal. Each of us would make one page for everyone to include in their book. That way by the end of the year we'd have a piece of artwork from each other. The books would have themes. Laurie chose "girlfriends", Valerie wanted "English cottage garden", Daisy went with "your childhood doll" and I opted for "dragonflies". 

The base for each page is a cotton canvas that we handed out. I used an old curtain that I was saving. I wanted to have something interesting so I tea-dyed it as did Daisy and Valerie. Laurie gave us white canvas. In the end for me that didn't matter because I started out by painting each page with fabric inks in the colors that I thought was suitable for the pages. 

Here's what I've done so far with Valerie's page:

I added some stamped images to the dyes to give it more depth. I'm not sure if I'll add more or not. First I have to begin to gather the items that I'll collage/sew on to the background. But I thought it was a good start for the English cottage garden. (Valerie loves the autumn colors so I'm keeping to the reds more than the traditional purples and pinks that most illustrations use.)

Here's how Laurie's page came about, while I was making it I hated it but at the end I now love it:

 

Daisy's page was a little more simple with pinks and purples:

 

Finally I began to tackle my page:

 

I still need to add a bit of mica powders to everyone's pages because I liked the effect I got with Laurie's page. I'm setting aside the backgrounds while I work on the next phase ... 3-D paper doll figures for each page. So far it's an interesting start. This is such a different type of project than what I usually work on, it's very fun. 

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a happy halloween. We had quite a few trick-or-treaters and even a few homemade costumes, yay! My favorite was the child who was a box of redvines. I have noticed that the little ones are polite and that their parents remind them to say thank you; however, the teenagers that come to the door aren't polite at all ... they grab the candy and take more than one without asking and don't say anything at all. Hopefully they are the exception and not the rule. At 8:30pm I closed up shop and turned off the porch light and closed the screen door. The dogs were very happy when that happened because they had to be shut in the kitchen during all the excitement.

My friend Calamity Kim sent me this lovely card to mark the occasion. I do believe that she carved the girl stamp herself, right Kim? Thank you so much ... she's hanging on the bulletin board now so that she can keep me company.

Those spider web picture corners are too cool!

 

Isn't the inside just as cute ... love the polka dot tape! Oh and I do wish that my handwriting was a beautiful as Kim's.