Karla's Cottage

A little dinner party

 

There is a 50% off sale in the Boutique!!! To access the bargain prices, type in

LABORDAYSALE

 at the checkout, and hit "recalculate" and watch the amount drop in half.

I'll be out of town and away from my computer and out of touch for a few days, so shipping will be next week.  Please remember that the postage prices will be adjusted when I get the actual total from the USPS as I box the goodies up to send to you and I will refund excesses.  

www.karlascottage.com

Aren't these hydrangeas pretty?  I am hoping to keep the plant I picked them off of alive, but while hydrangeas are one of my favorite flowers, they are not one that like me back that much. Maybe I love them so much because of their elusive, playing hard to get, attitude toward my garden?

Sometimes I think I wouldn't be any worse off if I'd simply planted 20 dollar bills instead of hydrangeas.   I sure don't love that aspect of them.

We had some little dinner parties this summer.  For all of them, I kept the table simple.  In the winter, I love layers of table cloths, but for summer, I preferred the bare table top.

It felt nice at the time, but looking back at the photos, it seems a little stark, doesn't it?

Miscellaneous tidbits of what's been going on, and where the heck did summer go?

Summer has snuck out on me somehow and I feel like I've missed most of it.   It simply went by too fast.   

Don't ask me what happened to my days. Besides what I've already posted about, trips, painting, raising pups,  I made a few things here and there.

Like this collage with hand painted flowers, modeling paste, and very old papers.  

Many Thursdays were spent at craft day with friends.

After a long time of not getting to see him, my little buddy, Fin was around again for a couple of visits, and we went to the KC and Topeka zoos, and got to hang a bit.

I didn't get to spend nearly the amount of time I wanted to on getting ready for A Snowbird's Song.   Some things got done, but I still have a set of kits to make.

 I spent quite a bit of time in the garden and tending to flowers.

This silly doodle might have kept me hopping too.  

As a matter of fact, I have a feeling that raising puppies and then keeping this girl is why I feel like summer slipped away.  Those babies ate up a lot of my time. 

As well as a rocking chair, some shoes, the cords to the strings of lights on the gazebo, multiple flower beds, and much, much more.

Now, the kids are back in school, and summer is winding down.  

But I am not ready to call it over.  Pumpkin lattes are being advertised, autumn decor is popping up everywhere, but seriously, it is still August, it is not fall yet.  I'm not giving up on my favorite season, just because the kids are in classes again.  There is still some fun to be had!

 

 

A redo

Did I confuse you with this room?

Nope, not my house!

Not my style at all.

Never the less, or perhaps even more because of it, I loved being a part of the redoing of this space for a friend.

A few of us got together to repaint and rearrange this office.

 

While I don't get one bit tired of the romantic, cottage look that I have in my own home, it sure is fun to play with some brighter tones and a more modern look.   Especially when we had such great art to plan the design around, and a room full of good friends to hang with while we worked on it.

Darkening of the Sun

Our town was not completely in the path of the totality, but was close. I'd have been happy with that, but my family's Sacred Circus troop was playing at a festival that was dead center of the darkness. So we packed up the camper and headed out to enjoy the shows on the arial rigs and in the afternoon sky.

This event was built around the eclipse, and there were huge parties on Monday in honor of it.  Drum circles, dancing, Native American ceremonies.  I'd fully planned on attending the Cherokee one, but after three days of heat, the idea of walking a 1/4 mile up to a bare hilltop in the mid day sun wasn't ideal.  Our air conditioner didn't work in the camper, and neither did the outlets, so we had no fan.

 The nights cooled off, and there was a breeze, but I was still worn out from getting very few breaks from the Missouri summer.  (Although it could have been worse, I'd expected bugs and there wasn't any problem with them at all!  Thank goodness for that break, yay!)

While thousands of happy hippies headed up the hill to go dance in the sun as it disappeared behind the moon, I joined some of my family who decided to take advantage of this Roots in Bliss Village that my boy had erected for the aerialists.  The place was pretty much deserted while everyone climbed up the road to the hilltop, so we sat under the shady tents and waited for the eclipse, enjoying our private time.   There was howling at the moon, some dancing, lots of relaxing.

 There was even a fan.  And chairs.  And shade.

There were a few others about, but the field was large, and our group still had an intimate feel to it.

I was thankful that these guys also decided to stay behind and not go with the crowds, they serenaded the moon as it covered the sun and I felt like I was being serenaded myself.

After the lively days we'd spent at the overflowing festival, watching the sun from this spot with a handful of people felt even more special.

I'd been more worried about everyone's eyesight than I was about looking forward to seeing the solar event myself, and wasn't expecting to be so moved by seeing first little bite of sun go away.  

When the air started to change and the light eerily began to have that glow, I was hooked.  

Of course, I was still worried about eyesight. And kept watching the girls as much as the sun, making sure everyone was following proper glasses etiquette.  And since bright lights lead to migraines for me, I peeked up in small doses.

 But there is much more to watching one of these than just looking up.  Looking around, feeling the shifts, and thinking about the magic of nature was more important to me than watching the entire sun get swallowed up.

I'm glad to know there will be another one to watch in my own lifetime.  

 

 

 

 

 

Mermaid craft day (and a redo that helps a little bit at least)

For the last couple of years, Tami has been inviting a group of local ladies who met and became buddies at Birdsong, over for craftdays themed for the season.  She goes ALL OUT, way, way out, on making us welcome.  For our summertime get together, she filled her house with seashells and gave us a beachy get away right in the middle of Kansas.

She is also, way, way over the top generous with the supplies she provides and projects she plans.

I chose to make a mermaid from Sculpy clay and seated her in a shell chair.  I wasn't too worried about the thick neck, sunken shoulders and wormy arms, knowing that she would have flowing, wool roving hair and be holding some things in her hands so those parts wouldn't show much.  

Over all, I was pretty happy with my sculpture.

And I loved the shell "easy chair" made with coral and a half shell.

I also wasn't too worried about the texture of her tail, since I was going to cover it in mica flakes.

But maybe I should have worried a little bit more....

ugh

Or should I just say, UGLY?

This mermaid should probably slip her head right back under the waves.

Some days, we just have to face it that what we make isn't as good as what we make other days, right?  

Even the crown that I worked on isn't very pretty. I've only shown a snip of it, it isn't worth showing you the whole thing.  Oh well.  It was such a fun day with good friends, that I didn't care that my creation was more Creature from the Black Lagoon than Little Mermaid.  

Thanks, Tami! I had a blast, as always!!

EDIT

 

Well, if you know anything about me, you'd notice that I hate an unfinished or bad project.  After looking at the photos I posted earlier, I was more than slightly aggravated by how my poor little mermaid had turned out.

So, I sanded some of the bumps in her face, repainted it, added some different colors to her hair and redid the crown as well as what she was holding.

She still isn't the prettiest thing I've ever made, but I feel better about her.  

There are things that cannot be fixed, like the way she slumped down into the chair and is sitting at the wrong angle, and the fact that her hips are too narrow, and oh, so many more.   Far from perfect, but now I feel like I can place her on my shelf and enjoy her as a memento of a lovely day and not cringe every time I walk by!

 

Hooked on floating frames and another Wyoming painting

Our last night in Wyoming was a little drizzly at dusk, and the cloudy sunset made for some soft, stunning tones.  

Of course, I had to do a painting from the photo I took from the roof of the house!!!  

And, of course, once again, I didn't create the piece on a standard size piece of paper, so it wouldn't fit in a ready made frame.  My choices for framing were either a custom one (too expensive) or another floating frame with the picture sandwiched between two sheets of glass.

(The glass is probably too reflective, when you look at the painting, you see yourself, but Ryan won't care. This one is a gift for him.)

This painting, and the other two vacation scenes that I did were made into note cards to give as gifts.  

The  painting I'd done earlier, was also popped into a floating frame, just like these.   

I really like the ease of this style of framing, but know I can't do it all the time, all over the house, that would be too much of a good thing.  The dusk painting will be in Ry's room, and this one is being sent to the owners of the home as a thank you for letting us stay there. 

 

Labels for the honey jars, and steps to an acrylic dog portrait

It was important to my husband to have special labels for his honey jars. So he asked the family to make some for him.  

The grand fairies did some drawings, I painted our dog, Honey, and we used a mix of the designs on the bottles, front and back.

That man LOVES his dog, and our anniversary was this week (32 years!), I figured I could combine label making with creating a gift for him all in one dog portrait.  

This is the photo Honey posed for. I held up a treat to get her to look up to the point where a bee would fly above her in the painting.  

She seemed disappointed when her modeling session was over, she was enjoying the treats.

First, I did a value sketch over the pencil drawing.

Then I started on the eye.

The layers started to build up next and the eye got more detail.

At this point, it was almost done, all that it needed was fine tuning, the little hairs that gave it depth and texture.  I chose my background color to compliment the blue that the girls used in their own art.

The final step makes a big difference, doesn't it?

After scanning the designs, I sized them and printed pages of the pictures onto matt photo paper, cut them out and glued them to the bottles.   

oh no!!!  

How could I have spent about 8 hours staring at the dog photo and painting her from it and not notice that her tags are missing???  As I was editing this post, it popped out at me that she has no tags. Dang, I just bought new ones for her before we went on vacation last month.  Looks like I need to make another one.  She is not going to get a sparkly, rhinestone one this time. She gets the cheapo, plain style if she isn't going to appreciate the nice one and take care of it.

3 decades plus a couple of years

32 years? Those seemed to zip by.

We celebrated on Thursday, kind of low key, but nice.  We went to a favorite restaurant for happy hour, then came home and watched Ozark on Netflix.  Hey, when you get hooked on a series and only want to binge watch, that is a pretty exciting evening!!

We debated getting food to go and eating in front of the TV, so I'm proud of us for having a nice dinner with a glass of wine before we sped home to see what was happening next on our newest obsession.  Plus, I had already put on makeup, so DANG IT, we were going out!

Part of being married for so long is knowing that you don't have to spend a lot of money on an occasion to make it special.  Being together and doing something we both enjoy, was quite a nice way to celebrate the anniversary.

 

A Circus performance in Wyoming

My kids brought their rig to the family reunion in Wyoming, and not only put on a show, they gave lessons to cousins at the party too.

Watching all the little kids up there giving it a try was cute as can be.

And seeing some of the big boys in action was a real hoot.

Of course, I can never get enough of the amazing Miss Tree.

Or her charming daughters.

And I love seeing Sugarwings showing her moves.

There was some grinning going on.

And lots of oohs and ahhs.

Of course, life is a circus anytime these girls are around. This is just how they are just standing around having a conversation.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the night.

The Colorado painting is hung

The painting that I did of Colorado doesn't exactly match the rest of my house, with its bright colored wildflowers and red rocks.  But it was a sentimental piece for me and I realized that it was a similar size to the painting I did years ago of Destin Beach, FL.  

So, I hung it with the other vacation paintings in the entryway to my studio and my husband's office, at the bottom of the stairs.

It is keeping the three paintings from Siesta Key company.

I'd better not take any more trips, I am out of wall space.