30 Days hath September

Oh how I wish it had many more days! It flew by so fast.
This is my growing butterfly collection.

New art arrangement on the north wall of our studio/school.

*I haven't forgotten about the last installment of my video painting the flying birdie, I will post it this coming Friday.

They're here!

The beautiful cosmos have arrived.

& with them, inspiration for my late September journal pages.

Autumn leaves intervention

Found these on my walk with Turbo and gave them some TLC with my brushes and some paint.
I love the Fall! It's the season I am most inspired by.

Little break

I will be taking a little one week break from the blog to get ready
for the new school year with my boys.

I moved some stuff around the studio this weekend.
This is a little sneak peek, I'll show you more when I'm back online...
Until then I wish you a very lovely week.

Manolo's fresh corn tamales

Strip the ears of fresh corn with a sharp knife, grind the fresh cut kernels with a "molino". Season the mashed corn with sea salt and put a couple of spoonfuls of the corn puree on fresh husks and wrap them as little presents :) Steam for 10 or 15 minutes (we use the corn "bones" in the bottom of the pot instead of a steamer basket ) and serve with jocoque or yogurt cheese.
He does the cleaning, cutting and grinding and I wrap the little presents :)

3x3

My very talented friend Gustavo Aimar is having a little party
to celebrate his blog's third anniversary and you are all invited!
He has created a special blog called 3 x 3 where he will be posting tiny 3 x 3 cms
(1 1/8" x 1 1/8") works of art by anyone that wants to participate.
These three little birds are my contribution.
I used watercolors, white acrylic ink and a Micron pen on gray bookboard.

............

If you want to participate email Gustavo at aimargus@gmail.com with a
300 dpi 3 x 3 cm (1 1/8" x 1 1/8") jpg file of your artwork with your name,
blog link and the technique or materials you used to make your tiny piece of art.
*He stresses the importance of actually making you art piece
in that small scale and not just adjust any artwork to that size and format.

Fiesta!

Manolo is celebrating Mexico's birthday by making fresh blue corn tamales.

Best present ever!

This is by far the best present I have ever received on my birthday (yes, today is my birthday!). My son Daniel (age 11), carved that Snoopy (my all time favorite character) out of balsa foam, painted it with acrylic paints & a sharpie marker and made him the perfect red house out of cardboard! He surprised me early this morning with it. He had been really sneaky and secretive about what he was making me for my birthday for the past two weeks :) Don't let anyone tell you otherwise...handmade presents are the absolute best.
Thank you Daniel! I love you so much. I LOVE my Snoopy!

Sketchbook cover...done.

Now what should I put on the other sketchbook's cover? hmmm...
Done with Cotman watercolors and FW white acrylic ink.
The lovely Stephanie Levy interviewed me at Artists Who Blog,
if you'd like to read it click here.

New Sketchbooks

I found these beautiful hardcover recycled paper sketchbooks yesterday
at a big art supply shop the city. They're called Cachet Earthbound by Daler◆Rawney

This old postcard I painted a few months ago served as inspiration
for the coral reef drawing I made on the cover.

I plan to color it with watercolors this afternoon.

Remodel

We've been doing a little addition to our home the past few months.
This new niche used to be Manolo's closet.

We now have a new bathroom, walk in closet & laundry room
attached to our bedroom.

Daniel will have a room of his own (yay!) once were done
in what used to be our bathroom and laundry room.

Prototype

A little 4" x 4" handbound accordion style calendar I'm working on right now.
Six months on each side & printed on beautiful local acid free handmade paper.
I will hopefully have a whole bunch of these available in my shop by late October.

Bigger!

Beautiful objects on my inspiration board today.
I modified the format of my blog this morning,
I hope you enjoy the bigger photos.
*If you are interested in learning how to make your
blog photos bigger I suggest you read this post.
I googled "how to post bigger photos on Blogger" and it came up :)
**Ups! I forgot to tell you that if you click on the photo
it will take you to Flickr where I placed notes with links
to all the lovely artists represented here.

September pages

September! My favorite month!
Collage & Sakura Micron pen on my
Hand Book Artist Journal.
Click the middle image to see it BIGGER