Sustainable Souls Project

The beauty of nature really embodies this quote, how lovely the silence of growing things. Nature is perfect for every single person: a deaf person can see the beauty, a blind person they can smell the beauty of the flowers and feel the wonders of the earth. 

Check out the other amazing artists playing along with this fun project here: 

http://thesustainablesoulsproject.blogspot.com/

Every single person has the ability to use all, or part of their senses to inhale the beauty of nature and feel it's beautiful silence.

Sustainable Souls Project from Catherine Scanlon on Vimeo.

Nature, or what we often refer to as our lovely green spaces; are there for us. But are we always there for them? Do you reach for harsh chemicals that will harm the animals, the beneficial bugs or other things that live and grow in your green space to take care of a pest or issue that is threatening your green space?
 

My house is situated on an aquifer and while I have a lot of gardens, sometimes the gardens require pesticides to remain beautiful but I do not like to use them because I want to protect my water source. Simply, we have a high the water table and I try to find natural remedies to take care of pests that might hurt my gardens.

Here are my helpful hints that you can try first if you have any of these problems in your garden:

Ants or other Exo Skeleton Bugs: sprinkle diatomaceous earth over the spot where the ants are living. Around the earth or the rocks and really sprinkle it in there. This is harmful to the ants because it does something to their exoskeleton and they dehydrate and die. Diatomaceous earth is what is used for a pool filter.

Slugs: while we love coffee, slugs do not! Sprinkle coffee grounds or a coffee solution on the ground and around your plants that may have a slug problem, slugs do not like the acid in the coffee grinds and will turn away when they encounter it.

Tomato Hornworm: sadly, the only natural way I have found to get rid of the hornworm is to pick it off the plant. The part about the hornworm that breaks my heart is it creates a lovely, lovely month. It's such a double edge sword, but since I want tomatoes to grow I will sacrifice these interesting moths.

Weeds: pull them out by hand or spritz a vinager/water mixture on them. If that doesn't work, try bleach and water. The harmful effects of bleach dissipate into the air after a few minutes. Also, mulching with a thick layer of pine mulch helps stop the weeds.

Fertilizing: Always use organic versions, cow manure or your compost pile. Miracle Gro has a lot of bad stuff in it, and is definitely not a good choice for vegetables, but I always spend a little more and get an organic version.

Epsom Salt: also known as magnesium sulfate; "helps speed up plant growth, increase a plants nutrient uptake, deter pests, increase flavor of fruit and veggies, plus increase the output of vegetation."

Lime: if you find that your tomatoes have a weird brown rotten spot on the end that starts as it gets bigger and by the time it is ripe enough to eat, your earth has a calcium deficiancy and you can amend the dirt with a little lime. This is a deficiency in the earth that causes the tomato to get Blossom End Rot. In the fall after I have cleaned up all of my vegetable beds I sprinkle and work in a generous application of lyme into the earth. You can also take your soil to a local gardening center to have them test to see what you need to add to make your soil better.

You can make a difference and protect our precious earth! Before you reach for the harsh chemicals, take a minute to look on Pinterest or Google what your garden problem is and I'm sure that you will find and natural way to solve the problem, if in the end you still have it then reach for the chemicals, but use these chemicals very very sparingly and take the safety precautions seriously. Not only do they kill the bad stuff -- but they also kill the good things like the bees, the butterflies, the birds and all of the other beautiful things that you enjoy in your garden.

Thanks for joining me today for this fun project!

Bellissima Cards!!

I'm so blessed to have talented friends that like my stamps! The lovely Michelle Borsack of Bellissima Cards is featuring my stamps this whole week --  she has created some beautiful cards that you aren't going to want to miss! 

Here's the link to today's set of cards:

http://bellissimacards.blogspot.com/2017/07/day-1-of-catherine-scanlon-designs-week.html

Make sure you stop by and leave a comment, she's going to have a few sets to give out!

Thanks so much for dropping by, have a wonderful day!

Book Review: Artful Adventures in Mixed Media

Writing a book is a lot like having a child. You carry it with you in your mind for months, even years for some. You work on making it perfect, wondering if the world will love it as MUCH as you do. You wonder what they'll say about you, your creativity and the value of what is in between the front and back cover of your baby. There are so many excited and nervous emotions, to name a few; that come with writing a book.

When my dear friend Nathalie sent me a copy of her book to review, I remember the feelings of trepidation, anxiety, excitement just opening the box. From the moment I saw her cover art I was impressed. Just looking at the cover of her gorgeous book is a reward with an explosion of color and texture. A quick glance through brings intrigue and the feeling that I just can't wait to find a few moments to read, digest and ingest every single thing inside and then get to work creating something from her easy to follow instructions.

Nat has not only shared her precious heart in this book, but her tried and true techniques for creating gorgeous and colorful mixed media art. From the ultimate beginner to the advanced "professional" there is something for everyone to learn. Her unique process of inspiration and exploration brought something alive in me and made me want to create something different, colorful and beautiful while maintaining my own sense of style.

I decided to mix and match a few things and create something inspired from her beautiful book, Artful Adventures in Mixed Media.

Below I have cited each part of the book that inspired me, so you can see how my process evolved after reading her book.

Chapter 5: Texture Collage. I am a total vintage book, music sheet and tissue paper junkie so it's no surprise that this spoke to me for the base of my painting. I did try tearing the papers, but decided that I prefer cutting them because I prefer a clean edge. Instead of moving right into an image transfer, I added some gesso and transparent color to tone down the background and unify the design. It was pretty hard to let it sit and dry over night.

I was really inspired by the art on page 66 and 67 -- and decided that the blues and greens and a little pink would be a nice color palette to stick with. Because I wanted the next step to be the most prominent, I created the entire base painting before the image transfer.

I am truly inspired by nature, if you know my art at all -- and her chapter about Enjoying Nature's Beauty really spoke to me -- maybe I should have tried a cityscape, but since I live in the country flowers and greenery really ignite my creativity. I decided to create a digital collage from a photograph I had taken. Once it was printed, I had a photocopy made and set to adding it to my painting using a traditional gel medium image transfer.

I kept going back to the art on pages 66 and 67 -- and added some sgraffito techniques as well as some stamping with brown ink in the background.

To finish my fun painting, I splattered paints here and there, added some green to the foreground and added my little Maya Angelou quote. I feels finished -- and it really inspires me to want to create more pieces of art inspired by this amazing book. I hope you love it and find as as much inspiration from it as I have.

Thanks for dropping by today, have a wonderful day.

Daily PaintWorks

I have had so many people tell me that they love Daily PaintWorks that I thought I'd give it a try. I've listed a few of my latest 5x7 Paintings there, hope you'll take a look!

Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a wonderful day!

In the End: Creative Storytelling

Here we are at week 5 and our last post for the special presentation of the Whatevers Three! It's hard to believe a whole month has gone by and we've shared 5 fun pictures with you. I have really enjoyed my weekly mixed media pages and have been cooking up some fun ideas to use my stash of photos on.

You can read Vic's blog post for this photo by clicking here
You can read Nat's blog post for this photo by clicking here

Also, make you stop by the Whatevers Facebook Page, which you can find here. You can also share your project with us there, we love to see the story you create around the photo!

Here's the photo we used for this week: Women in a Truck!

Please note, we are sharing these photos with YOU for your PERSONAL use only -- we love and encourage you to share your work on social media with credit back to the Whatevers! These photos are not for classes or in any resale situation!

And here's my story for week 5:

In the end, Winston knew everything was gonna be ok.

THANK you so much for joining us on this fun remake of the Whatevers, make sure you like our Facebook pages, you never know what we're going to do next! 

Creative Storytelling -- we're bringing back the Whatevers!

I have been so excited that our 2 year long project from a few years ago, The Whatevers made it on the cover of the May/June Cloth, Paper Scissors magazine.  It's been hard to keep it a secret for the last few months.

This project, that my two dear friends Nat Kalbach and Vicki Chrisman and I shared is one that has always been near and dear to my heart. It was a fun way to create and be silly with no deadlines or requirements and we got to give our favorite photos a story.

• You can read Vic's blog post for this photo by clicking here.
• You can read Nat's blog post for this photo by clicking here.
• Visit the Whatevers Facebook Page here. You can also share your project with us there, we love to see the story you create around the photo!

Here's the photo we used for this week: Mr. and Mrs. Dam.

Please note, we are sharing these photos with YOU for your PERSONAL use only -- we love and encourage you to share your work on social media with credit back to the Whatevers! These photos are not for classes or in any resale situation! 

So without further delay, here's my colorful page. 

 

The text says: Winston was always embarrassed by how much effort her parents put into the annual 4th of July Parade.

 

She was always grateful at the end of the day.

 

Make sure you come back tomorrow for another installment in my FREE Creative Storytelling class. Thank you so much for dropping by, have a wonderful day!

The Whatevers: A Journey into Creative Storytelling

Four years ago I taught an on-line class at My Creative Classroom called Creative Storytelling, it coincided with the Whatevers Project that Nat Kalbach, Vicki Chrisman and myself were working on at the time.

Since My Creative Classroom closed a few years ago, I have decided to share some of the lessons with you, to coincide with our magazine article (and we got the COVER -- woohoo) in the May/June Issue of Cloth, Paper Scissors.

So as not to overwhelm, I'll share the 5 videos here and there over the next few weeks. To get started thinking about this, here's a little Fast Forward showing how one of my pages comes together. I didn't make any changes to the content of the videos, so the intro and voice over is out dated and the videos may be out of order from the original class, but the content is relevant to the release of the magazine article.

Enjoy, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for dropping by.