Not Another Art!

I saw a blog post a few months ago about cutting rubber stamps. It looked like fun so I put the needed supplies on my wishlist to see if Santa would bring any of it. Well, he brought the Speedball cutting tools so I bought the box of Pink Pearl erasers and the fancy ink pad after the holidays. The stuff sat there on the art shelves for a couple months and today turned out to be the day to play with it. In true Barbara Sue (daughter of Hank) fashion, I played with the stuff and then I watched a couple YouTube videos about it. Don't want to have too much instruction before just diving in! I drew a seashell and a fish on two of the erasers and got busy digging out all the parts I didn't want. It wasn't as messy as I thought it'd be and I didn't get black ink all over myself. I count that as a win.

 

There were a few Sparrows around this morning and this one flew over to get a drink so I snapped a picture. Makes a change from a bird sitting on the square green feeder picture. I keep hoping to see some kind of Woodpecker but so far, no luck.

 

A squirrel leaped up onto the roof of the suet cakes feeder and then up onto the suet nuggets crook. It had a nice time nibbling there for a quite a while.

 

Look at what I bought today. It's a spring bulb planter. Isn't it pretty? And you wouldn't believe the fragrance of the hyacinths. I want it to last a long time so I put it out in the garage where it's cool after supper. I'll bring it in during the day and then let it spend the night in the garage. I figured that florists keep flowers in a cooler to help them last so my cool garage might do the same thing. Maybe. As long as we don't get prolonged freezing temps.

 

When I flipped through the drawing book today, I found this page of Bugs & Such with six lovely bugs to draw. I like drawing bugs so I dived right in. The slender gray insect did not have the firefly glow around its back portion in the example but I thought it looked like a lightning bug and added it.

 

I saw the sun setting out my bedroom window and took a picture. It's not a very clear picture because it's taken through the plastic, a not very clean window, and the screen. But it was pretty so you get to see it. I thought about going outside to take the picture but I'd just gotten out of the shower and didn't want to terrorize the neighbors.

 

When I came back from errands it was just starting to rain like it meant it and when I got into the house I saw hail on the patio. I took a picture of the birdbath and you can see the little white balls of hail around that too.

 

Tomorrow's the first session of the Novel Intensive Critique group I signed up for with Wisconsin Writers Association. I got an email from the leader today asking if I'd be willing to go first because two of the other three aren't experienced with group critiques. I said okay.

Then I sat down and made some notes about publishing and marketing for a workshop that some writers are organizing. They invited me to be on a couple panels so I thought it'd be a good idea to plan a bit beforehand. It helped to organize my thoughts on the subjects. Made me less nervous about the whole thing.

--Barbara