Strawberry Season

   Strawberries have personality. And good taste.

Crows Love Cherries!

Where did all the cherries go?

 
Caw!  Caw!

The tree was decimated by the crows.

Old Women

Some have a dislike (fear) of anything "granny". Everything is poo-poo-ed if it's too "granny".  The expression "not your granny's … (decor, car, crafts– whatever)" is touted as a good thing because to be "granny" means to be out-of-style. Well, I say poo-poo to that! Get over yourselves, youth obsessed. If you are lucky, you too will get old.

     Some of my paintings and drawings of "old women".

Reading

Watching

Shopping

Fetching blueberries

Wiggle Worms

 Wiggle Worms ... Why?

More than 3,000 species of earthworm exist in the world.

Worms can have between 1-5 pairs of hearts.
(What's a "pair" of hearts, though?)

Gotta whole lotta love!

If a worm is cut in half, only the part of the body that has the head will live.

Because I'm headstrong!

Earthworms will eat almost anything that was once alive, but is now dead.

I eat dead stuff!

Worms cannot hear or see.

But we can wiggle!

 And that's why Wiggle Worms!

Worms facts from:

http://www.infobarrel.com/Top_10_facts_about_Worms

St. Patrick and the Holy Trinity

"Even the plants of the field tell about God.
The shamrock has three leaves but only one stem.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not three gods,
 but one God."     ~ St. Patrick

I think that a gif illustrates the concept plus it is fun to make.

Mink at Mass

When I was very young, women were still wearing mink stoles with the little animal faces and paws attached.  Sunday Mass was an occasion to dress up and some women would adorn themselves with this strange item.  Kneeling behind one of these stoles and being stared at by those beady eyes was sometimes scary, sometimes fascinating and always distracting.

The Catholic faith has made me at times fearful and fascinated.  There have been distractions certainly.  For long stretches Catholicism was out-of-style for me and I ignored it except when I was frightened and prayer was the most comforting thing.

I wonder what distractions a child might have at Mass these days– anything as odd as dangling, dead animals?  Fur stoles are thankfully out-of-style (as are mandatory head-coverings for females).  Happily, I am now a less distracted Catholic.

One World, Many Stories

  Summer reading is upon us and I drew this ... sometimes a simple, literal interpretation is the best (and librarians are fond of "literal", heh, heh)!

and, of course, I just have to animate it!

Jumping Rope Animation

Here's how I made this animation using Photoshop:

1) I made 9 drawings. I changed each drawing to what I determined would be the next sequential move in the animation. It helps to be able to draw and be interested in movement. Scan the drawings into Photoshop and color them.

2) Edit each image to be the same size. These are 4" wide x 5" high, and 72 dpi. I like to place the drawings beside each other on my computer desktop so I can visualize how they relate to the previous one and next one— in other words: how they will animate.

3) Using my very first drawing in Photoshop, I open LAYERS. Make a new layer; in my version of Photoshop, I create a new layer by clicking on the box at the bottom, directly to the left of the trash can (in the layers window). Copy and paste drawing number 2 into the layer. Create another layer. Copy and paste drawing number 3. Another layer, drawing 4 ... until all drawings are in LAYERS in the very first drawing.

4) In the LAYERS window, unclick the check mark to the left of each layer, except for the first drawing at the bottom.

5) Open the ANIMATION window in Photoshop. The first layer will be there. Click the new layer icon (same icon as in the LAYERS window) at the bottom. In LAYERS, click the check box for drawing number 2. It will then appear in the ANIMATION window. Make another new layer and add drawing 3 by clicking its box. Add all layers to the animation. 6) Choose how long you want each frame to display. Each frame in this animation displays for .2 seconds.

7) Hit the play arrow to see how it looks! Hit stop if you need to make adjustments to display time.

8) Save for Web to create a lovely little GIF animation.

Note- The effect is similar to a flip-book. I could create more drawings to make an even smoother transition. See my "Dancing Sisters" and "SnowBunny" blog posts for similar animations.

Note 2- I got a bit artistically exuberant with the length of the rope. I may fix that (or not).

SnowBunny

SnowBunny's in quite the hurry;
cross-country skis in a flurry.
Getting exhausted,
extremities frosted,
determined to get there, don't worry.

Rats

Rats can't throw up, that's why rat poison works.

Rats don't really need to throw up anyway. Their digestive systems are powerful enough to process what would normally be dangerous materials, and their heightened senses of smell and taste keep them from consuming anything that they can't digest. from answers.com

Fun Underwater

Designs for Make A Splash - READ!

Designing t-shirts for librarians (and staff) is NOT my favorite thing. People are very opinionated about what they will wear. So the entire project usually begins with color restrictions, etc. I've never considered myself a "logo" designer but more of an illustrative artist ... so my t-shirts have you basically wearing a poster. For the past several years, I have been using the stock CD of supplied art for each summer reading theme. But not this year! The supplied art was dull and I was encouraged to give it a go. The result: One splashy t-shirt!

It reminds me of all the summers spent on the bottom of the community pool with a big teen-age boy's foot unwittingly holding me down. Ah! Fun!

And below we have both sides of the reading log. This is such a fun theme and I'm glad that the supplied art was crap so I get to do my own!