Mohonk Flowers & A Beautiful Garden Picket

I'm still enjoying my vacation and my time off as well. I really like to use this time to recharge and get inspired. I know I've shown you lots of photos of Mohonk Mountain House before (in my out and about section) but today I'm viewing it in a different way. We were there for part of the afternoon and I was running around, armed with my new camera. I decided this time, rather then get so many landscape photos, I would really get up close and personal with a lot of the flowers there. There are too many for one post so some of them will have to wait until another day and in the mean time, I've picked some favorites. Lots of wonderful ideas for some future paintings in these photos.

This beautiful Purple Salvia *Fairy Queen*.

I was so close to this bee that I almost touched him with the camera. His wings looks like beautiful stained glass panels.

Up close and personal with a yellow Lily.

My birthday was this past week and when I saw this beautiful picket that my blog friend Gail McCormack painted, I had to have it as my birthday present.

I nestled it in with a floor standing vase of Pussy Willows that fill a corner in my diningroom . It just looks so pretty in there and I get to admire it each time I go from the livingroom to the kitchen.

It is such a unique piece and I'm very thrilled with it.....THANKS GAIL!!! If you would like to stop by Gail's blog and say hello and view her beautiful artwork, here is her address: http://www.gailmccormack.blogspot.com/ .

Back in the garden, I was able to photograph a lot of different Foxglove but this was my favorite, Foxglove (Digitalis) *Camelot Lavender*

I got so close I felt like I could almost crawl inside.

Last of all, this beautiful pink Zinnia captured my attention.

Hope you've enjoyed this mini tour.

Totes & Tees.....

Over at my house I've been busy making more products from my paintings. Remember my Floxglove Seed Packet watercolor above........I've made it into........

several different kinds of shirts and.........

a cool tote bag.

I painted this little gray kitty for a very nice couple in Belgium last year, it actually was a Christmas present that was ordered for them. What do you know, I turned it into.....

a shirt for all the CAT CRAZY people out there. Actually, if I find that the cat products have a wide appeal, I will be doing more cat art that I can create fun, everyday items from.

With this design, don't ask me where the original photo is.....my husband Chris has his own wacky storage system for our photos. Sometimes I look and find things right away, other times, I might be sitting here 20 minutes and still haven't found it....I then give up in utter frustration. I spent about 10 minutes looking for this one tonight and then decided I could live without it for the moment...so here we are, without it.

Anyway, this cat and another sweet kitty were painted for a lady in CA, now here they are on a tee shirt and tote bag. I'll soon be adding these to my website but in the meantime, I'm adding them to my first ETSY site... http://www.artfulcreations.etsy.com/ .

Foxglove Seed Packet Watercolor On Masonite Board

Just this week I finished my latest 11 x 14 watercolor on masonite board. I've decided to do a whole series of seed packets in watercolor and I started the series by painting some Foxglove, a flower that I have always thought is so very beautiful.

I had some beautiful Foxglove photos from a trip we took to Mohonk last year (lots of photos of our Mohonk outings are in my Out And About section to the right) so I decided to use those as a reference for this painting.

I wanted to do a series of really unusual and fun paintings and I got the idea for seed packet paintings by looking around on line, at vintage seed packs that were for sale. I just stumbled across them one day and the idea hit me out of the blue.

I wanted to make the border of the painting very colorful as I plan to make tee shirts and tote bags from this design , as well as the other seed packets that I paint.