Photo Friday: Flowering

How can I choose only one?

 

 

 

Beeswax!

I confess I forgot to include you in my beeswax making method.  I forgot to blog it, photograph it, and share it. If you'd like to check out the link to the YouTube video I used, go here.  The guy in this video uses a solar oven.  I just used my regular oven on the lowest temperature and it worked great.

Here are the awesome results!  As mentioned, I washed the wax in water twice to remove as much honey and other impurities as possible.  Then using an old window screen that would fit in my oven, I layered an old 9x12 cake pan with an inch or so of water on the rack in the oven.  The window screen was placed on top of the pan and a paper towel was placed to fit exactly over the cake pan but on top of the window screen.  The paper towel was my fine sieve, used to remove all the tiniest bits of impurities.  Then I heaped the wax "shavings" onto the paper towel, turned the oven on low and watched and waited until all the wax melted through the paper towel into the waiting cake pan.

The most crucial part was to turn off the oven and leave everything alone until the morning.  This way the pure wax hardened and floated on the water in the pan and there was no accidental mixing of impurities back into the cooling wax.

I have this photo of some of the wax collected after straining the honey out.  This is before all the wax was collected and washed twice.

My sheet of wax is quite thin because I didn't have a whole lot of wax.  But this will melt nicely into my molds for easy use.

Photo Friday: Alive!

Showering Bluebird

Away With You, Michigan Weather!!!

It hasn't happened for several years.  Saving for college tuition and life have prevented my yearly road trips for several seasons.  This was a wonderful year for it to become a reality again.  Goodbye cold Michigan (at least for a week).  We bundled our summer clothes, cameras, and sketchbooks into the car and road off into the sunset to warm and beautiful Savannah...

 From the streets of Savannah, to the Riverfront and Tybee Island to charming shoppes, garden squares, author's homes, and plenty of sketching and reading opportunities made for a warm and relaxing week of sunshine.

A Challenge called "Paris"

We were given a challenge several months ago during Cake Eaters, an art group I'm involved with.  It was a one word theme...Paris.  Naturally visions of the Eiffel Tower immediately come to mind.  However, my frame of mind hasn't been normal lately.  So I thought...and sketched...and dreamed.  The week before the deadline I physically started putting my ideas on fabric.  This is what I made...

I call it, "Paris in the 1940's"

Photo Friday: Explore

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Some of my favorite places to explore are in New Mexico...