September Big Leaf Maple

For the month of the Autumnal Equinox I have revisited my Vernal Equinox leaf from March.  The maple (Acer macrophyllum) leaves that were just beginning to unfurl in Spring have now began to turn yellow and brown.  Though the leaves turn in a mottled pattern from green to yellow to brown here I gradated them from left to right to show the season's change.  I also reversed my half sun half moon motif from the Spring Equinox to show that the days are getting shorter.  Though it's the same size as the unfurling leaf I depicted before I tried to give a sense that this a bigger, mature leaf that is ready to fall into the Autumnal mulch.  Autumn is my favorite time of the year, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming months!

Wire Wrapping

I took a class last week at a local bead shop to make a wire wrapped beaded heart pendant! It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed making the heart. Over the past week I made a wire-wrapped leaf for my daughter. I thought it came out pretty good for a second attempt! I think this is inspiring me to get busy beading again. I'm way behind on my BJP!

Ginkgo Leaf in Fog

This month I chose to depict a gingko leaf.  This is my first non-native leaf, but I think that millions of years ago they did grow here, so it almost counts!  I remember my grandfather pointing out this tree to me years ago and telling me it had grown when the dinosaurs were alive.  This fixed it in my memory and when I met my fiance I learned that he too shared a fondness for gingkos!  Since John (my fiance) has his birthday in August I chose this ancient tree for this month.  He also has a fondness for bunchgrasses, which I depicted (rather abstractly) in the lower left corner.  The right is a fabric following design of ocean colored beads in tribute to the fact that the Bay Area this year has had an unusually cool August.  I've enjoyed all the fog rolling in off the Pacific, so I beaded a representation!  I chose the fabric color to match the colors of the year right now - Summer-dormancy shrouded in fog that awaits the rain.

Elder Leaf for July

As the dry season settles in we still can find some green in Sambucus mexicana - the blue elderberry.  This project is pretty simple - a leaf, some flowers (upper left), and green, not yet ripe berries (lower right).  Right now most of the elders have green berries, but a few are already a deep ripe purple, and some are even still in flower!  I chose the elder partly because this fabric's colors reminded me of it.  In fact one of the reasons I used few beads was so I could still see the fabric's lovely hues!  The elderberry branches are used by indigenous Californians for clapper sticks and flutes so is associated with music here.  But of course this little tree has a lot of history and mythological associations in Europe, also, and I found out recently that the European and Californian elders are now considered to be the same species!  This much revered plant is one of my favorites so it was nice to represent the elder in beads.  You can see a leaf from one of my garden elders in the first photo!

Ocean Seaweed Garden

It's taken a couple of weeks to post, but I did finish it by July 1st! As the hotter part of the year approaches we take more trips to the cooler coast. It's only 45 min. away and usually is about 20 degrees cooler and wonderfully foggy. So for June I chose seaweed shapes rather than leaf shapes. I used white pearls (yeah, I know they're freshwater - it's still aquatic, though!) to depict lines of foam as the waves go out. The other dyed ones were scattered around and used to construct a holdfast for my largest seaweed. And the shell was one I found washed up on the shore. It also repeats the spiral, which also popped up in last month's project. I think the colors and shapes of the seaweeds turned out pretty well. I mixed some garnet nuggets into the reddish one. I also used shiny rather than matte finish beads to give the impression of being wet and freshly washed up. Here's a couple of pictures of the beach and seaweeds that inspired me!

May BJP

Well May is finished and I'm officially caught up and working on June! May was a very difficult month for me. It felt long and dark and endless so that's what I was trying to show in my project for this month.

I had originally planned to use all black beads around the heart but something just wouldn't let me and I kept adding color so maybe it wasn't quite as dark as I thought. The heart in the middle is full of holes which is how I've felt but it's also anchored. I used red and white beads to hold it in place and it felt like I was trying to stitch up a fractured heart but I think it worked. The line of white beads is hope because I know there is still a lot and I just don't look in the right place sometimes. Why it snaked outside the borders I don't know - it just had a mind of its own. I did a close-up on the blue beads in the corner because they looked so pretty and sparkly!

This really seemed to have a mind of its own and took off in a direction I hadn't planned. Which I guess is what life does all the time. I think June is going to be brighter though!

Queen of the May

Another view of my project.


The Penstemon azureus whose hues inspired me.

This month is The May Queen in a Western Hawthorn Leaf! I've had this little Goddess spiral pendant for a very long time but since I don't really wear much gold-colored jewelery I never got around to incorporating Her into a necklace. But I love the design and the gold color is perfect to evoke the afternoon light through a verdant mixed evergreen forest in May. And May was especially verdant this year with above average rainfall! So I adorned my little May Queen with a bunch of green beads, with some Penstemon purple and blue colors as well. I also scattered some beads in those colors outside the leaf. Penstemons come in a range of colors but here I was inspired by Penstemon azureus. But the upper left represents a Clarkia unguiculata flower - the common name is Farewell to Spring! The model for my Western Hawthorn (Crataegus douglasii) leaf was the little hawthorn I bought this year at the native plant sale. It's the plant that you can see a bit of in the background! Anyway I had fun with this, but it was challenging to figure how to make the leaf margin look serrated. It was pretty simple to stitch, though, once I figured out how to do it - I think you can see from the picture what I did. The other problem when I first started was unexpected - I had trouble attaching the pendant because it's fairly heavy! But eventually persistence paid off and once I ran the thread through a few times it stayed put. And I love using these batik fabrics! The colors are so much fun to look at and work with. I'm also really liking using the interleaving paper to back these!