Scattered

I know it has been a little quiet here for a few days.  That usually means I'm so busy living life that I don't have time to write about it, or there is just nothing that exciting to share with you.  This time it is the former.  Scattered is my brain and the stuff all over the house that I haven't gotten around to cleaning up (usually cleaning is low on the priority list, but since it is starting to look like my teenager's bedroom, I need to get to some semblance of order soon.) 

I do have exciting news to share with you.  For the next three months (the last quarter of the year), I have an opportunity to be part of a co-op art gallery in downtown Boise.  It is only temporary, as it isn't planned to run past the end of the year.  I'm pretty excited and am trying to get some things ready for the space.  Most of my work is still up in Meridian until Oct. 8.  But I have other pieces that should work.

So yesterday I spent some time trying to get a few smaller pieces framed (you've seen them before).

Sorry the pictures aren't so great, I took them early this morning.  These are part of what I like to call the Mini Garden series.  Above are Winter Tree and Spring Tree.

Spring Tree, Summer Tree and Autumn Tree

And here are all the seasons together.  I have always intended to frame these and, now, have the incentive to do it.  I've had the frames and mats waiting around.  Just had to get out the mat cutter.

I'm embarrassed to say that the first one took me about two and a half hours to frame.  Why?  Well, maybe you can see from the pictures that the pieces are floating on the mats and set back like in a shadow box.  I sewed each piece to the mat and then cut matching mat pieces to go on the inside edges of the frame to hold the piece away from the plexi-glass.  This is a time when it does have to be perfect, for me.  So it took me a lot of fiddling to make sure there were no cracks on the edges where all the pieces met.

After finishing the first one, and going back to the store to get another mat, I figured out an easier way to do it.  The next three all together took less time than the first.  I still have to put hangers on the back, but I think they look pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

I bought about ten of these frames thinking that I was going to do more in this series.  But my attention on other things has taken me away from the excitement of doing more of these, at the moment.  I have one more I might frame while I have all the stuff out.  A couple of the other frames will be used for some artwork I own that has been sitting around waiting for the mat cutter to make it's appearance.  And I might use some of the others for some smaller pieces of mine not related to the series.  But framing these this way is not my favorite thing to do.