Stamps of the Week- Italian

These are a few stamps from my small collection of Italian stamps. I've used a bunch of the doubles in some of my artwork but at some point realized how collectively cool all of the Italian stamps are and started putting them aside in a smaller collection for an as of yet unthought of piece. These are just a few of my most favorite stamps from this collection.



This stamp is one of my all time favorites because it looks like you can just walk right into. And sometimes I'd like to....



Who doesn't love a good castle?



Always partial to all things tiny, especially tiny stamps.



More tiny stamps...

Container Potatoes!

Yesterday I decided it might be time to dig up the potatoes that I've been growing all summer in a big container in my little backyard. Once the plant stalks start to yellow, they're done.



You have to be really careful getting the dirt out so as not to puncture any potatoes buried in the dirt. I use a big plastic serving fork and an empty plastic plant container to break up and scoop the dirt out. And after digging a long ways down, I found my first two little potatoes!



Here's a closeup of one of the bigger potatoes that I was able to harvest.



Sadly, this next photo is the entire yeild of potatoes for the year! I was expecting a little more. I used the eyes from a HUGE baking potato and I thought it would yield more and/or bigger potatoes, but that's not the case. Perhaps the potatoes were simply too constrained by the size of the container. Last year I used fingerling potatoes (very small!) and the yield was close to double what I was able to harvest this year. C'est la vie. Next year, back to fingerlings in multiple and larger containers. The one thing I do know is that THESE potatoes will be the best I eat all year!



Growing potatoes are REALLY easy- even if you only have a little space. This website has some good instructions for easily growing potatoes in containers: http://www.container-gardening-tips.com/container-vegetable-gardening/growing-potatoes-in-containers.html

Stamps of the Week- Animals

These stamps are from my smaller collection of animal stamps. Sifting through them feels like traveling to me- they're so varied across the world. I have hundreds of animal stamps, but these are just a few of my favorites.



I love the hanging panda. So sad I didn't get to see them while traveling through China a few years ago.



I ask you, who doesn't love a bejeweled camel?



I love this next one for the great colors.



I've seen all of these while scuba diving in various parts of the world. I love how realistic most of these are. The nudibranchs are incredibly small creatures and it's difficult to see this much detail on them when you're under the water.

This one just simply cracks me up.

As always, some of my favorite stamps are the ones with only 1 or 2 colors. Simple, effective design.

Bunnies, bunnies everywhere....

These are some of my favorites, probably because they have plants in them.

Stamps of the Week- Ships

I thought for the next few weeks for my 'Stamps of the Week' it might be fun to show you some of the more interesting stamps that I keep in smaller collections which are separated from the main collection that I use in my art. From time to time, I will do themed art pieces using one of my smaller collections, but for the most part these are stamps that I love too much to part with.

This is my small collection of ship stamps. I have actually used many ship stamps in my mixed media art pieces because I didn't start separating the ships out until just a few months ago. It took me a while to realize that there are a LOT of ship stamps out there! And then I decided that I should start keeping them. I actually did a 'ship' themed canvas several months ago, but I'm not satisfied with how it turned out, which is unfortunate because I used some of my favorite ship stamps in it.

I digress. Here are a few fun ones:

I'm always fascinated by the triangle stamps.

Most of the triangle stamps I've found are from South America, but this one is surprisingly a US stamp. AND it has a ship, so it's doubly cool.

Ship stamps from a couple of my favorite places.

These make me wonder about Malta. I know nothing about it. Except that I haven't been there and I'd like to see the Megalithic Temples in Malta. Someday.

Lastly, a couple of nice tall ships. I really like stamps in either black & white or black & brown. Maybe because they remind me of newspapers and books, both of which I love to read.

I've finished my summer work in the mountains and now it's back to classes, blogging, working on some new art pieces and getting my life back to a little more normalcy. Next week I'll be posting some things from my collection of Canadian stamps and hopefully blogging some other fun things in between.

Back to Blogging!

I know, it's been a while. But I'm still here. I've been working on 3 different alpine field research projects over the last couple of months and it has taken a toll on my blogging time, not to mention the creation of new art. I have 4 canvases that have all been started and are all less than half finished. I've totally lost momentum on them but am hoping to get back to it now that I'm more or less done working until next summer. I'm looking forward to it as I definitely feel a happiness surge when a portion of my day is spent in creative pursuits.

I want to share a couple of my favorite blogs and websites today because I always love finding new treasures on the net.

First, I dabble in gardening and my all time favorite gardening post is this one by a woman in Canada who is my true gardening champion. (She has a fabulous book that has saved me a lot of time and wasted effort, and it's fun to read.) She's also a photographer and graphic designer so the photos on her blog are always worth a look:

http://www.yougrowgirl.com/

I found a really great mixed media artist online named Seth. He has a blog about his art, the art of others, good books, great art in NYC, etc... He makes zines and mixed media work. His blog is one of my favorites. Maybe because he's living one of my dreams- that of artist in NYC, but maybe because it just has really great information and I love his art. I encourage you to check out his blog if you like mixed media artwork:

http://www.thealteredpage.blogspot.com/

I moved into my little row house in Denver about a year and half ago. Across from my house is a building with some little businesses on the bottom floor- 2 artists and a yoga studio. Lately the two artists have been open for the First Friday Art Walk on Santa Fe because we're only a couple of blocks away so on the first Friday of August we decided to check out both of these artists studios. The first guy, whose name I can't remember, was a textile artist that makes big colorful quilts with mostly geometric patterns. The second artist is a painter named Richard Groskopf and his work is amazing! His studio is stacked to the brim with huge, amazingly colorful paintings- I can't wait to go back to see them again. Check out the gallery photos on his website:

http://www.richardgroskopf.com/

I hope you like these sites as much as I do. Post YOUR favorite sites in the comments- I would love to see what your favorites are right now.

Later today or tomorrow I'll get back to posting 'Stamps of the Week'. This week I'm posting stamps from one of my special smaller collections that I've separated out from my main collection so check back soon!

Stamps of the Week

I know, it's been 2 weeks since I've posted anything new on my blog. I'm working in the field for a couple more weeks doing vegetation surveys and counting flowers and I'm gone from 5am till 6 or 7 at night. I find it hard to blog when I'm so tired after hiking in the mountains all day. So today I thought I would do a BIG post of 'Stamps of the Week'. I've decided to go through my smaller stamp collections and start highlighting those for the next few weeks.

These stamps are all from my vegetation collection of stamps. It's mostly flowers, but I do love trees so there are lots of those too....

In this first set, I particularly love the tree on the bottom. I think you could live in a tree like that and never feel like you had to come down.



I like these stamps for the simple colors and designs.




These are a little crooked, but nonetheless, they're colorful and make me want to paint them....




The same for these.....

We spent a month in the Cook Islands 'recovering' after our long winter at South Pole- so I love all things 'Cook Islands' but especially their stamps, and stamps with flowers are all the better.

I have a soft spot for all three of these next countries, as well as for these stamps!

I like these for the blue hues.

And last, but never least, some of my very favorite flowers. I found my very first Calypso bulbosas in the woods this year. They were REALLY tiny, almost hidden among the foliage and if the hill hadn't been so steep as to put them at eye level with me, I would have completely missed them. They survived for about three weeks in the shade and I only found three of them.

I have never seen this flower, but I would love too. This stamp is fabulous!

And finally, the 'Shooting Star' flower. This is one of my all time favorite wild flowers. If you have never seen this flower, get yourself to the Rocky Mountains ASAP and go hiking above 9,000'.

The area where I've been doing vegetation surveys this years has many meadows that are FULL to the brim with these flowers! I love seeing thousands of them together in one place. A truly beautiful and inspiring flower....