painting a day -- day 7, and a Joy list

It's a wet day today. Thunderstorms. Cool air. I had been planning to spend today outside in the garden, but the weather had other ideas. Which is ok with me. I like being inside on a rainy, green day. Listening to the birds and thunder. And I have plenty to keep me busy inside. Like finishing up the begonia leaf painting.

Not perfect, but for something I was trying to be quick working on, not too bad.

My inclination is to keep tinkering with it, but I'm not going to let myself.

Subborn as I am, I have not decided to abandon acrylics. Instead, I took them out again today and painted more flowers in a vase.

I don't love them, but that's ok. I painted the polkadots with my fingertip, which was fun. And I like the streaky green wall. This time I experimented with sketching out a design first. I don't usually do that with acrylics. With the extra paint I worked on another abstract on a stretched canvas.

It needs something more, but I'll leave it be until I work on my next little acrylic painting, using up more  extra paint.

I'm feeling very Joyful today. My list is bursting at the seams.

• painting every day
• a custom Etsy order
• my Moo mini cards
• baby birds in my rosebushes
• butterflies
• delicious jasmine flowers blooming on a sad plant

Painting every day has been wonderful! Thank you Dana for challenging me to do this. Perhaps blogging every day is a bit overkill, but it's helping to hold me accountable. It's also forcing me to take more photos. Using my real camera is something else I've been focusing on lately. I love the convenience of carrying my phone with me to take photos, but if I'm not out and about and if I don't have a leash (or two) in my hand, then there isn't really any reason to be using a camera phone (even if I do love instagram). 

Thank you, also, to the person who ordered a custom bracelet from me. Finding that perfect color of crochet cotton ended up being a fun adventure. Right across the road from the shopping center with the craft store was the lake:

I'm glad I decided to drive over to the park and take in the loveliness of the view, even if just for a few minutes. And I did find the perfect color of thread.

Color is such a Joy.

As are my Moo cards!!

Frustrated with my business card flop, I decided to finally order some new ones. I'd heard a lot of good things about Moo and so I thought I'd try them.

Love them! The way Moo works is that you can choose up to 100 different images for your cards. They do make full size business cards as well as these adorable mini cards (and postcards, greeting cards, stickers, etc.). It was very easy to upload my images and to design the front of the card with my information and logo. Let me know if you are interested and I'll email you a code for 10% off your order.

Joyful, too, are the baby birds living in the Double Pink Knockout rosebushes in the front corner of my yard. Matthias discovered them while mowing the lawn. Robins kept scolding him as he mowed near there and he soon saw why.

I was surprised to see that as soon as the babies realized that I wasn't their mother, they jammed their heads deep into the nest to hide from danger. I felt bad about poking around and disturbing them, so even though I didn't get a good shot of them, I stopped trying.

But speaking of roses... a few days ago, my first rose of the season opened. 

It's a lovely rugosa variety called Therese Bugnet. Not your typical rugosa foliage and not your typical rugosa flowers. They have a nice fragrance, but not overly strong (I'm a bit picky when it comes to rose fragrance).

I'm not at all picky about jasmines. The more the merrier. I have a few different varieties, including one plant that has looked pretty sad all winter long. I was delighted to see that it was full of flowers. Just a single open flower gives off a very strong fragrance. It's a sambac variety, but I can't remember exactly which. I think, Flore Plena, but I'm not 100% sure (I think the plant came labeled a generic "Jasmine"). In any case, it's beautiful. And sitting at the dining room table painting is extra Joyful with its flowers open beside me.

See... it's been a Joyful week. Hope yours has been, too.