It has been a long, tiring
and emotional six weeks
but
Midge and I have made it to our new home in
Florida.


We are even unpacked
and ready to enjoy life here.

One of the first things I did in the stuio
was make a cloth tiki for our
good friend Linda.



I have been dying to carve a tiki after seeing them all over Cocoa.
But time, tools and skills stood in my way.
However, I came across
cloth tikis
while searching for tiki inspiration on the web.
Mimi Kirshner had made these great tikis in wool.
I was inspired.
So I set to work creating my own Artgirlz tiki.
Linda loved it.

Happy Solstice from Soggy Rhode Island! We have brief moments of sunshine all month, and one of them in all ways was a visit from Lesley Riley! What's not to love about that!! After taking a class at Pro Chemical she landed at Artgirlz World Headquarters. We had a great 24 hours talking family and business. I was very grateful for the opportunity to talk with another artist trying to figure out the next direction!! Miss Allison made it up from FLA in time for the visit and Linda got to meet one of her heroines!!! Good day!

Al has been around the Rhode Island Headquarters this week. We had to prepare for our class and continue slogging through the process of figuring out how to do our business when we are miles apart. That has been somewhat painful but coming along. Lots of pots on the Artgirlz stove...trying to make good decisions around the mix of ingredients...that would promote mental health, creative satisfaction and a profit!!! I keep telling her to get a grip but she just won't listen! Did I mention that we are both tripping off of our anti-depressants?#$@? Who knew???

Our class went well! We got to paint paper outside in the morning and proceeded to the secret underground location to continue working with paints, stamps, bubble wrap, stencils, gesso....etc.etc.etc. The folding and combining of the painted paper and the pages pulled the pieces together! We of course had a delicious lunch...rice salad, bean soup/stew...(stewp as Christy came up with!) Christy's ginger snaps and Linda's Mother's Blueberry Cake...It seemed like all brave attendees had a great time. We thank them for joining us. We missed Ellen, Sallianne and Jacqui...

Arty Goodies for the Garden

Greetings from rainy rainy cloudy Rhode Island!

Midge and Al have unpacked their Pod in Florida and Sue and I are moving things here and there, filling in empty spaces...picking up treasures at flea markets and garage sales. Al and I had to split up all of our fabric, beads, threads etc, so I have been trying to make sense out of the stuff left in my work space and trying to set it up so that things are easy to find and use. What a concept. We have been so busy with Artgirlz for the last five years that we really haven't had time to use all of the must have objects in our collection. I am hoping that will change a bit!

Last month on another rainy day, I brought the base of this old bird bath into the house with my collection of broken plates and tiles. It was very satisfying to break down the dishes and cover up the grey! What a great way to recycle old dishes and miscellaneous garden objects!

The base is finished and waiting in the green house for a great topper. Hasn't shown up yet!Linda is coming by today and we are going to get the goodies together for our book class next weekend. I am hoping that we will be able to work outside for a bit, but the weather map isn't looking good. But, staying in the moment, it will be fun working with papers today!

If you haven't seen the latest copy of Studios from Cloth Paper Scissors, you should check it out! There are stories and photos of a wide variety of work spaces and a couple of lovely shots of us doing a project in the garden!