Paper and Threads

This is the year when our DC children/grandchildren join us for Christmas weekend.  On Sunday I took Annabelle and Sydney to the New York City Ballet Nutcracker.  It was 4 year old Annabelle's first time and Sydney's 4th!

Sunday evening my husband and I made dinner for all 16 of us and we continued our family tradition by giving our presents to the children on Christmas Eve.  Here are the 7 children's gift bags and 8 stockings packed and ready.

And our 8 grandchildren as they headed off to watch a movie.

Yesterday our daughter made Christmas dinner at her apartment and we again were 8 adults and 8 children.  Zachary, Annabelle, Sydney and I spent time painting Santas in the afternoon.  My Santa was drawn from a photo that Sydney and I took last week at Rockefeller Center - of the skating Santa.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday.

Posted by Shirley at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rockefeller Center, the Huge Christmas tree, and the Skating Rink are all a central part of Holiday celebrations in our city.  Each year, scouts travel by light plane around NY, NJ, and CT looking for the perfect tree, hoping the owners will agree to part with it.  It is always HUGE!

My husband and I walked down 5th Ave last week to Rockefeller Center to enjoy the tree in the dark.  Here is a photo approaching it from 51st St.  It is hard to imagine the size from this distance.

Here is a closeup.  Look at the size of the people that are standing around the base.

Here it is above the Skating Rink.  It can be seen easily looking down the pathway of angels from 5th Avenue.

There are also life size toy soldiers that are placed in the garden down both sides of the walls above the skating rink.  I frequently sketch and paint them.  Here is 2007, 2008, and 2012.

I wish all of you happy holidays with your family and friends.  All three of our children will be here with their families and hopefully we'll get a first group photo of our 8 grandchildren (ages 3 mos-9 years).  Thank you for visiting my blog and keeping me enthused about sketchbook art, bookbinding, and sharing ideas.  May we all have a fun, creative, and artistic 2013. 

Posted by Shirley at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Last week I posted some pages of a watercolor book that I'm creating to document my handmade Christmas ornaments.  I've been making them every year for 30+ years and decided that it would be fun to have a book full of paintings of them.  Here are 3 more pages.

The dove was made out of a piece of lace from my wedding dress and hopefully will be passed down by my daughter to her daughter.

The two red cats are actually red embroidery, outline stitch, on white fabric.

I smocked the eyelet on the cuff of the stocking on the top right.

                   At last count, there are 124 ornaments made by me on our tree.

Posted by Shirley at 6:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made a 16 page Teesha Moore watercolor booklet to paint many of the Christmas ornaments I made for our family and friends.  Last year I posted several of the pages here and here.  I am still painting more ornaments in the book while the ornaments are unpacked and easily accessible.  Here are the next pages in the book.

Here is our fraser tree this year.  It is full of ornaments and I made 95% of them since 1976.  Each of our children have a full set on their family trees and each year now I give them enough for our grandchildren to start their collection.

This is the painting on the front cover of my book. 

And here are the four pages that follow the ones in the above links. 

This is a duck made on a big white jingle bell.

Posted by Shirley at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When we were standing on the Charles Bridge in Prague, a group of seagulls were taking off and landing right next to me.  I took multiple pictures and painted several of them when we came home to remember the lovely day.

I brought home a newspaper front page  from Berlin, Prague, and Budapest to use for collage.  I tore strips of them for this double page spread and glued them in place.  Then I painted on absorbent ground and allowed it to dry thoroughly before drawing and painting my gulls.

Posted by Shirley at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)