BEACH LIFE

On this September morning at the beach we saw giant jelly fish, abundant sea weeds, rock cairns, oyster catchers, changing leaves and exploring children. Definitely our own part of paradise!

THE AUTUMN GARDEN

Autumn is my favourite time of year. I love the ambient lighting, fading flowers and changing leaves. Eating a crunchy, fresh apple whilst rambling slowly down a leafy wooded lane is a must. These images were taken in my rather neglected (but pleasingly so), overgrown garden. We picked seed heads for my daughter's school project and I was chuffed to see the little brown bouquet. How pretty they collectively look in a simple white creamer vase.

TEA COZY

Have just made another tea cozy featuring my favourite little bird. Same recycled materials and theme (sitting on a raffia nest awaiting his little 'cuppa). Love interior fabric - faux bois - perfect to represent a hen house. This tea cozy is on its way to GreenCraft Magazine - fingers crossed they will like it as much as I do.

KID'S STUDIO

We spent Labour Day revamping my "studio" space to make it more child friendly. I brought in a two big tables - one small, perfect for little people and one large table, perfect for spreading out supplies and large projects. Two orange old school chairs that a neighbour gave us lent themselves to comfortable seats for the children. I hope we can spend hours of creative time together this autumn.

I organized the space to better serve our needs filling baskets, boxes, and a wonderful old trunk full of great supplies. The old trunk was a perfect vessel to house all of my old coffee sacks and packaging, corrugated cardboard and miscellaneous bags. It has a great old sticker from 1926!

I love September - it inspires new beginnings and fresh prospects.

SCULPTURE

We are still following the art show "Work of Art - Finding the Next Great Artist" on tv. The challenge for the contestants was to spend 30 minutes in a warehouse that had discarded electronics. They could gather and take any items they wished to make a sculpture.

Our at home challenge was easy - head to the basement for some bits and bobs to create our own smaller scale sculpture. Ironically, the day after viewing the show we were leaving the library where I found a crunched cell phone in the parking lot. Perfect! Found, free and fitting to my attitude about cell phones (I won't go there at this time!). Other items I gathered were a packet of wire Christmas hooks (for hanging tree ornaments), a small lamp shade frame, corrugated paper from cookie packaging, an old light that one would affix to a book, an old light bulb, sandpaper, a metal thingy, two large bolt type screws, a poppy seed head and some coffee sack burlap.

My artistic process is to not plan ahead and just see where the supplies take me. A sculpture of a female with a broken cell phone head and Medusa like wiry hair materialized. She wore a hessian dress and a tag with her name - Collette 604A around her inverted light bulb neck. Some rough, natural coloured twine added to her hair and attire. The bendy part of the light acted as a microphone or mouth piece making the piece look both futuristic and rustic simultaneously. She looks good in the garden and I found the perfect bit of smooth driftwood to mount her on when she comes back inside.

My husband went scrounging too. His sculpture was a wire man walking a dog constructed from an old bicycle light, an over sized spring for a body and nail legs. A length of random chain acted as a lead and a two bits of Styrofoam insulation made great feet to anchor this small sculpture.

Challenges such as these are fun, inspiring especially using all found objects with nothing more than a glue gun to assemble the piece.