Chihuly: The Nature of Glass comes to Desert Botanical Garden

Art in the desert

Photos of some of my favorite sculptures of The Chihuly exhibit: The Nature of Glass at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix Arizona




Flowers in February

A perfect glass interpretation of the agave plant

Don't you think

A flower!




My next landscaping project

So plain white yet one of my favorites

Desert plants. I love em

The exhibit was magical.

I've been looking for a water garden for my front yard.

I think I found it.

ALice iN wOnderLand JoUrnAl

Can you tell where the flamingo legs are ?

The journal is bound. I still want to put a very more embellishments here and there and some on the cover.

When I was younger I never read Alice in Wonderland because of all the insanity.

Now have spent several weeks with the book and journal I see a very different tale.

I found I was not the only one who found Alice as a child to be too insane or even scary.

For all of you I hope this journal can also bring a fresh view of life and Alice.

Can you see the flamingo page?

Through the Looking Glass

Inside back cover. I don't know which magazine I found the picture in or even when I cut it out. And I certainly did not know it would end up in an art journal on Alice in Wonderland on my blog no less!

"Will you come and join the dance?"

Will you won't you, will you won't you, will you join the dance? Photo by Peter Hinson and Selene Gibbous which I got in Artful Blogging magazine. The flowers were cut out of another photo also from Artful Blogging magazine.

"One can't believe impossible things" "or can we?"

I say not only can we. But we should. After all the queen did - and as many as six - seamingly impossible things before breakfast no less! Today I believed I won the lottery and sailed across the oceans, that I ate dinner in the flower garden where I take long quite walks, that I rode my bicycle with a flower basket along the seashore and the sun shining, I danced in a meadow, sipped lattes on the deck over looking the mountains with not a care in the world and swam in my pool under the moonlight.

This is how the page looks in the finished journal. It is the center fold of the book with a smaller book within a book. The photo is by ellemoss. "a very merry unbirthday to you."

The Queen's Croquet Game

We've got a snow day. Yes I know I'm in Arizona but I live in the mountains so sometimes we get snow. And we got it yesterday and last night. So I thought I take sometime this morning to post another page to the Alice journal. This is a favorite picture. I'm not sure what you would call them. The wire croquet "baskets" but I love the way Natasha Burns uses them. I found this photo in Artful Blogging winter 2009. I have played croquet since I was a kid. And still love it. Although never with a flamingo. But it would be fun to give it a try.

The quote reads

“Tis so,” said the Duchess: “and the moral of it is –

‘Oh,’ tis love, tis love,

that makes the world go round!"

The facing page. Another quote goes on:

“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess;
“and the moral of that is

‘Be what you would seem to be” or,

if you’d like it put more simply –

‘Never imagine yourself
not to be otherwise

than what it might appear to others
that what you were"

Having never really read Alice in Wonderland before, either as a child or as an adult. It was just to crazy or should I say mad to read. But having spend some time studying it for this journal I have found that once you sort through the madness you can begin to glean the truths from it.

Just like life.

Isn't it!

And of course I wanted to include the Mad Hatters Tea Party.
I want to show the beauty of what this tea party represents not the insane madness of it. Photo by sandra evertson

We have enough of that.

I did this with pictures spread out among many pages.
Including a little book within a book. (a seek peek)

I did, however, include the riddle;

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?

I will include an answer to the riddle!!!!!!

Not from Lewis Carroll but from Illustrator Ralph Steadman. I will include the answer on the page page of the book.

...which way ought I go from here?

These
mushrooms
are
soooooooo
Alice in Wonder-
land.

I feel so lucky to have them in my very own garden.
The Cheshire cat is one of the symbols I wanted to include in the journal.

Why?

Because this quote is worth
remembering.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

" I don't much care where."
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go."

So often just like Alice we look to someone else to tell us where we should go, who we should be, when, or how we should do something. We truly are lost, to ourshelves, and to this most enchanting world we live in.

Know where you want to go!

bUnchEs of JournAl PaGes cOmIng

I've got lots of journal pages to post. I am so on a roll creating them
I can't slow down long enough
to post.

But I'm taking pics as I go.
I have even changed one of the others.
I just didn't like it all that much.

And when something just isn't "right"

I can't stop thinking about it until it feels right.

Maybe once I changed that page the others

all just starting flowing so smoothly.