lately

...playing with pencil crayons, thinking about caverns, visiting Thunder Bay...

from the garden

giant poppy

Amethyst Mountain

Amethyst Mountain  ~  Oil on panel  ~  14" x 11"

getting friendly

One of the melon seedlings by my window has been making friends with my paint brushes. It's pretty sweet to see my two loves getting along so well!

dark crystal

The second of three new pieces that Narwhal brought to Pulse in NYC. 

(I'll save the best for last.)

yellows

taming the fairy roses

I spent most of Sunday working in the garden, taking advantage of the beautiful weather to clean out the flower beds and tackle the painful (so many pricks and scratches - ow!) but immensely satisfying job of trellising the out-of-control climbing fairy rose at the side of the yard. I forgot to take a "before" picture, but it was previously just a big tangled mess hanging off the fence, mostly drooping into the alley, where it was nearly reaching far enough to scratch cars as they drove by. It was charming in its own way, I suppose, but now it is so much better. It has a more substantial presence, and helps to make the yard feel a bit less exposed. I can't wait to see a wall of little poufy pink flowers. The trellis on the right side looks pretty empty, but it is actually covered with clematis vines, which are just barely budding. Hopefully they will thrive now that they are up off the ground. I'll be sure to post another photo later in the summer when everything is blooming!

new acquisition

I picked up some great stuff at a mineral show this weekend, including this gorgeous chunk of fluorite. Lately, I've been letting myself choose some larger pieces for my collection, rather than only focusing on specimens to use as painting subjects. One of these days I'll have to do a post about my whole collection. It's getting pretty big!

all work and no play...

...makes Carly a bad blogger. I can't believe I've neglected this place for over a month. I mean, I know my posting has been pretty sporadic for a while, but this is getting ridiculous. I guess I've been lacking motivation or inspiration to post much here in general lately, but I've also been super busy. I have a bad tendency to let a lot of things slide when I start to feel overwhelmed by my schedule. What I have been doing is a lot of working (at the "job") and painting. I've been making some new pieces that Narwhal will be showing at Pulse (art fair) in NYC at the beginning of May. Here's one of them. A big departure for me: BLACK!?!? OMG CRAZY. This is a "tektite", which is a pretty cool thing. It looks like an asteroid, but is actually a small lump of natural glass formed by the impact of a large meteor on the Earth's surface. I will post the other two paintings I made for the fair soon.

Of course, now that I've reached one deadline, I've got another coming up in 6 weeks, so the busy-ness continues. However, there are many more beautiful things sprouting and blooming in the garden, and I have an embarrassing amount of new perfume acquisitions to share, so I'll try my best to find time to take some photos and bring some life back to this here blog.

good news / bad news

The good news is that there are beautiful early signs of spring blooming around the garden (including one of my Hellebores!). The bad news is that the roofers who just re-shingled the garage dropped the old eaves troughs on my flower bed, crushing two of the roses I planted last year. ARG! I hope they can survive!

the heart beating wildly

My perfume obsession has entered the "obsessively browsing vintage perfumes on ebay" stage. In fact, I've taken a step beyond the browsing stage to actually make my first vintage and un-sniffed purchase. More about that when it arrives in the mail (or if it arrives? - apparently shipping perfume internationally can be risky business). The anticipation is killing me. 

My ebay perfume search has also led me to discover so many amazing vintage perfume magazine ads. This one for Guerlain's Chamade from 1971 is my absolute favourite so far. Possibly the best perfume ad I've ever seen.