Have A Great 4th of July Holiday
July 4, 2009
Have a great 4th of July. I did a very (very) quick banner using a public domain image from one of my books.
For this 4th of July holiday I thought I would give you a few more freebie copyright free images. This time I decided to give you some images to celebrate Independence Day. The illustrations and map are from the book, A History of the United States by Wilbur F. Gordy, Copyright 1920 by Charles Scribner’s Sons of New York.
This is a drawing of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The image is between pages 150 and 151.
This drawing is between pages 142 and 143. It’s an illustration of “The Battle of Bunker Hill”
This map is of North America at the end of the Revolution. It is between pages 182 and 183.
All of the 300 dpi images should be in the public domain and are copyright free. I have attributed them to Creative Commons. If you would like to download the images, just click on them. You will be taken to the image on my flickr page where you can chose a size to download.
Illustrations This Friday is a Freebie For the Bird
July 3, 2009
The illustrations this Friday are all about birds…one of my favorite objects. These public domain drawings are from the vintage book, Light on the Child’s Path by William A. Bixler, Copyright 1918 by Gospel Trumpet Company of Anderson, Indiana. All of the images were published prior to 1923 and should be copyright free.
The first image above is from page 46. The picture is of a couple of geese and a quail.
The image above is a drawing of birds in the woods, one of which is singing. The illustration appears on page 42.
The image of owls above appears on page 44.
The last image is of 3 birds on a branch. The illustration is on page 43.
All of these images have been uploaded to my flickr page and attributed to Creative Commons. If you would like to download the illustration you can just click on the image above which will take you to the image on my flickr page where you can select a size of image to download. They have been uploaded at 300 dpi
Above are my 3 last batches of homemade raspberry jam that I cooked and canned yesterday.
I can’t even remember when I learned to can produce from my garden. I know that even when I was little and living in Las Vegas, where produce was scarce, I would go on family trips to Idaho where we would pick chokecherries. My grandmother, my mother’s friends, and my mother would make and can chokecherry jelly.
I was surprised a couple years ago to meet a couple of 70+ women who had never canned and knew nothing about canning. They spent several mornings watching me can jellies. They were fascinated. They said they grew up poor.
My mother learned to can from my grandmother who probably canned in the summer and fall so her family could eat well through the winter. I wondered what people who were poor and didn’t preserve food ate during the winter.
Although I learned to preserve food a long time ago, I now realize not everyone did. I thought I would just briefly show some lids and my canners.
Above is a two part metal lid designed to fit a regular mouth canning jar. Canning jars come in two sizes regular mouth and wide mouth. Both use a two part lid. The flat sealing lid goes against the jar. It has a rubbery ring that presses and forms a seal on the jar. The other part of the lid screws down the flat part of the lid. To seal the jar you need to process the jar in a canner.
I have two canners, the steam canner pictured above and a water bath canner. I think the steam canner takes less energy to seal the cans. It uses less water.
The jars sit above the boiling water. The lid is placed on top. The amount of time the jars need to be sealed depends on the size of the jar.
Above is my water bath canner. I have had the canner for years and I use it most years. Jars are submerged in boiling water. Again the processing time varies with the size of the jar.
ple handles that allow you to lift the jars out of the water bath once they have finished processing.
If you would like to know more about canning food, you might want to visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation. They provide information on boiling water canning and pressure canning (I did not show photos of my pressure canner). It’s not that hard to make your own jams and jellies or preserve vegetables from your garden. The great thing about preserving your own food is that you know exactly what’s in it…and homemade jams and jellies make great gifts.
I bought some vintage vinyl shelf liner second hand a while back. I’ve been working on alternative bags for packing jewelry. I’ve tried to do recycled mail packaging before with very little success. Since it rains a lot here, I like to pack the items I’m shipping in a rain resistant package.
Above is the final version of my packing pouch all closed up. I went through several versions of the pouch before I finally found a version that I though would work for me. I thought I would show you my iterations.
I have two kinds of vinyl shelf liner, the gold and the red. My first version used the gold. I cut long strips of it, rounded off the edges, folded the bottom part up and zigzag stitched around the outside. For the closure, I decided to use paper circles riveted to the flap and pouch then tied with thread. On the first two pouches, I forgot to consider a closure for the bag. The rivets are reversed on them. I finished them then decided to do one more by riveting the circles on before sewing the pouch.
After finishing the 3rd gold pouch, I thought, “Why don’t I just use Velcro?”. So I pulled out some red vinyl shelf liner and made a few more pouches. I zigzagged all the way around, then sewed on some Velcro dots. I put a button on the flap cover up my stitching. I still wasn’t satisfied. They looked so plain!
I thought they would be great with a pocket on the front for my business card. I found some red mesh in my stash. I zigzag stitched a piece of mesh on the front then sewed up the pouch.
Also I decided that I had so many plain white buttons that I might just as well use them to make a closure for my pouch. I sewed a button to the flap and one to the mesh pocket.
Since the vinyl shelf liner is tacky on the backside, I folded a piece of paper in half and put it inside the bag. I can slip my piece of jewelry between the two halves of paper. I can slip my business card in front. Finally I can tie the ribbon around the buttons for a rain resistant package.
A Day At Oceanside and Tillamook Forest Center in Photo
June 28, 2009
Since it was a beautiful sunny Sunday, we packed up the kids and the dogs and headed off on a trip to Tillamook, Oregon today. I thought I would just show some photos and shorten the narrative a bit. I’m going to try to tell about our day mostly in photos.
Our second stop (the first was the Tillamook Cheese Factory) was the beach at Oceanside, Oregon.
We found a few tide pools. The tide pool above contained quite a few sea anemones.
We also found a tide pool with a starfish. I like the way the camera makes little stars in the photo where the sun was reflecting off the water.
Our youngest found the largest bird egg I’ve ever seen in the wild. She found it up against the cliffs near the Oceanside Beach.
It was very windy at the beach, so we decided to head inland to find a nice swimming spot. We saw the signs for the Tillamook Forestry Center and we decided to check it out. The youngest and I climbed to the top of their outlook station and looked down on the center.
We found a wonderful swimming hole on the Wilson River. It was along one of the trails at the forestry center.
We saw a lot of Foxglove.
…the wild flowers were abundant…
…some of them you had to look close to find…
…others were so bright and beautiful, they were hard to miss.
As we were getting ready to go, I spotted a butterfly collecting nectar from the flowers. I stopped to take a few more photos.
It was a wonderful day. Oceanside is always nice, even on the windy days. I discovered a new place that I’m going to add to my favorite destinations, the Tillamook Forestry Center. We had a fantastic family outing.
Illustration Friday ~ Pictorial French Lesson & Stories
June 26, 2009
Today I have 3 more freebies from The Book of Knowledge Volume XVII, copyright 1919 by The Grolier Society of New York and The Educational Book Co. of London.
The first image above is from page 5392 and is titled “A French Lesson in Picture: The Names of Familiar Things in a Dining Room”
From between pages 5504 and 5505, this is an illustration of the children’s nursery rhyme “Tweedledee and Tweedledum”
From page 5504, the illustration above is from the children’s poem “Teeny-Weeny” by Eugene Field.
The images were scanned in and uploaded using 300 dpi. All 3 images have been uploaded to my flickr account. They have been attributed to creative commons. You can get your own copy of the image by clicking on one of the images above. This will take you to the images on my flickr account where you can chose a size to download.
As I was outside picking raspberries today, I was thinking about the difference between gardening and farming. I usually tell people I’m going out to garden…but is that really what I’m doing?
We live on 10 acres in the Pacific Northwest. We use a little larger equipment than home gardeners and we grow a considerable amount more. The property is too large to maintain with small home equipment. We actually have to use tractors to do the minimum amount of work required this time of year. We also grow more than we consume. We’ve sold a little more produce each year since we started planting. At some point I’m going to have to start saying that I’m going out to do some farming rather than gardening.
I decided to try to take some photos to show you what I mean. I wanted to take only two photos, one of the vegetable and berry garden (top photo) and the other of the orchard and strawberry patch (above). It was difficult to get a full-view of either area in one photo.
We started planting 7 years ago and many of our plants are now producing well. Our trees are producing a variety of tree fruit including pears, plums, peaches, apples, figs and cherries. We also have a variety of trees that aren’t yet producing. For the last few years we have been getting a good quantity of raspberries, blueberries, grapes, blackberries and kiwi. Our honeyberries and thimbleberries are just starting to produce good quantities.
I’ll be making raspberry jam later today from raspberries I picked this morning. I’ll be picking some peas and blueberries later to freeze. Except for last year when we had a family crisis, I’ve kept busy canning and freezing from the end of June until the beginning of October.
I quickly learned in a Master Gardening class that gardening means very different things to different people. I still say we’re gardening, but maybe we’re gardening our land into a farm.
Update: Above is the 5 pints of jam made from 6 pints of raspberries, 8 1/2 cups sugar and pectin. I hear from the experts that it is delicious.
Glass Beach ~ A New Beaded Bracelet
June 24, 2009
The challenge package was titled something like “A Day at the Beach”. When I opened my package and saw the shells, pinkish stones, glass fish and sand colored glass beads, I immediately thought this was a bracelet and it needed to look like the sea had washed the pieces ashore and piled them in a long beautiful line.
I pulled out everything for this bracelet. I did some stringing, some weaving and even some wire-wrapping. The beads were so varied in size that I felt like I had to do a variety of techniques to achieve the look I wanted.
I added a lot of gold glass beads and quite a few pearl beads. I don’t think I’ve perfected the bead weave techniques or the beads on a string. I do think the use of multiple techniques, the gold wire, the variety of beads, really helps get that washed up on the beach look.
I like this bracelet better than the first (and only) seed bead bracelet I just finished. The fit is somewhere between a weave and a cuff. I like that the beads are tightly woven together.
Whew! That’s finished! I think I’ll try something a little different next.
Does Overuse of Words Make Them Useless?
June 21, 2009
I have been thinking of changing how I describe myself as an artist. It seems that everyone has jumped on the environmental friendly wagon…and honestly it’s getting kind of crowded. For the 4th of 5th time recently, I heard someone state that they were tired of hearing the word “green” attached to everything. I’m really wondering if some of the words I use to describe my creations are becoming meaningless.
I started using recycle art and recycle artist many years ago because I wanted to make it clear that I was reusing items that I found at thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets and/or on the ground. I wanted to be honest. I started using these object not just because I thought it was a good idea. IT”S FUN! I love making unusually wonderful things from unusual materials.
The best thing about creating using found objects is that they are almost always one of kinds. They are original and very special, at least to me.
It saddens me that the words seem to have been used so much that people are tired of hearing them. I’m wondering if overuse of recycle, re-purpose, upcycle, eco-friendly, environmentally friendly, refurbish, re-anything and (yes!) green has made them totally useless.
I will continue to create with whatever materials I happen to find along the way, but I’m wondering if I should expand my vocabulary…create a new language. What do you think? Should I make up a few new words to describe the type of art I make?
This week I’ve scanned in public domain and copyright free images from The Book of Knowledge Volume XVII, Copyright 1919 The Golier Society of New York and The Educational Book Co. of London. I’ve picked out pages with stories and one game.
The first illustration above is from page 5453 titled “What Games Do These Pictures Represent?”. It contains some great black and white drawings including a cat, a bat, a bird, dogs, an insect (fly), a frog and more.
Above is page 5287 of this vintage book. This page contains the beginning of the short story “The Sad Heart of A Little Trott” by Andre Lichtenberger. Included with the story is a copyright free illustration of a child, Trott.
Above is page 5288 in The Book of Knowledge. The page includes the ending of “The Sad Heart of a Little Trott” and two “The Fables of Aesop The Slave” fables, “The Dove and the Ant” and “The Dog in the Manger”. This page has two wonderful copyright free illustrations including a bird (dove) and a dog barking at a cow.
The images are all from a vintage book and should be in the public domain; therefore, they should be copyright free. I have attributed them to Creative Commons. You can click on the images in this post which will take you to the images in my flickr. You can select a size of image to download. All the images are 300 dpi.
