Oak Spirit

Oak Spirit
Originally uploaded by crafting4goddess.

This one has been in my head to get down on canvas for a looooooong time. It feels good to finally get it down! I had some trouble with the lower part & how to get it to depict a thick Grove of more trees. It finally came to me AFTER I asked an online painting forum. That's how it usually works for me. Ask & then the answer comes. I love her stance. It says "Look how strong I am. Look at my children. They are strong & wise because of me."

Sweet Grass

Sweet Grass
Originally uploaded by crafting4goddess.

I am all about the sacred herbies this year. Did I mention I am an Apprentice Herbalist? Totally! I am training with Kathleen Wildwood of Wildwood Herbs here in Madison. My first class was last Wednesday & in one hour's time, I learned soooo much! She pointed out 30 wild growing herbs & their uses. Did you know violets are editable?! Totally! They are high in Vitamin C & antioxidants! Every time I see one on my walks, I ask the plant for a leaf. Kathleen is very much into the communing with plants & I found this book titled "Ask Mother Nature" at the library that is proving to be a very interesting read. You should check it out!

White Sage

White Sage #1
Originally uploaded by crafting4goddess.

I planted six White Sage seeds about one month ago. I had almost given up that they would germinate when not one but TWO did finally germinate. You can see more photo's of this years Gardening Adventures on my flickr feed.

My New Band for May

My New Band for May
Originally uploaded by crafting4goddess.

o Do This
1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" and TAG the friends you want to join in

My New Band for April

My New Band for April
Originally uploaded by crafting4goddess.

I found this on facebook. It's super fun to do.

To Do This
1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" and TAG the friends you want to join in

Starhawk on Faith in the Washington Post

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/starhawk/2009/04/time_to_apologize_to_witches.html

"Starhawk is a prominent voice in modern Wiccan spirituality and cofounder of reclaiming.org, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion, and author of ten books."

"Time to Apologize to Witches

I've always thought that the ability to apologize gracefully is a mark of a good leader. We all make mistakes -- even popes, and whole religious traditions. An apology is a way to take responsibility, to signal a change, and to assure the world that it won't happen again.
And if apologies are being given out, Witches would like one. It's more than time that the Catholic and Protestant Churches both apologized for centuries of persecution of Witches, Pagans and those they deemed 'heretics' for believing something different than standard dogma. How about an apology for the Papal Bull of Pope Innocent the Eighth, in 1484, that made Witchcraft an heresy and unleashed the Inquisition against traditional healers, midwives, and any woman unpopular with her neighbors for being too uppity? It's high past time to apologize for the Malleus Maleficarum, a vicious document written by two Dominican priests in 1486 that created a whole mythology of Satan worship, attributed it mostly to women, and unleashed a wave of accusations, torture, and judicial murder that have haunted us ever since. An apology won't do much good, now, to those accused, tormented, and destroyed because someone coveted their property or needed a local scapegoat, nor to their children left motherless or fatherless centuries ago. But it might clear some air.
One of the reasons many of us modern-day Wiccans still proudly call ourselves Witches is to consciously identify with the victims of those persecutions. The Witch persecutions are a suppressed history of abuse. Just as suppressed memories of childhood abuse can hamper us in adult life, suppressed cultural histories still constrain our emotions and our imagination in subtle ways. The Witch persecutions left a residue of fear inside women--that if we speak too loudly or too forcefully, become too strong or visible, we will be attacked. They made imagination, intuition, and magic suspect. They set a pattern that judicial torture is sanctified once your enemy has been labeled 'evil'. And they made nature herself something a dangerous and suspect.
We use the word "Witch" consciously, as a way of reclaiming our power as women and as men. We reclaim the sacredness of our bodies and our sexuality, the healing traditions rooted in an understanding of the natural world, the power of intuition and imagination, the respect for nature and the love for all living things. As long as there's a word someone can use to shut down thought, we're not free. Claim the word, shed light on the hidden history, lance the wound, and we can begin to heal.
So yes, it's time for an apology. The viability of all nature's life support systems are threatened today by what our civilization has become. What better time for the religions of the book to signal a new respect for the religions of nature?"

HERE-HERE!! WELL SAID!! BRAVO!!!

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

My First Watercolor class...

WAS A BLAST!

I learned a lot more than I could have learned on my own in only two hours time. This is only the first of four more classes. The teacher is more than confident that we will put out a gallery quality watercolor painting by the end of the five weeks. I'm thinkin, ALL RIGHT! Let's do it!

We learned how to do an even flat wash without making a tide line (a line of dried up excess watercolor), how to find a quality brush (not nessecarily expensive), paper, & even how to make our own brush & journal tote. Guess what I'mma be workin on? You guessed it! Only I want mine to be leather....of course. Might take a trip to the leather store in Baraboo & get a fresh dear or horse hide. Then she taught us about cool & warm colors & how they effect perspective. Something looks a little flat? Need to cool it off, she said. Cool colors make things look like they are fading into the distance while warm colors bring things more to the front. Neat aye?! So the two examples from her first beginners class she dragged out...& boy where they fantastic! First time painters painted these, she told us. No prier artistic knowledge or experience. WOW! I tell you what, it was hard to believe because I would have expected them to be framed & hung in a gallery to sell for hundreds!! That good. She told us about the Amyrilus & how the lady could not get the center of it to her liking. Teach suggested that she add cool colors to the center & it made it look like it was further into the distace. Makes the viewer feel like a humming bird coming in for a drink, boy-howdy!

Our homework is to find a flower we like so we can work learning how to paint it next week. So I am rummageing through all my photo cd's to find something I adore. She warned us about using someone elses photograph, & if we decided we wanted to paint something from someone elses photo that we had to make a reference note of that on our finished painting. Because, she told us, if you were to enter your finished painting into a contest & you won first prize, the owner of the photo could come looking for you to sue the pants off yea. Wow, ouch.

Crazy. Well I have no worries, I've got plenty of my own nature photo's to choose from thankfully. I will have to go & get different paper though. We found out that the paper I bought was a rough grade, so the texture would be different. Well, so I'll do two paintings, one on rough & one on smooth...but nessecarily both of the same thing.

I was shocked at the number of people that came to the class whom I knew. Strange how things like this work out. Next time I think I am gonna bring my voice recorder...so much information...so little space in da'brain to store it!! LMAO!

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Lunar Insights

"Lunar Insights"

This is a small playful painting that I plan to do in a larger format. I have a love affair with the moon.

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

By Hughes

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Watercolor Journal update #2

It's taken me 20 minutes to get this post up because Internet EXPLODER won't let me rearrange the photo's I uploaded without closing the entire browser window. ARRRRggggga! So I am using Google's Chrome which is still primitive compared to IE...but at least it doesn't explode one me.

Here a photo of my hand made headband because no one in town sells them. It is basically a cord (you can also use twine) glued between a fold of book binding fabric. The purpose of the headband is to hide the ends of the signatures. It's an aesthetic thing.

Here is the front of my watercolor journal made with rubber stamps...a hobby I took up long ago, got bored of, but kept all me stamps. I'mma multi-media type of gal. LOL It still needs a protective glaze. It's lookin more & more like a book! I just need to add the decorative end pages & it will be done. It does not lay flat like I wanted it too, so I will have to tote along some rubber bands to keep the pages down, damned it. All that work, & hammering, for nothin.  I still like it & will use it.

More photo's to come!

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW

 unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly

 prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Mono-tone Landscape

Here is another of my fiddlins from the Simply Painting series. I didn't forget my trademark "Satan" snake....ROFLMAO! I rather like mono-tone painting. There is a lot less fuss when you don't have to worry about colors, just tones.

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Some Watercolor fiddlin's...

Thought I would show-off some of my watercolor fiddlin's. The flower is supposed to be a Hibiscus, but I just don't know how to shade it right just yet.
The trees & leaf are from exercises in the same book as my previous fiddlins. The last one, the landscape one, is a mini-painting from a demonstration in the Simply Painting series. I really like the tree's I did. It was an exercise in negative panting.

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***