Bloglovin and a New Fall Watercolor

Have you heard of Bloglovin?

You make an account and then you type the name of all your favorite blogs into the search engine and when you find it, click Follow. You can even categorize your blogs (art, photography, mommy, etc). When you logn to Bloglovin and you land on your homepage you see all of the most recent blog posts from your favorites!

Say goodbye to searching for your favorite blogs in your web browser's favorites and being disappointed when you check up on a blog and they haven't updated. All you do is scroll down your Bloglovin home page and you are ready to go!

You can also add me to your blog reads by typing in Lady Poppins and you can follow me and what blogs I read by clicking on this:

You can follow my blog with Bloglovin

In other news, here is a new painting I have done for Fall!

Autumn Leaves Please Fall by Me...

It is officially Fall this coming Sunday...and it is in the high 90s.

I remember watching Casper (the one with Christina Ricci and super-cute-at-the-time Devon Sawa) and wishing that when school started leaves would be bright colors of green, yellow, orange, and red.

My home still looks and FEELS like Summer. And what makes me really confused is seeing all of the seasonal décor at Michael's and Target. Or worse---the coats and scarves! As if! It's like as if we live in Alaska and the sun just keeps on shining so you have to pretend that it is night and just go to bed. Here we have to pretend it's a crisp Autumn, but really we are just baking like crisp bacon.

In honor of the rest of you glorious season-changing states and countries I give you my own watercolor clip art of fall leaves, pumpkins, and flowers:

And then here is a new one:

Here are two free leaf PNG / clip art images for you :) The blue one is not part of my set in the shop, but the green one is.

Here is a picture of Clara nearly 3 years ago! These were taken at the end of November and she was only a month old...I am a horrible mother and put her down on the grass amidst fall leaves in our front yard. But only for the sake of the cutest fall pictures ever!! I can't believe my little girl will be a big THREE year old next month!

Let's Get Digital

Sooooo, after being urged by a family member and also a friend, I have decided to sink my toes into creating digital clip art.



Here is my first set:

And I am giving you a freebie! This is a PNG image of a teal butterfly resting on a pink flower. If you click on it you can save it. It is in 300 dpi, so it is a nice quality. You may use this for personal use only. Understandably, you are not allowed to resale this image or use it to make product to sell.

This set is super cute and girly. It has pink, mint, teal, and green going on. Here is the rest of it in the shop.   

Meanwhile I have been busy planning a top secret, super exciting project. I can't wait to tell everyone about it! And after that I have two more special projects to work on. This girl is so happy to be busy!

Here is a little saying I made using the clip art: Be Grateful. I think we need to be saying thank you for our blessings all the time.

On the home front Calvin started kindergarten. He LOVES it. He just adores his teacher and is excited every morning to go to school.

Here he is on his first day with Dusty the airplane backpack, Kermit the Frog lunchbox, and a huge smile :) Oh, and Velcro shoes because Kindergarten teachers spend a third of their day tying shoelaces.

When I get the chance to edit a few more pictures I am going to have to do a post about our summer vacation. We took a family road trip (2 grown ups, a 5 year old and 2 year old!) from SoCal up to Oregon within one week. Yikes! It was fun, but there are some stories to be told!! This picture above is from Solvang, California. It was the cutest little town EVER. I wish we could move there. It is enchanting.

I hope everyone is adjusting to Summer being over. I have a feeling Fall is going to go by too fast and before you know it Christmas will be here!!

DIY Overhead Phone Mount

I had a huge dilemma.

I am starting a new and exciting project where having an overhead mount is essential. BUT my best option for making a video is my cell phone! I love how awesome cell phones are nowadays. My nice camera is old, so the video abilities of it are of a different era.

But how to mount my phone ABOVE my workspace for my video? I saw one where they attached it to a bendable lamp, but of course the two I have were too short. So what's a girl to do?

Um, take your DIY light saber from Pinterest (a pool noodle cut in half with duct tape and electrical tape on it) and attach it to your camera tripod with rubber bands and string. VOILA!!!!

Yes, I have my phone attached to the top part with rubberbands.

I apologize for how excited I am about this, but I solved my problem all by myself! I hope it helps other people, especially for people who want to make instructional YouTube videos or online class videos.

SUPPLIES:

1. Camera tripod (or you can get creative like me and find something around the house that will suffice)
2. 4 rubberbands
3. Half a Pool Noodle from the Dollar Tree
4. 1 piece of string
5. Your phone

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Put the phone on the end of the noodle with rubberbands
2. Fiddle with the amount of noodle that needs to be attached to something solid till you get the phone to lay horizontally
3. Tie down the noodle with string and/or rubberbands

P.S. To use the tripod for my phone when I wanted to film myself, I mounted it to the place you normally put the camera and just used the rubberbands to strap it down.

UPDATE:
When my husband came home that night I showed him this post. He laughed at my creativity and then said, "Why didn't you just use my mic stand in the garage?"

OMG. 

I scavenged the whole house for this solution and it was sitting the garage the whole time!! Well, if your husband isn't a musician with a microphone stand that you can loop some rubber bands onto, then try my pool noodle/tripod approach ;) But I must say, I love using the mic stand because I can easily adjust it to different heights.

Mommy and the Half Truths

So my little girl is almost three... I really wanted to take pictures of her in front of a special quilt passed down from my Nana, but she really wasn't in the mood to take pictures. She would rather read Olivia (above) or hide behind her bed (below).

In order to get the one good picture of her with her babies I had to hold the camera in my lap and snap a photo in secret while I read her a Santa Claus story. Just one of the many tricks I use while parenting.

For example, I have told Calvin not to answer the door while I take showers because it might be a monster.

He was so excited to turn 5 that when he started to act up, I told him I would use my super mom powers and stop time. He would not turn 5 if the behavior continued.

"Mommy, how does Space Mountain work?" My husband was stumped. Does he tell him the mechanics of it and ruin the magical illusion? Nah, just ask me. My answer? Mickey Mouse uses his magic. Done. Everyone is happy.

Also, little boys and girls only get balloons at Disneyland if it is your birthday. So let's be happy for them!

You know, half truths.

And the fun is just beginning, because Clara is talking in sentences and really understanding things. So inevitably the mommy tricks will continue. I will have to write them down to help all you other moms out. And I hope you are doing the same for the rest of us ;)

My mom: my best friend.

I LOVE my Mom.

 

She is my best friend.

My role model.

She is just simply THE BEST.

No matter how old I get she still calls me her little girl.
She still spoils me with love.
I can tell her anything.
I am always comforted by her presence.

My mom loves with her whole heart and with complete selflessness.

Example:

My mom is an AMAZING artist. As a child she was a natural, always sketching and creating. In high school her art was published in their yearbook and won awards at fairs. As she got older she enjoyed trying new mediums from drawing, watercolors, acrylics, oils, ceramics, to crafting. She is never afraid to try new things and when she starts to get into something she cannot stop. She almost becomes obsessed. She will constantly work on perfecting her art and her standards are high. She will throw away creations that anyone would claim to be a masterpiece, but if it does not satisfy her, she would rather just be done with it.

So here I was, her first baby, and caught the art bug. My dream as a little girl was to be a schoolteacher, a writer, and an illustrator. But watching my mom made me self conscious. I didn't want to show this master my elementary drawings (which they were! I was in elementary school). She decided that she didn't want me to ever feel that way and put away the pencils. She packed up the paintbrushes. She said goodbye to something she loved so that I could flourish. I makes me teary eyed just to think about how much she loves me and how hard that act must have been.

And thus:

All that I am, or hope to be,

I owe to my angel mother.

 

Abraham Lincoln

 

She started to dabble in art again when I started performing in school plays. She volunteered her artistic abilities to painting breathtaking and realistic sets. Before every show she was backstage in the dressing rooms, head of the makeup. I'm sure her makeup rivaled the Broadway greats with her realistic Cowardly Lion and faces of the like.

 

But she still wasn't painting. I was in college and decided to take a beginning painting class. I would bring home my work and my mom was interested in playing with paints again. So we would sit side by side and oil paint. When we got bored with a piece or stuck we would just switch! She would see things in paintings that I hadn't and vice versa. We had SO much FUN!

 

It motivated her to redecorate the house with her own paintings. Before I knew it my mom had a FULL on art gallery in her house. Which, of course, motivated me to make my own creations since my husband and I were renting our first home.

 

And now, all these years later my mom is back being a fine artist. She went on a watercolor binge the other year and made at least one watercolor a day, if not more. She had so many she would give them away to family, friends, and even strangers.

 

Currently she is mixing it up and doing acrylics, oils, and watercolors. I even set up a little shop for her on Etsy. She decided to name it Now and Forever More, art by Denise Iverson. You should check it out! I have only posted the original watercolors because they are so easy to ship (versus stapled canvas--ugh, I'm still figuring that out myself).  

 

Here are some of her watercolors that are posted:

 

 

 

And now I am thinking I should do a house tour...so you can see her personal art gallery!

 

So maybe that will be a future post. :)