Debra's Cottage

Debra's Cottage

Finding inspiration . . .here. . .there. . everywhere.

"Rose Garden" painting


Welcome and join me for a little stroll through Debra's Cottage where I paint and meet customers on the first Saturday of the month. Debra's is a fabulous cottage style shop located in Costa Mesa, CA where I sell my art and home to over 100 talented vendors and artisans specializing in Cottage, Shabby Chic Style and Garden furnishings to romance your home.


The beautiful home decor and accessories at Debra's Cottage serve as many of the inspirations behind my Shabby Chic Style and Garden paintings which are shown on my blog post today.


"The Boudoir" painting

Inspiration for the "Tea Time" painting

"Tea Time" painting

"Garden Day in the Rose Garden" painting

"Flower Shop" painting

I will be painting at Debra's Saturday, November 1st and Saturday November 8th which is the day of our Winter Open House.

Debra's Cottage will be featured in the December issue of Romantic Homes Magazine and is located at:

2777 S. Bristol, Costa Mesa, CA - 714 662-5828 -http://debrascottage.com/

There is lots more to see at the Debra's charming cottage store and I hope you will join me next time when we will continue our tour.

Lavender

Welcome. Autum is in the air in Southern California and my garden has taken on the look of fall. Today I picked the last of my lavender and fragrant sage to dry. I love the tangy smell of sage and the lavender flowers remind me of the fragrent lavender fields in Provence in the South of France. I was inspired to post about lavender by a visit to Ruth Welter's beautiful blog, artful-creations.blog.spot.com, and was struck by the fact that no matter what part of the world you visit, the colors of mother nature are the same and how similiar the colors in her photographs of Zion National Park in Utah were with my photographs of the lavender fields in Provence. Both of our photograhs show soft greens and shades of umber, ocher and lavender - the colors of nature and the inspirations for our photographs. You must visit her blog to see her georgous photographs of nature taken in Utah.

I am very new at blogging (this is my 3rd post) and still learning to use my new scanner to scan some of my "nondigital" photos to share with you. After many tries I was able to scan one lavender field only to find that I was unable to enlarge it to show you.

I decided to post without showing the inspiration photos of lavender fields in France and show you other photos of inspirations.

Sage flowers drying in the sun

Paintings inspired by a trip to Provence in the South of France where the skies are blue, the hills are carpeted with sunflowers and lavender and the air is filled with the heady scent of lavender

Sunflowers and lavender fields

"The Lavender Harvest" - insiration by lavender fields.



"Blue Shutters"


"Sunflowers and Lavender"
"The Girl on the Red Bicycle"


A yummy receipe for lavender sugar brought home from Provence.

Bentley ( my studio assistant) waiting to get his taste of rasein bread with lavender sugar.


Lavender Sugar
Combine 1 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup fresh organic or cullinary lavender heads. Place the mixture in a sealed container for about one week. When ready to use, sift the sugar to separate it from the lavender. . The sugar can be sprinkled on sugar cookies, ceral or toast or used to flavor your tea and lemonade

Lavender sugar sprinkled on rasein toast.

A friend gave me the web address of a beautiful farm in Sequim, Washington that grows organic lavender. You may want to check out:http://purplehazelavender.com/ for their "cooking with lavender guide" as well as their blog.

Finding Inspiration

Happy Fall


Hello and welcome to my 2nd blog post. I am delighted that you stopped by. This is where I create and share my art and the inspirations and sense of joy behind my work.

Finding inspiration. . . .here . . . .there. . . .everywhere.

A trip to the garden shop was the inspiration for the Garden Shop painting. Beautiful blue hydrangeas tinged with lavender and these beautiful sunflowers were just waiting for me to pick up my paint brush and transfer them onto my canvas. The red geraniums were in full bloom and the perfect compliment to the lavender and yellow flowers.

I added a little red birdhouse and white daisys to bring harmony and balance to the painting.

The finished painting - " The Garden Shop".

Finding inspiration. . . . .here . . . there. . .everywhere.

You will probably recognize the same sunflowers and blue/purple hydrangeas that were in the previous painting. I painted this the next day and added white iceberg roses from my garden and the white cloche with bird on top. You can't see it, but there is a chair next to the table with a straw hat. I added garden gloves instead of the little bird (we artists get to change our minds a lot!). I repeated a color throughout the painting - this time I used blue starting with the ribbon on the garden hat, blue and white vintage table cloth as well as blue and white bowls with flowers. I feel repeating one color throughout the painting brings harmony and carries your eye over the entire paitning. This artistic principal also works well in decorating your home or in your flower garden.

Later, I decided to paint out the garden chair and add this lovely climbing Iceber Rose from my garden.

Inspiration to change the painting







The finished painting " Garden Day".

COLOR TIP - All colors are made up of three primaries - red - blue and yellow. When you combine the primaries, you get the three secondary colors - orange - green - and purple. You can use colors next to each other on the color wheel - for example red would be orange and violet, or you can use the natural compliments on the opposite side of the color wheel - for example red and green. These are complimentary colors - warm colors have cool compliments and cool colors have warm compliments. Think about colors in nature and you won't go wrong in picking out colors for your fall garden or in your fall decorating.

Stonybrook Wildlife Sanctuary

The Autumn colors of New England are at their peak now, and the intensity of the colors is phenomenal. I took Gabe out to view the foliage at Stonybrook "Farm", which isn’t a farm at all.

Every photo I took turned out looking like a post-card!













I am always a little sad this time of year. The plants are no longer growing, and the days are shorter. While I know that once it snows, I will be happy again, the thought of facing the cold and the dark again makes me melancholy.

But there is something to look forward to at Stonybrook: otters! I was told they are easiest to spot early on winter mornings.

On this trip, we saw a swan.

Columbus Day

Whew! Columbus day weekend and our marching band home show are finally behind us. Now there's just a bit of breathing space and a wee bit of time for the garden.

Here's a lovely shot of one of the old churches on Main Street in our charming village of Huntington New York.

Looking up Main Street, we were waiting for the big Columbus Day Parade to begin!

And here they come, the most amazing, incredible, Walt Whitman High School Wildcat Marching Band. Hooray!!!

Cold-Blooded Critters

We are seeing the last of our non-furry friends for the year. While taking down the garden, Chris stirred up a leopard frog, rana pipiens



We had to catch it, of course!

On sunny days, we can now easily find garter snakes, thamnophis sirtalis basking among our rock piles. It turns out that by making rock walls and rock heaps, we have been building snake habitat. Rocks provide holes to hide in, plus the absorb the day’s eat and store it into the frosty night. Also, on hot dry days, warm air wafts into the crevices, and water condenses out onto the cool rocks deep inside, providing a water source. That moisture attracts other wildlife, too, such as crickets and slugs, which are perfect snake food.



Now that I understand all of this, I am building rock piles in the front yard to attract snakes there as well. I put the first pile on a patch of ground that remains dusty-dry even after days of rain, in the hope that the condensation will improve the soil there, too.

I also found a salamander hanging out in the remains of our dirt pile on the driveway, but I didn't take a picture, alas! I suspect the presense of an amphibian there attests to the good quality of the soil.



It must be a good year for katydids, because they are everywhere!

Shutting Down for the Year

Autumn put an abrupt end to tomato season. Suddenly, the nights feel cold, and the trees are turning glorious reds and oranges.

Because the bunnies keep infiltrating the garden, Chris decided to call it done for the year. The tattered fence came down, and the tired tomato vines went into a compost heap.





The asparagus fronds remain, as well as some basil and the Swiss chard. I think Chris was considering running the mower over the chard just to see it turn into confetti.





Even though the bunnies ate the tops off of the carrots repeatedly, we still got carrots! Perhaps because of having to regrow their leaves so often, they didn’t taste all that good, sadly. We processed this batch into baby food.



The raspberry bushes weren’t supposed to bear fruit until next year, but they didn’t get the memo. Chris and I are becoming frightened at the thought of drowning in a tsunami of raspberries. We will have to invite the neighborhood kids to eat all they want in self defense.

Fall New Beginnings

The Colors of Fall

Fall . . . new beginnings . . .a new season . . . a new blog. Welcome to my first blog post. What a lovely time of the year, when skies are blue, the air is crisp and fall colors are bright, to start my adventure into Blog Land. Come along with me for a little tour.

One of my favorite places to shop for my garden is Rogers Gardens in Newport Beach , a fabulous nursery, florist, and garden /home decor shop located on 4 beautiful acres.

A fall trip to Rogers Gardens (rogersgardens.com) was the inspiration for the Flower Market painting - the white market umbrella in the background, rich fall colors and profusion of mums, herbs and pumpkins were just waiting for me to transfer onto my canvas. A fountain of perfect pumpkins.

Fall mums in a profusion of colors.

The final inspiration painting!

Fall Bounty

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It's what sunflowers do" Helen Keller

What is an artist to do with bunches of glorious sunflowers found at the local farmers market? These beauties all went home with me and ended up in the still life painting. The addition of two pears and a terra cotta pot of ivy completed the painting and added a touch of fall whimsy.

Sunflowers in Blue Pot

Later I used the same bunch of sunflowers and pears and set the blue vase on a vintage blue and white check tablecloth to create another painting with a vintage feel.

Vintage Sunflowers


What are your fall inspirations? Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about my art or would like to share your inspirations with me. Have a great day and beautiful fall season.