Garden Update, Take 2

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For the past couple of weeks I have been on a steady diet of weed. Weeding the garden, that is. We've been experiencing quite a bit of rain which has created an explosion of plant and flower growth but, alas, the weeds also benefit from Nature's largesse. Particularly bothersome are the morning glories. Last year's beautiful abundance of blooms resulted in hundreds upon HUNDREDS of seeds, all of which appear to be germinating simultaneously. Without any exaggeration, I can easily say I have pulled out several hundred seedlings in the past few days alone, only to have a new crop appear again in the same place the very next day. This is in addition to purslane, dandelion, bedstraw, chickweed and all the other usual characters found in the weed pantheon. Nevertheless, I press on, determined to pluck every last one lest they compete with my plants for nutrients.

Speaking of my plants, they are doing quite well although some of them are taking a very long time to germinate. I have quite a collection of flowers growing.

Here are some lovely four foot tall orange daylilies. They sit front and center in my front garden, greeting all passersby. They are so prolific that I've given most of them away and spread them through the garden and I still have a lot.  They tower over their pretty yellow cousins, the Stella D'Oro daylilies. They, too, are quite prolific and would easily take over the garden if given the chance.

 Here are a couple of snap dragons that popped up spontaneously without my help. (
There's a lot of that going on the garden this year.) These two are actually growing under the large leaves of two other plants that have mysteriously sprouted in my garden. You can see them below left, flanked by lavender in the raised bed. I have no idea what they are but they appear to be sunflowers on steroids. The leaves and flower buds are similar but there are differences in the growth habit. They are so thick and stocky, I'm almost afraid I'm cultivating another Audrey 2 (from Little Shop of Horrors fame). The raised bed is surrounded by sweet alyssum that self seeded from last year. They are already releasing their beautifully delicate fragrance and sweetening the air.

In the vegetable department, I've got some bush beans growing in plastic pails along the front of the house, They are joined by the yellow flowers of the cucumbers climbing through my old azalea and some bush variety cherry tomatoes blooming profusely in another pail. My onions, not to be outdone, are also in bloom. If  you've never seen an onion blossom, it looks like a fuzzy ping pong ball at the end of a stick. I'll soon  cut off the blooms and use the stems as scallions for cooking.

For a touch of whimsy I set up my tipsy pot of flowers. Every year it is in a different spot and sports different flowers. This year I decided severely limit my garden expenditures and chose to use whatever was already growing in my garden to fill the tipsy pots. This year it is filled with alyssum and creeping Jenny (moneywort) trailing over its side.

There is so much more going on in the garden but too much for now. Fodder for another post. Until then...


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Saved by the Bird

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My husband and I had to go to a wedding this week but in the rush-rush of my activities I didn't have a chance to design a card. With only three hours to go before we had to leave, I called my husband at work and asked him to pick up a card on his way home. After I hung up, I decided to see if I could whip up a card really fast. I tend to linger and dawdle over everything I make. Working fast is not my strong suit so I set a deadline. I gave myself one hour to create a card. If I didn't have it finished and in the envelope in an hour or less, I would abandon it and use whatever my husband brought home. That's when inspiration struck.

I love the free cutting files available for download from Birdscard.com and recently used two of her files for the birdhouse birthday card I made for my sister-in-law last week.  As soon as I saw this wedding cake card cutting file, I knew it would be a cinch. I had all the papers and embellishments I wanted to use easily available so cutting and putting the card together was a breeze. My KNK Zing Air cut everything flawlessly.

I followed Bird's lead and used a monochromatic color scheme for the cake, using a special pearlized paper that changes color when you turned it to the light. In the top photo you'll notice the garlands on the cake appear pearly white but in the lower photo you can see that they appear to be a pearly mint green. I had a small piece of floral striped paper in a mint color with rose and glitter accents. The garlands and tiny rose pink flowers play up and coordinate with those colors. Tiny pearls in the center of the flowers complete the embellishments. I called my husband back and told him not to worry about buying a card because I had made something better than he would find in any card store.

Thanks, Bird, for your fabulous files. You saved the day for me.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Here's One For The Birds

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I've been on a bit of a birdhouse fad lately. In my last post, I wrote about a birthday card I made with an image of a birdhouse on it. Here I'm featuring some wooden birdhouses that I have painted and embellished to use as home decor in my mountain house.

It seems as if I've been seeing birdhouses all over the place. Well, actually I've always seen them but never paid much attention until recently. The birdhouse motif is a frequent sight on the back roads of upstate New York where they decorate mailboxes, front doors and wreaths. I suppose the allure of country living has given me the birdhouse bug.


Here are photos of the birdhouses I have done to date. The blue and green ones in the center photo were painted last year. (Then they just sat on a shelf in my craft room overlooking my work table, whispering that they wanted some company.) The larger of the two is decorated with paper die cuts that were featured in Part II and Part III of my most popular post, the Cuttlebug Filigree Medallion tutorial, By combining the negative cutout pieces, I created the design on the front and back of this birdhouse. On the sides are the pieces from which the negative spaces were cut. The smaller birdhouse is actually made in 1:1 scale for miniature dollhouses. You can get an idea how small it is by comparing it with the size of the dime in front of it. This house was a little to small to embellish with paint or paper cutouts so I used nail art decals instead. They worked like a charm

The black and red birdhouse at the top also features die cut designs from the very same Cuttlebug die as the blue-mint green house. Here only the tiniest of the cut outs were used to create the black design under the tiny red hearts. The hearts themselves were left over from a project I made for my sister and brother in law's 30th anniversary surprise.

The yellow and green house at bottom is not to be outdone. It also sports decorative die cut flowers with rhinestone centers resting on a delicate vine twining around the outside of the house. The flowers were burnished slightly to cup the petals so they would pop up and have some depth. All of the birdhouses were painted with acrylic paints and sealed with Mod Podge before and after painting.

I still have one more wooden birdhouse on my craft table. I don't know what I'll do with that yet but I'll be sure to show it to you when it's done. Until then, keep crafting!

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Birdhouse Birthday Card

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Birdhouse Birthday card front

The summer is my busiest time of year with birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and the occasional birth. My sister-in -law celebrated her 60th birthday last weekend so I created this card featuring my current fascination with birdhouses and my ever popular butterflies. I created the house file in a drawing progam and cut it with my KNK Zing Air electronic cutter. The grass border was a little piece left over from a previous project. The verse in the center of the birdhouse, a free cutting file I downloaded, appropriately enough, from birdscards.com, as well as the inside verse and image, were drawn with the Zing Air.


Drawn, you say? On a cutting machine? Yes! The Zing Air has an optional pen accessory tool that allows you to insert pens or slim markers in place of the cutting blade. This allows you to draw an image instead of cutting it. (
(I have also used a glue pen in the past and added glitter afterwards...great effect.) Because the Zing Air does not have a fill function, it only draws contours and lines, leaving the centers blank. With the verse on the front of the card, I had to manually fill in the letters with a fine tip marker. The inner verse was done using a hairline font, meaning that the contours of the font are very, very slim so the letters appear to be comprised of simple strokes. After trying out several different hairline fonts that I downloaded free from 1001Fonts.com, I chose the one  you see here. The image is one I composed using graphic files I have had on discs for years. I tweaked the elements a bit until I got something I liked and sent it to cut...err... I mean draw. I used a dark grey gel pen for drawing the poppy and hummingbird and a black one for the verse. I wanted a subtle difference between those two elements so they wouldn't visually compete with one another. My sister-in-law loved her card and showed it off to all her friends at her party.

I definitely see more birdhouses in my future.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Garden Update

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A lonely pansy peeks out from among
the sedum. Self seeded from last year.

The weather has been pretty flaky here in Brooklyn, NY these past couple of weeks. May brought us unseasonably warm weather with a couple of days past the 80 degree range but not a lot of rain. June, on the other hand, has brought much needed rain with much cooler temperatures. This has caused much confusion among my plants and they have shown their displeasure in a number of ways. My Alexander Darby rose, which produced some beautiful buds, drooped miserably when the colder weather hit us so the resulting blooms were sad looking. The rain has been a boon for my crops as well as for my weeds. Weeding is my least favorite thing to do and the garden has become a little scruffy looking for lack of diligent weeding.

A white heath aster shows up in one of
my pots. Take a look to the left of the
flower...I caught a bee just about
to land on it

To add to that chore, last year's bountiful morning glories left hundreds of seeds in their wake, all of which appear to be sprouting simultaneously. Seriously, there are parts of the front garden that are blanketed in morning glory seedlings, all of which must be ripped up and thrown out before they begin their insidious twining around the fence.

Lovely lavender survived the winter
to bloom fragrantly this spring.

And my tomatoes! Oh dear, what a predicament that is. I think I must have thrown tomatoes into the compost at some point without removing the seeds. So, of course, when I used my compost for planting my containers, the result has been dozens and dozens of tomato plants sprouting in every conceivable nook and cranny where they were not deliberately planted. I really don't know where I'm going to put them all but I hate the thought of throwing them out.

A mysterious plant (weed?) showed up
in the garden. Planted by a bird perhaps.

In spite of my garden woes, it continues to surprise me in many ways with blooms and plants in unexpected places. I have more than a few plants that I didn't plant but just showed up spontaneously. Last year's sweet allysum reseeded itself and is blooming beautifully with tiny white flowers floating over fluffy masses of greenery. A lonely pansy showed up in the middle of my sedum and a white heath aster has bloomed its daisy-like head in between some other plants. Then there are these two plants with large leaves that appear as if they will bloom into the second coming of Audrey II (from Little Shop of Horrors). I don't know what they are or where they came from but they're getting so big so fast I'm concerned about my lavender plant which is immediately next to it. In about a week I should know if it's a winner or bound for the trash bin.

I'll keep you posted.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva