Riveted Flower Cuff

Yesterday I made myself a cuff bracelet to add some "edge" to an outfit. I used some of my singed fabric flowers, but the bracelet still comes off as pretty tough! I've listed the bracelet on Etsy here.

Hybrid Maps

Ever since I started doing cut-out maps I've wondered whether I could combine that with drawn maps, so over the weekend I did some experiments. Here's a couple progress photos:

The dark part is the cutting board below the image. I originally intended to put the pieces on top of white paper, like my cut-out map cards, but that actually ends up being too subtle next to the black lines of the drawing. Luckily, there are a lot of different things I can explore!

Early Summer Garden

I've been at home a lot lately waiting for a wisdom tooth surgery to heal, which is mostly a pain except that it gives me more time to peer at my little porch garden. I'm trying a lot of new plants this year, and I hope they all work!

There was a big rainstorm last night, so when I went out this morning everything was green and wet -- perfect for taking morning photos!

Marigolds (I don't actually like them much, but they keep bugs off the tomatoes, and the deep red color is rather pretty):

The tiniest proto-stringbean! Can you even see it?

First tomato flower! This year I bought four different heirloom tomato seedlings. I think this one is a pink and yellow striped beefsteak tomato. Can't wait!

My friend China Blue gave me these strawberry plants from her garden when I visited last summer, and they actually wintered over and started blooming this spring! I think this one didn't get properly fertilized though, it's such a funny shape:

I also bought strawberry seedlings from the nursery since I wasn't sure if the others would flower properly this year:

Pretty pea flowers:

And a little pea! These guys are shelling peas, so I might just try to eat the pods before they get big (like snow peas). I also have the most adorable proto-sugar snap peas slowly growing on the other vines.

I bought some Thunbergia "African Sunset" seedlings at the nursery. When they aren't being mysteriously eaten (what snips off stems and leaves on a second-floor balcony garden? Rogue, sentient clippers?), the flowers are really beautiful. They start out a dark pink and fade to light yellow, like this one:

I bought a mini rose plant for $7.50 (at Brattle Florist in Harvard Square -- super good deal, guys!) and planted it in a larger pot, and immediately it shot out new branches and buds. This one's juuuust about to pop open:

For some reason everything's been bolting before it has a chance to grow leaves big enough to eat (spinach, radishes, bok choi). But I figure if I can't eat it, I might as well see what the flowers look like. Maybe they'll help attract bees up here, which can be an issue for pollination. Chinese mustard buds:

Mosaic Maps

I was thinking recently about the geometric, relatively inorganic process I use to build up the design in my papercut map cards, and tried applying it back to drawing. The first drawing I did and painted in was sold almost immediately after I finished it (I didn't even have time to scan it!):

I was also working on a larger 9x12 drawing of the same type at the time:

That one's still on hold; I took a break to finish a previous work in progress in the new mosaic style, which I think came out really well:

I also made another small map in plum, like the one in green (but more dense):

I think the first green one and the five boroughs one are the most successful at the moment. Someone recently suggested that I try making a diptych of a cut-out and a mosaic map in the same form, or influenced by each other, that could be a next step.