"Lucy...I'm Hoooome!"

Yes, after almost a week away in Florida, I arrived home last Friday night.  This was a business trip, so it was a must.  The flights were grueling (flying isn't fun anymore!), West Palm Beach was very hot and very humid, and the palms trees and tropical plants were gorgeous!  The folks I was visiting were absolutely wonderful, which made the whole trip worthwhile.

After dumping mounds of dirty laundry, my creative juices were screaming at me to make something.  So I worked on a couple of pages in a friend's altered book, which is part of the activity for my monthly art group.

The theme of my friend's book is "Trees," so it was a delight to create some related pages that were inspiring to me.  I couldn't get the poem "Trees," by Joyce Kilmer out of my mind and centered my artwork around the poem.  If your school years were anything like mine, you had to memorize this poem in about the 3rd or 4th grade and then recite it in front of the class.

I created a 3-D effect by cutting out 2 groups of pages in the exact shape of the tree that I painted onto the pages on each side.  On the outer pages I wrote the poem...

On the inside of the middle, 3-D pages, I created a huge leaf tab on the tree trunk that says, "The Wishing Tree" on one side.  The other side of the leaf says, "Trees hold the promise of wishes coming true".  There are silver stars blooming all over the tree to give infinite wishes!

I was pleased with the results and so was my friend when I returned her book!  Now, on to a busy week at work!

See you soon,

Deborah