" But Love Goes on Forever"

This is the box that was in my first photo in my last post. Given to me free at a garage sale earlier this summer by an older lady who said she used it for her earrings. She was selling her house and moving...I would love to be able to show her what I did with those frames as well as with this blank box.

The completed box. The topper is from a bird house given to me by a friend that was redecorating her yard. I took the birdhouse and it was in my garden until we moved and by then the whole thing was falling apart but I kept the metal top. 

Detail: little glass jar that I put ribbons in to match the color scheme. 

Small basket I've had for over 50 years! (it was in my original doll house) Music scroll, fairy dust, packet of "secret letters" 

The title of the piece comes from this ceramic shopping bag which is from the Precious Moments Chapel in Carthage Missouri. I visited there with my family about 20 years ago. 

Our new neighborhood has held something called "The Sycamore Stroll" for years. I was lucky enough to be in town for this one. It is a neighborhood of garage sales with hotdogs, lots of neighbors on foot or bike going from house to house to find treasures. I was in heaven on my bicycle in the perfect spring air and abundant flowers. I bought a box of the little plastic wine glasses from a woman whose mother used to collect miniatures. I filled it with tiny glass beads and resin.

A friend gave me a roll of hand printed paper of bicycles. I've been cutting them out and using them in projects. I put the little dog that was made hand painted in Scotland, that I also have had for years.  

I hope you enjoyed my little journey with this piece as much as I did making it and telling you about it. 

Bikes and Biking On My Mind

Collage on top of shadow box

3D shadow box of a little girl with dog and tricycle looking out over the fence at a woman riding a bicycle and thinking someday I want a big girls bike. $65

Bikes are still on my mind as snow has not come to this part of Idaho yet.

Our ski resort is losing $100, 000 a day! The snow markers register- nada! so what am I doing? Riding my bike in January. I got a new mountain bike for Christmas which I rode yesterday- 16 miles, and lots of climbing! There were a few patches of ice and mud but overall it felt like a spring day. The temp. registered 52 on my bike computer!

I was never much of a bike rider until my late 40's when I got my first bike. My first big ride was the "Hotter Than Hell"  in Wichita Falls Tx. 60 miles in 112 degree heat! Since moving to Idaho four years ago, I got my very own mountain bike at age 50 (the previous 2 years I was riding my husbands hand me down) and am now registered for my first mountain bike race coming up in April!


Maybe I was that little girl looking over that fence, it just took me a while to get there... those of you who have followed my blog for a while may recognize the red trike in the shadow box. It was left mysteriously on my doorstep a year ago, I found out recently it was a fellow artist and neighbor who had left it there. So for a year I have been making a little pile of papers and ephemera related to bikes around the red trike.

Tuesday at Studio Em was the time to make it all come together. First I went through my little pile and divided up the ephemera into 2 piles, one that was more related to mountain biking and one that was more related to casual riding around town. The mountain biking ephemera will be for a future piece.

side panel collage

me on my new bike in January and no snow!

Other side panel collage