It's saturday, it's 106 outside, 2 degrees above what they thought would be the high for today. Yesterday the high was 109.

I went on errands early to avoid the heat and decided to hunker down here and paint, organize piles in the studio, and do a postcard.

I have this pile of little acrylic bottles from my mom's old craft stash I got when I cleared out her sewing room. Then my dad gave me his old acrylics several months ago, after a renewed interest in painting that was short lived. I love using these premixed colors to do the postcards. It's fast, and I end up using colors I don't normally think about using. I've been more attracted to saturated colors lately.

This one started out with reds and oranges. Then I collaged part of an East Indian loose tea bag on top with matte medium. I liked the collage bit, so continued with some old patterns from an ABC rug ad, some painted pattern, and some stamping from some of my own home made stamps carved out of corks (the new fake corks actually work best).

It still didn't look done, so I added the alphabet and numbers down the right side, painted over those, added a lacier tone on tone sideways alphabet in the middle. It was starting to really look the way I wanted, but something was missing, so I added my birth sign of gemini with cut out letters and the tiny butterfly.

I really like this one, so much so that I think I'll do the astrology sign for each month as they come due. If I'm pleased with the results I'll print them up as cards for my etsy shop.

You just never know when the creative angels will visit and bless you with some magic.

Stay cool everybody, here's to some rain and a cool breeze.