Key to life

"The key to life is enjoying the passage of time." That is quite a large statement and I'm not sure it is entirely true but it certainly has some truth in it. It is a garbled quote from a James Taylor song, in case it sounds vaguely familiar. James says "the secret to life is enjoying the passage of time". I created this piece when my friend Mary threw down a challenge, after giving 5 of us in the creativity group each a baggie of old keys and asking us to create something using one or more of the keys. We had 2 weeks to work on our projects. Yesterday at our get together we revealed our creations, you can see them here: http://foxontherunarts.blogspot.com/

I used 3 keys in my mixed media piece, each tied to a rust colored ribbon and held to the background with some beaded stitches.  I long ago made some rust dyed fabric and thought it would be perfect to use some as the background.  Then continuing with the vintage look I used some old photos that Mary had also given me (no one we know) and put it all together using some tea dyed lace, scrim, felt, beads, bottle caps (behind the two smaller photos) and hand stitched it all together, frequently using beads to enhance some areas.  It was fun rummaging around through my collection of crap...I mean, my collection of valuable artifacts to find just the right bits to bring this all together.  As you can see if you have been following along on my art journey for long, this is rather a change of pace for me in its color scheme.  Usually I am all color, all the time.  I quite enjoyed the change.

I might even like to continue along this theme, but use some photos that have personal meaning to me.  I have lots of old family photos from both my mother's and father's sides of my family.  Maybe the theme would be "the key to life is starting with good genes".

My weather here has remained mostly quite cool for summer.  Cool as in the 60's, and wearing sweatshirts all day long.  If the sun comes out it does warm up but mostly it doesn't come out until mid afternoon.  The neighbors have cut my hay field down and we are waiting for it to dry so it can be baled.  With the cool damp weather, it was great for the grass to keep growing so this years hay crop has been much more abundant than usual.  I have been taking pictures that I will share when the whole process is finished.  I'll bet there are a lot of you who have never been involved with the haying process so maybe you will enjoy seeing it.  Until then, I will leave you with this quote:

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
Gandhi  

Slow down, be well.