swallowfield :: jennifer judd-mcgee

love your mother

a quick business-y update! i am offering a sweet little deal for mothers day in my etsy shop - use the code 'momlove' for 20% off between now and may 1st. orders will be shipped within 24 hours, and i am super happy to include a little gift note for you if you like.

also, two new prints!

all by all

starlight LARGE print

starlight

this is a new, pretty large papercut i made over the past few weeks. i had a ton of fun working on this one. i have some new stuff cooking and this design will be part of, er, said new stuff. i will show you soon.

maybe we're cold-hearted, but the kids and i laughed hard at this yesterday. thanks to liz for the link.

i hope you have a great start to your week.

spring-like activities

hello! i hope you had a good week.  we're on vacation this week and planning to enjoy the spring weather as much as we can. i got a new bike, so we've been having fun taking some short pedals around together. and my brother is running the boston marathon today - he raised over $12K in support of the MS society - so the kids and i are having fun tracking his progress online. (he's doing really well so far!)

we also dyed some eggs:

and then we decorated a few too:

there is something incredibly pleasing about dying eggs. i never get tired of doing it each year.  :)  i did get tired of blowing out the eggs, though. i only did a dozen of them, but my eardrums are not fond of me for it.

ps: i made some new card sets

have a great day!

 

 

today is just that kind of day.

Today

By Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

thanks very much for your comments yesterday - i am so glad to hear that people are still reading blogs! this blog is kind of a quiet happy place for me - i never feel like i have to keep up with it every day, and when i do update it i try to keep it to the things that inspire me and i think are beautiful. most of the time, anyway.

this morning i woke up really early for the second day in a row and took a long walk as the sun was rising. i feel grateful to live in such a gorgeous part of the world. spring is here, and it is making a huge difference in my outlook and optimisim.

happy friday, and happy weekend!

the increasingly rare big blog update

i've been a little bit distracted from updating this blog for the past little while. do people still read blogs these days? i've been wondering. i find i click around to places to read in a different way than i did even six months ago, but there are still blogs i love to visit. i didn't think i would like using a facebook page for my art, but it turns out that i do - sometimes it's just easier to upload one image and do a mini/quick update.i'm always a late adapter; other smarter people seem to have figured this out long ago.

the papercutting bug has bitten me again, after a few months off. partially because i've dreamed up a bunch of designs i want to make, partially because it's easier at the moment to hold the exacto knife than a pen, and partially because i am working on a fun new collaboration with a local artist that will feature some of my papercuts - but the long and short of it is that i am super happy to be creating in this way again. it's addictive + relaxing.

dig in the dirt

island life

botanical no. three

there are more in the works, too! the originals here will be in galleries this summer, and i've made prints of a few of them, too.

and here's a new mixed media collage i made recently:

three flowers (print is available here)

and a new pattern i created from a collage:

i will soon have cards sets of these bottom two images - i'm excited about that. 

and inspiring me lately:

possibly the sweetest video EVER

misunderstood lyrics medley

ranunculus! it's hard to get it here on the island, but i picked some up in portland last weekend when we visited. it doesn't feel like early spring to me without it.

i hope you are well. thanks so much for reading here.