Art with Heart - creative moments that make our lives beautiful.

I just adore old sheet music - it's yellowed pages and gentle lyrics carry romance and beauty and lead to many great art ideas...

Someone kindly gave m three boxes full of glass jars....hmmmm...Christmas (or anytime!) lanterns! We made these an activity at the country markets.

Then took it a step further and strung them up from an old dartboard wire thingo. Simply gorgeous hanging on the balcony!

This beautiful teepee was constructed by Flex out of reeds he had cut to size with the 'knifeblade' he had fashioned from shale rock. Photo on iphone using hipstamatic.

Had to put this one in because it goes with the title of the page :)

Ditto. I loves me a bit of random 'found' nature love!!

I just love making 'cairns' or little towers out of rocks. This one fell over twice before it was perfect, and Lucky contributed the very last stone...

Stencilling and spraypainting is our latest craze. The boys ended up exploring the silhouettes of all sorts of stuff...curtain rings, plastic monkeys, old keys, matchsticks...and we even turned Lucky's old farm jeans into tsubi-like works of art with a stencil of crossbones and some fluro orange paint....LOVE!

Flex and I watched the painting scenes in the film 'Pollock'. So inspired was he that we immediately got out paint and canvas, splattering and pouring on colour with crazed and joyful abandon. Very much like Jackson from what I understand....Flex had a great free style. It was MUCH harder for me to 'let go' with the paint - I was trying to be neat!!! Too much school in my life perhaps....

This is a canvas we did about 4 years ago - maybe more. It still hangs proudly in the bathroom!

My favourite painting, from an op shop, hangs above the toilet.

A nature mandala created by us and friends.

This is one of my all time faves. Lucky 'invented' this style of painting - dip a spinning top in paint, then spin til it's a winner! Such a fun way to make art!

The majestic gymea lily. Out in force right now (late winter). Our local floral emblem...

A gorgeous work by Lucky and I. It's amazing what you can come up with, using found objects, a bit of paint and something to print with (we used bubble wrap). And trust the kids - they often have an innate sense of aesthetic placement...the one thing I did offer was when to stop!

This one was a joyful artistic experience for Lucky. A friend gave us some canvasses with board shorts printed on them - can you see it?? Lucky did a base coat in dark grey and finger painted the lines. he then got square pieces of paper and did 'butterfly' prints on them. He was stoked!! With a limited colour palette, the effect is really modern and quite striking.

This is a painting I did using three colours (black, white and dark orange) - and my fingers!! It is a portrait of our family. I urge EVERYONE to finger paint - it is sensual, effective and most of all, fun!!

A sweet little boat made out of paperbark and a stick. The simple things in life are often the best...

This is the same collaged art work as the one to the right. But I photographed this one with the sun behind it - sort of like a stained glass window.

This was a group effort done at the country markets. We ripped up old magazines and glued them on in an homage to the gymea lily. I love that if you look closely you can find dolphins, a shoe, car headlights...We will display it at the country fair!!

This is the top of my newly shaved head...and methinks...if you put your rose coloured glasses on...it looks like my cowlick is shaped like a heart....aawwwww!

Lucky's set up for a game of marbles was so pleasing to the eye I had to record it. He won by the way.

The beautiful silver gum in front of our balcony has become target practice for the boys' paint ball finger-gun experiments. They have declared it a 'work of art' and quite frankly, I agree.