Mother’s day viewing of the Avengers. Plus a coloring page.

Lyon — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:11:46 +0000

This weekend was just glorious.

I feel only a tad guilty that I spent nearly all of it just puttering around and not creating more art, but there has to be some time in the schedule for recharging the creative juices.

Saturday was a seasonal sunny day. Husband and I spent the morning doing assorted chores.

I made a run to the bank after which I went to Main Street to check out a new health and vitamin store that recently opened in one of the vacant store fronts.

My intention was only to peek inside and see what they had. So much for intentions. They had fresh walnuts with no oils on them, and a huge bag of candied ginger root. I bought both. The shop keep was thrilled I’d stopped in and talked my ear off about everything under the sun.

When I finally made my escape, I headed south to the Quilt Shop. I’ve been meaning to do this since my birthday several weeks ago, but deadlines ate me alive and I just couldn’t get to the store. Lucky for me, they’d just received a shipment of the very item I was on the hunt for. I am now the proud owner of a freehand quilting foot. Maybe with the proper tools now, I will be able to finish the queen-sized “Stack and Whack” quilt I’ve been working on for the last 10 years. I’m making it for the master bedroom.

Sunday, was Mother’s Day. And The husband and kid took me to see the Avengers. It was quite enjoyable. If you haven’t seen it yet, you have to stay through ALL the credits. There is a scene at the very, very end that is worth a chuckle.

This week’s coloring page was inspired by the recent movie outing. A cat with a very generous tub of popcorn. (Our local theater uses paper bags now, instead of the iconic wax-coated tubs.)

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day. Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

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I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Click on the covers to find out more.

Help support my efforts by spreading the word or buying any of my books. Please stop by any of my social networking sites to leave me a message (here is good too!) and let me know how you like the coloring pages. Remember, I provide these pages free of charge for your own personal use. Do not reproduce them or use them for any other purpose without my written permission.

Happy Mothers Day and goodbye Maurice Sendak

Lyon — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:24:49 +0000

A picture book great passed over the Veil yesterday morning.

Maurice Sendak was best known for his story “Where the Wild Things Are.” While I enjoyed that story with the rest of the world, my all time favorite book by Mr. Sendak has got to be “In the Night Kitchen.” I remember thumbing through the pages for hours at a neighbor’s house soaking in the many mysteries embedded into the art. I don’t think I ever bothered to read the words.

Years later, when my daughter was born, I came across an old DVD with 4 of Mr. Sendak’s stories in stop motion images being sung by a female vocalist. One of the stories was “In the Night Kitchen.” Hearing the words sung and seeing the images brought the book alive for me all over again.

My daughter is grown now, but that video was picked out of her GoodWill donation box and saved with several other treasures she felt she’d outgrown, but I know I never will.

Sendak’s work was greatly influential in my path to being a children’s book illustrator. His words of wisdom along with his body of work will remain in a place of honor in this house for years to come.

Goodbye, Maurice. Hope the other side is as wild a rumpus as you would like.

I wonder, if Viking Warriors go to Valhalla when they die, do picture book illustrators go to an amazing library?

This week’s coloring page honors Maurice Sendak. A young boy in his wolf suit stops being a wild thing long enough to give his mom a card and some flowers. Of course, he was just wild enough to pull them from the neighbor’s garden. Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there.

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

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I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Click on the covers to find out more.

A coloring page for the Full Moon

Lyon — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:55:58 +0000

I cannot believe we’re already a third of the way through 2012. I have so many things I want to accomplish this year. Of course, knowing me, my list is impossibly long.

Still, I’ve been chipping away at projects all year-long and some of my long-term ones are nearing completion. It’s so hard working on things I’m proud of that I have to keep secret and not share with you. I hope I will be able to very soon.

The baby bunnies I mentioned in an earlier post didn’t make it. Although Mama Bunny did her best to hide the burrow, a predator found it and the wee ones didn’t survive. Mama Bunny is still around and kicking though. I saw her when I came home last night.

This week’s coloring page is a cow enjoying some cookies and milk. This month’s full moon is on May 6th. May’s full moon is called the Full Flower Moon, the Corn Planting Moon or the Milk Moon

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

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I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Click on the covers to find out more.

Happy Beltane coloring page

Lyon — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:14:10 +0000

This week’s coloring page is a cute and cuddly unicorn letting the birds use her horn as a Maypole to celebrate the holiday festivities. Do you dance the May Day Fires?

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

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I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Click on the covers to find out more.

Happy Earth Day April 22, 2012

Lyon — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:28:54 +0000

I’ve been keeping myself entertained by listening to the various TED talks while I draw. Some of them are very good information, some are just fun and silly. Last week, I listened to one talk about the other “inconvenient truth.” (No, not global warming, although after this past winter and record-breaking warm March, I wonder how any one can still doubt that.) What’s that you say?

According to the speaker, Jonathan Foley, we are going to run out of food for the population of earth in a very short while. Possibly as soon as our children’s lifetimes, most assuredly by their children’s lifetimes. That’s a pretty scary thought. Jonathan Foley studies complex environmental systems and their effects on society. His computer models have shown the deep impact agriculture is having on our planet.

This week’s coloring page is a brave mouse holding up the world. What are you doing to support Mother Earth?

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

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I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Click on the covers to find out more.

Tangoing flamingos coloring page

Lyon — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:16:27 +0000

I just got back from taking my daughter to get her learner’s permit. This is her second one. She let the last one expire without ever driving the required 30 pre-driver’s test hours and then promptly lost it.

She’s planning on moving out as soon as school is over for the year. I hope she manages to figure out the driving thing by then as I have no clue how one can function as a full-fledged adult in Missouri without driving.

When I left home at 18, I moved to New York City. NYC has one of the most extensive mass transit systems in the world. I could get nearly everywhere I wanted by a combination of bus, subway or train for the 12 years I lived there. Then I moved to another state and had to *gasp* learn to drive and buy a car so I could become gainfully employed. Also, so I could actually open a bank account because – even though I had a NY driver’s license, it didn’t have a photo on it and all the banks in my new home town required some form of PICTURE ID. They wouldn’t even accept my passport since it had expired 2 years earlier.

One of the things I still miss to this day, several decades after leaving NYC, is convenient and affordable mass transit. Do you have any idea how many things I got done while traveling on a subway? Scores of books, hours of doodles, piles of writing and countless wonderful daydreams. You can’t (safely) do any of those things while commuting and driving a car.

I also had to get my own driver’s license renewed. This time around my photo doesn’t make me look as if I am suffering a severe hangover. I even look younger! LOL Got get your perks where you can.

This week’s coloring page is a pair of flamingos dancing the tango. I have to tell you, flamingos are not built to dance a tango, but I think I managed to make this pair appropriately entwined. Think pink and enjoy!

Click on the image to get your 8.5X11 download coloring page.

I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

Sign up to receive alerts when a new coloring page is posted each week and/or click here to view more coloring pages!

I send out coloring pages to let people know about me, my art and my children’s books. Help support my efforts by spreading the word or buying any of my books. Please stop by any of my social networking sites to leave me a message (here is good too!) and let me know how you like the coloring pages. Remember, I provide these pages free of charge for your own personal use. Do not reproduce them or use them for any other purpose without my written permission.

Pink Moon coloring page

Lyon — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:38:17 +0000

This week’s coloring page is for the full moon this week. April’s full moon in the Northern Hemisphere is called the Pink Moon (for the flowers in bloom), the Egg Moon, the Sprouting Grass Moon and last but not least the Easter Moon. Yes, Easter is a holiday that follows the first full moon of Spring. Strange how all paths converge at some point or another, isn’t it?

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

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Planting time!

Lyon — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:58:10 +0000

Even though it’s still March, we have our garden planted out back.

I’m really excited to taste the first crop. We’ve never had a real, planned garden on our property before. When my father-in-law was alive, we used to work his garden with him and reap the benefits every Sunday. For several years after his death, my husband and his siblings tried to plant a garden for my mother-in-law, but with everyone working full-time jobs, the garden was sadly neglected and after a while, no one bothered any more.

My husband has been talking about putting in raised beds in the back for several years, but all things being equal, it never happened.

This year it has. Can you tell I’m thrilled?

This week’s coloring page is in honor of the small sprouting gems of yummy poking their leafy goodness out of the ground.

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

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Happy Ostara

Lyon — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:57:23 +0000

Spring is officially here as of 5:15 am this morning.

My husband and I spent the last weekend creating raised garden beds. My husband has been saying he’s going to be planting raised gardens in the yard for at least a half-dozen years, so I am amazed and delighted that we finally have them created.

I picked bunches of herbs for him to plant. We also got tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuces and melons to plant. Plus, because my darling is an old mush, he got me a tray of purple pansies. They are my favorite flower because they look like small lion faces.

May you all have a blessed Equinox and a wonderful first official week of spring!

This week’s coloring page is an adorable bunny in honor of the holiday. Have fun coloring!

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I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

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Weekly coloring page: Luck of the Irish

Lyon — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:55:03 +0000

People are barbecue this evening. I’m drooling at the aroma since the windows are open because of the unseasonably warm weather. The newscast earlier says we broke a record. The temps today are about 30 degrees warmer than normal. Such high temps in March, MARCH for Pete’s sake, have me dreading what the summer will bring.

But enough about the weather! Here’s a lucky leprechaun for you to color.

Click on the image to get your 8.5X11 download coloring page.

I love to hear from you. Emails, comments and your colored pages make my day.

Email your colored image (less than 1mb) to coloringpage (at) handcraftedpagan (dot) com and I’ll post it to my blog!

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