On Earth Day, I spent some time under my favorite tree with my favorite art supplies. After some thought, I decided to stash the pencil and eraser back in by bag and do everything by instinct. As I splashed the paint around, it started to rain, and I let that become part of the painting too. I first thought of who would be living in the brook splashing by my feet, and a dark-eyed naiad started to take form. And while that one started to dry/get drizzled on, I grabbed the other sketchbook and started to use the firey colors that hadn't been in the first painting, inspired by the luscious pink blossoms overhead. My favorite, final touch was a small pink petal from my weeping cherry tree that spiraled down and landed right in the paint. It was like getting a kiss from the tree.

A few years ago, I got this crazy idea that I would paint every day in May. And post the paintings here on my blog. And invite others to do the same. ♥

Here's how it works:
Commit to create something every day in the month of May. (Note: one year I did over 31 paintings. I felt really rushed. So this year, I will spend more than one day on a painting if I want to. You can do the same, or do 31 separate paintings, or take 31 photos, make collages, or write a page of your novel every day.)

They can be tiny.

They can be crap. :)

They can be about anything you want.

At the end of the month, a month that has a solid week of recitals and hours of driving time and packing up the kids to bring to my parents so the house can be perfectly quiet, I will have done 31 days of paintings. I may hate them all! I may have one I love, or I may think all of them are my best work yet. But I do know that I function better painting than when I'm NOT painting. And hopefully after all those paintings I will learn something new.

So...who wants to join me?

. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Graphics to link back and use for your own "Every Day" journey:


Feel free to join the Flickr group here: Every Day In May. Go! Share your stuff!

(Happy fruit, on my toaster oven, between cookies and art projects.)

I can't believe it's been a MONTH since I last posted. Life has been very, very full. Exciting, emotional, ecstatic, exhausting. I have lots of things I want to write about, and lots of things I promised to write about. There will be paintings up soon, though, lots of them. Because....

I'm doing Every Day In May this year. And so are you. Details to come.

This is a bracelet I was given on the Mother's Retreat. It was randomly placed in my folder, but those of you who know me know that I don't believe much in coincidence. There is a reason for everything. At the time, I wondered, "Why mercy? Why couldn't I get grace, or courage, or love, or one of the other bracelets instead?" And I put it on my wrist and have been wearing it almost constantly since then. Whenever I look down at my hands or roll up my sleeves to wash dishes, I see it and am reminded again... of mercy. And again, I wonder what the message is there for me.

I think I am beginning to figure it out for myself, but I wonder - what are your experiences with mercy? Why do you think I was given this bracelet?

Sophie's birthday party was fairy themed this year! All the fairy friends took home a magic wand (and heck yes, I made lots of extras. I was a wand-making fool). As requested, here are some wand pictures (birthday girl with Mama to the left, Angela to the right with a bouquet) to share.

Here's how to make magic flower wands yourself:

• Get a bunch of dowels (wider is better!) and cut them to about 16" long. Sand them well.
• Paint the wands with watercolor. Try to make them all different!
• If you want to add glitter or gold paint, now would be a good time after your watercolor paint dries.
• You'll need LOTS of flowers, the bigger the better. Cut them close to the flower head and hot glue them to the top of the dowel. Hold them on tight while the glue sets and don't burn yourself!
• Cut a big leaf from your flowers and write the name of the lucky recipient on it with a paint pen.
• Punch a hole in the leaf and tie it close to the top of the wand, right under the flower, with ribbon. Use contrasting ribbon, different widths or lengths - make it bright and interesting! I even made one with a sunflower tied with brown ribbon with white polka-dots. The more colorful, the better.
• You could also add tendrils of ivy, a pipe-cleaner bumblebee, or a butterfly to your wand for even more waveability.
• Then go out and make some magic!

More fairy party ideas:
♥ Pair this with making clothespin fairies, as we did. The kids really enjoyed this craft!

It's time again for the annual Mothers' Retreat, where my mom and I will actually be roommates! This year's poster is proudly displayed by the Wonder Twins. And its message is one I really need to hear right now as we deal with some seemingly impossible situations. I am looking forward to having some quiet time with no distractions to just breathe, and BE.

Be strong, everybody.

I know I have been posting more on the sporadic side - I look at all the paintings I was doing this time last year and want to sigh - but here is a quick list of things going on in just about the past month or so, and maybe you'll forgive a slowness to post:

• family member in and out of hospitals since before Christmas
• dear friend and boss of 15 years passed away and I still miss him every day
• my sister's getting married: I made her wedding invitations
• and secondary invitations for the reception for people at work
• and invitations for her bridal shower
• which I also hosted at my house
• wedding at end of this month and I am in the wedding party
• Sophie's 6th birthday was this past Thursday
• Sophie's incredibly awesome fairy-themed birthday party this past weekend
• and I made hand-painted magic wands for each party-goer to take home after
• Peter and Angela's 5th birthday is today
• their safari party is next Saturday
• did I mention I have a day job
• and have been helping with my husband's paperwork to try to lighten his load
• this weekend is the super-fantastic mother's retreat
• and of course I am hand-lettering the poster for it
• ...there's more, but don't you think that's enough for now?

While a few of the things on this list are stressful, the majority of them are joyous, and for that I am truly thankful. But they all take time! Whenever I think, "Ooh, I should post that!", by the time I get the pictures in the computer, or sit down to write, I think it's all old news, and then I don't bother. So I'll throw it out to you: what do you want to hear about? Do you want to see the magic wands? Do you want to hear about the Mother's Retreat? Or none of the above, go paint something already?

More posts coming up with what I've been up to, and boy, has it been lot! At last, here's this year's Valentine, and as always, the Valentines of years past. Watch those cookies grow up!


(2008)


(2007)


(2006)


(2005)

Rest assured, the traditional Nazzaro kids on the couch Valentine is coming, I just have to get it loaded up. But in the meantime... here's a teeny pic of me and Sophie, holding one of her Valentines. It says "Wool you be my Valentine?" and features a cotton-ball-made lambie and numerous hearts.

Tomorrow we host my sister's bridal shower here - what a lovely way to celebrate my favorite holiday! Happy Valentine's Day!

Thank you so much, everybody who's written to check on me. I have several posts, not to mention paintings, in me that no doubt you'll be seeing something one of these days. I have so many things going on right now, but I'm truly doing okay, and in fact have felt pure love surrounding me. I swear God is holding my hand. It feels really good.

In the meantime, there's a luscious new cake to try out with new illustrations by me in Craft Magazine! (And I'm working on the next new illo right now.) Click here to view it and try it out for yourself.

UPDATE: Sadly, this issue of Craft will be the last one in print. WAH! I loved illustrating for them! But the good news is that the website will still be going strong. Go show them some love.

My amazing, incredible, funny, creative, loving, and caring boss and friend, Rich, passed away this weekend. My heart is breaking.

Here, finally, are Paul's trees. You're seeing them much much smaller than I painted them; in real life, they're 12 inches across. But they're about to get bigger...

Since we built our fireplace years and years ago, Paul's always wanted to have different pictures hanging above it. Something with lots of trees, since we both love them, and paintings we could change with the seasons. But I work on a rather small scale, and this size honestly took me days and days and days. Weeks even. Forests are involved like nobody's business, and it's hard to get down the feeling and the color of the forest without making it look like you're being clubbed with the details. I kept remembering this painting my Grandma had where every single leaf was rendered, and I was trying to do the opposite of that. I would paint in my studio, bring everything down to the dining room and paint more while the kids had a snack, look at it after dinner and splash more paint on it, hate it the next morning and lift sections of paint off of it only to drip on more once it all dried again. I swear that last weekend I was painting WHILE I MADE DINNER. I had it propped up on the counter, would go stir everything the stove, turn around, and paint again. I literally could not stop painting.

I have one small bit left to do on the path, and then I'm scanning it all in. Inspired by the way the poster of Tree/Bird/Heart came out, we're making it into a poster so it will be huuuuuuge! Framed and matted, it'll go over our stone fireplace and we'll be able to see every line and edge of color as we get close up to it.

And from the couch? It'll just look like a forest.

I am coming up on my (gulp!) 15-year anniversary of working at PRI, in March. My boss just circulated an email saying, "When you first came to work for me you had pigtails and you said that some people said you reminded them of the girl in the Bugs Bunny cartoon about Red Riding Hood. I knew immediately what you meant, and I knew immediately we'd hit it off." And attached a link to this piece of awesomeness:



By the way, 15 years later, we're still completely on the same page. :)

At last, here's Peter's painting of his favorite stuffed animal, his beloved Duckie. He wanted a formal portrait of Duckie after considering and then (thankfully!) discarding the following subject matter:

1. Portrait of Cookie Monster to go next to the painting of the chocolate chip cookie he requested when he moved into his own room (actually, that would have been pretty cool to paint, I have done the big guy before.)

2. A race car with everyone you can think of from Sesame Street riding in it. No, wait....

3. Five cars, and all of them should have a separate Sesame Street character in it... and they should all be racing!

And thankfully, idea four was Duckie.

The part that impressed me most was that Peter showed this painting to everyone who came over for Christmas, and rated it as his favorite present over (get this) two remote control cars. What 4-year-old boy likes a painting of his special fluffy over remote control cars?

A boy who loves his Duckie. And clearly, who has good taste.

Extreme closeup:

I foolishly didn't have time to scan in any of these Christmas presents (held by my awesome niece and nephews, their proud owners), so I had to settle for snapshots as they were opened. I'm especially miffed I didn't get a good shot of Kermit, as he came out pretty darn good.

But my favorite story is about the space pic in the lower left corner - it was for my nephew Joe, who as I understood, wanted "the night sky." So I looked up what the constellations would look like on his birthday, masked them out, added a moon, and painted it up. One night while I was talking to him on the phone, he mentions the TIE fighter he wants in the picture. "What TIE fighter? I'm done!" I said. But he's my nephew, and one of my godsons, and darnit, it's Christmas, and I love him, so I went back in with a wet brush and lifted out a whole bunch of sky and made him a TIE fighter, and while I was at it, made the moon into the Death Star for good measure. I think it came out even better, so everyone wins.

So I was telling my brother (his dad) that there's now a TIE fighter, it looks great, the force is with me, and all that. And he says, "Which kind of TIE fighter did you paint?" and my blood ran cold. I had no idea there was more than one kind! Luckily for me, the one I painted was the correct one. Phew!

While my pre-Christmastime was very busy with all the painting and crafting, I can honestly say it was also exhilarating. I spent my time painting and painting and painting, and I was so proud to when it came time to wrap them. I learned something new with each painting, and yes, there are even more to show (and... to finish.... ) I still also have one yet to scan and two more still to start! I'll show Peter's (which I did scan) next, and Paul's which is a work in progress that is proving to be quite a challenge.

The dolls are done! And are getting played with lots, thank heavens. At last they're finished and sat for their first photo shoot:


Angela's doll's dress is a sundress (under that fluffy lavender sweater) that is modeled after her favorite tie-dyed summertime dress, which naturally is also purple. She got it right away. Angela named her doll Velvet, after Angela's name she uses when we play fairies.


Sophia has named her doll Grace, after her own middle name. Grace's stockings are made from leggings Sophie wore a hole in as a baby, and her jumper is from the leg of embroidered corduroy pants Sophie outgrew long ago.


Peter and his doll refused to pose, but we set up a photo shoot for them anyway. His doll (as yet unnamed, but we're calling him PJ right now) wears jeans made from Paul's old pants. He will have an extremely colorful sweater that borders on being Cosby-esque as soon as I finish knitting it, as Petey loves to wear sweaters and the colors in it look like one of his meticulous drawings. But in the meantime, his doll wears a stripey shirt made from an old onesie of Peter's from back in the day. Good think I never throw anything out, huh?

I've been madly painting and sewing in preparation for Christmas! Here's Sophie's painting. Her request was "A lamb wearing boots, a cat wearing boots, and a dog wearing boots." One sketch had them all having a picnic tea, but she voted for this one instead, playing in the rain.





More Christmas paintings to come...

Dancing squirrels, a little rambunctious for Illustration Friday this week.

Remember I gave everyone on our gift list the choice of an original painting? Well, Angela requested "Squirrels, dancing." And so she shall have them. I had a sketch where one was upside down on his hands and she was really opposed to it for some reason, so here are her dancing squirrels, all on their feet. They'll need to have shadows underneath them, but other than that, I don't think I want to do too much more to it. In a perfect world, I would have painted the background FIRST, but I'm toying with going back in and adding in a light wash.

Extreme tail close up:



Tomorrow hopefully: painting in progress of a lamb, a cat, and a dog, all wearing boots and carrying umbrellas.

While making all the presents for Christmas has been fun, and rewarding, it's also time consuming. At least the dolls all have hair and faces... now they need some clothes! And while 4 of the 11 paintings are completely done and framed, and 4 more of them in various other states of completion, I can't show any of them yet or the recipients (and their parents) might see them. When my kids' paintings are done, I can post them, as all they're interested in seeing on the computer is YouTube, Cute Overload, and the occasional visit to Flying Pizza Kitty.