Crafting with Herbs

 

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I vowed not to take multi-day classes until I retired, there just isn't enough time. But retirement has been pushed out and I couldn’t wait. Understanding how to grow and use herbs has been one of my top interests. When I learned about Herbal Academy it didn’t take more than a day for me to abandon my vow and decide to enroll in the introductory herb class.

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With plenty of borage outside my door, the first herbal recipe I tried was fresh borage leaf tea. The taste is mild and not unpleasant, quite like a weak green tea. Learning that it helps with stress and insomnia makes it a winner for me. Borage self-sows and I have it all around the yard from spring to fall.
 

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July also meant another trip to my local nursery where I picked up more herbs for my new herb spiral garden. My purchases included the bee-friendly plants bee balm, hyssop, and lavender that are now blossoming. These plants can also be used for herbal teas, tinctures, and salves. I'm eager to make a rosemary-lavender hand salve.

After the flowering plants have lost their blooms I’ll be saving the seeds to start next year’s plants. The sunny side of the backyard will become a bee haven!

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Throughout the summer, bees swarm the chive, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and savory blossoms. I’ve often wished I could get the herbal honey they are making. Then, this week in my herb class, I learned how to make herbal honey with dried herbs and I can’t wait to try this. My herbal class has introduced me to excellent sources of dried herbs for those that won't grow in my climate.

The next step in my herbal crafting journey will be stovetop hydrosols. Perhaps if my new peppermint and spearmint plants are bountiful I can create a refreshing mint hydrosol before summer is over.

I'm very happy I decided to take this course as I can now use the information before retirement to get a head start on experimenting with cultivating herbs and putting them to various uses. In fact, I'm so happy with my decision that I've already enrolled in a month-long class during September. Life long learning is the true goal after all, so why wait?

 

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February Crafting ~ by Lexa Fisher

I never imagined that taking an all-day writing workshop would re-kindle my creative energy, but it certainly did. Not only did I come away with fresh ideas for my current novella, but also with renewed energy and ideas for my creative outlet of making cards this month.

I'd purchased a Valentine card kit to inspire me with new ideas and craft materials. The neon pink glitter paste you see in the hearts above is part of the kit, and is almost gone now--I love the bright color!

  

In addition to using the materials in the kit, I learned several new card folding techniques. Here is a corner fold card.

 

Another folding technique I learned is the diagonal fold.

 

 

Here are two more card styles I made this month: the mini card-on-a-card, and a top fold.

 

My favorite new technique is the Z-fold, which is easy to make but looks quite intricate. It also uses lots of decorative papers, which I love and you can see I've used in all of these examples.

Making cards wasn't all I did for Valentine's Day. Since we're not going out shopping, I needed to make my sweetie something chocolatey and homemade. I've had these soap and candy molds for decades, and they came in handy again. These are hand-poured crispy rice cereal and sunflower seed butter filled chocolates--that he refrained from eating in one day...25 hours counts as more than a day, right? 😄

 

 I hope your Valentine's Day was sweet!

Hitting a Brick Wall? ` by Lexa Fisher

 

I usually don't think of a brick wall so pretty as the embossed pattern above from one of my fellow card makers. This example inspired me to challenge myself to see what I could do with cards that start out as empty brick walls. Along the way I also looked at a few examples of brick sayings--hit the bricks, gold bricking, and hitting a brick wall.

 

Hitting the bricks with my first attempt provided a much needed warm-up opportunity. My favorite card supply shop closed last January and I was a little rusty from the lack of camaraderie and inspiration. Starting simple, I colored bricks using a stencil my husband designed and made on one of his 3D printers.

My second card has raised bricks that were done with the stencil and tinted modeling paste. My husband shares his 3D creations on Thingiverse and this is his most often downloaded design. Sounds like other card creators like Thingiverse.

My card making muscles are warm now, so my next card used the Glaminator to create a shiny red brick wall. Another tool I pulled out was my Cricut to cut out the letters J and Y. 

 

 

Here's where I recalled the phrase "to gold brick", meaning to cheat or swindle. My first idea was to use gold glitter for the bricks. A lot of crafters hate working with glitter, and I'll admit that after this trial I've had my fill for the year :) 

Then I switched to gold leaf--still a bit messy, but not as much as glitter, and it's not something to be used during allergy season! It may look like you're pulling out a tiny pinch, but it really fluffs up and  breathing on it will send it all over the room. Here is a card made with gold leaf.

That's enough designing with bricks, so I'm hitting the yellow brick road to make other holiday card creations!

Photo by Akshay Nanavati on Unsplash

 

 

 

Meet Our Members

Author Lexa Fisher

Lexa writes seasoned romance—romance between characters who are over forty. Her characters value integrity in a partner and a relationship founded on trust. Gratitude and thanks are predominant themes in her cards, and sparkle is always an element in her designs.

To learn more about Lexa and read her prior blog posts, please click HERE

Meet our Members ~ Lexa Fisher

  Lexa Fisher
Romance Writer and Greeting Card Creator

Lexa is from the Seattle area and when she isn't writing romance, she is creating beautiful greeting cards. To find out more about Lexa and read her prior blog posts, please click on the link below.

LEXA'S MEMBER PAGE

Grateful for All I Have ~ Lexa Fisher

Grateful for All I Have

From a friend's FB post

Our current house is half the size of our previous one and has highly limited storage space. This means we no longer shop at warehouse stores--there simply isn't room for bulk purchases. 

Lack of space has also necessitated a new rule: one thing in, one thing out. I have to give a lot of thought to what I buy, because something has to go. In with the new, out with the old, as the saying goes.

This flowchart I recently saw on a friend's Facebook page depicts the decision process that helps my purchasing choices.

Gratitude turns what we have into enough. ~~ Anonymous

Though I purchase less, I'm grateful for so much. As we reflect on all that we are thankful for later this month, it's also the perfect time to consider what we need. No doubt our needs are far fewer on Thanksgiving Thursday than they are on Black Friday.

One day we give thanks and express gratitude for what we have, and the next day kicks off the biggest shopping spree of the year. If we're so grateful, why this need to have more or to give more?

"[There are] Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give." ~~ Edwin Arlington Robinson

Photo by Mel Poole on Unsplash

There are many reasons to give, and not all pertain to unnecessary excesses or filling voids in ourselves. Gifts are the most common form of expressing thanks and showing appreciation to the people we're thankful for.





As I've composed this post, I've found I can reconcile the opposing ideas of gratitude for enough versus needing to express it by buying more, with this quote:

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." ~~ William Arther Ward

I struggle to find the right gift for friends and family each year. But this year I'll focus on giving holiday gifts that express gratitude to the recipient--for their support, the knowledge they impart, the love they give, or the joy they bring to my life. And, of course, something small or consumable--space considerations, you know.😀

Card by Lexa Fisher

Home Grown ~ Lexa Fisher

The kiwi arbor

Several years ago we bought a house with a neglected yard and I joined the Seattle trend to "eat your yard". Old, long neglected plants were replaced with edibles. Though it took several years to get started, especially in the backyard which gets little sunlight, rosemary now thrives along with red currants, an elderberry shrub, raspberries, kiwi grapes, and gooseberries.

Despite the small size of our lot, in the sunnier front yard I've managed to squeeze in two plum trees, a four-way grafted apple tree, two columnar apple trees, two figs (our favorite), a dwarf peach, seven raspberry bushes, and nine different herbs.

Friends thought I was silly using strawberries for ground cover, but we get at least twenty quarts a year from the small strip where the plants have filled in nicely. Plenty enough to share with co-workers and friends! This year the raspberries that were planted last September have also given us an abundant and delicious crop.

June 2nd--strawberry season begins!

Planter buckets hold tomatoes, potatoes (so much fun to dig!), and rhubarb. Lettuce will be planted between the raspberries in late summer, and hot peppers find space in one of the herb beds. One day maybe I'll have grapes for wine-making from this little vine along the side fence.




Pollinators are important for fruit plants, so we do our part to keep them healthy. Did you know that bees get thirsty? In order to drink, they need to keep their feet dry while they sip water. Here's a bee waterer that my husband designed and made for our yard with his 3-D printer.

This thirsty bee gets a drink of nectar from a sage flower. When the herbs are in flower we have a lively yard!






I considered a hive with honey bees because 
we love honey, but a lot of new beekeepers lose their bees over the winter and my neighbor is allergic to bee stings. After donning a bee-keeper's suit and tending an active hive with an established beekeeper, I was convinced honey bees weren't for me! Instead, we have blue and green orchard bees and bee houses for their nesting. They don't produce honey, but they are prolific pollinators.



Birds are such fun to watch and provide great entertainment for our indoor-only cat who watches from her window perch. My favorite bird, the black-capped chickadee, has been nesting in this little house outside my home office. In the evening I can occasionally hear the babies chirping.





It takes a few hours of yard work on several weekends, but we now enjoy a lot of home grown goodness.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions ~ by Lexa Fisher

     I recently had a frustrating week at work waiting on others to make decisions. Often decisions aren’t fun to make, and we are bombarded with them from the minute we wake up.

Five more minutes of sleep, or get up now?

This blouse? Those pants?

Stop for coffee or drink the office industrial swill?

Eat lunch or work through it?

Dinner--take-out or frozen?

     All day long it never ends. Readers are probably feeling quite anxious by now, so what is my point?

Photo by Carolina Heza on Unsplash

     Our brains need a rest. It took me many attempts over the years to finally embrace the rare moments to unplug. I can’t meditate for even half an hour, but for five to ten minutes I can still my mind. No decisions, no book plotting (a curse that keeps many writers up in the middle of the night), no chasing an elusive answer. Just be open and let a choice, idea, or solution come to me.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

     Attending a guided meditation course at my first Romance Writers of America conference provided a successful introduction to the practice of quieting one’s mind. Lori Wilde, the author who organized the course, told us how meditation has improved her writing with greater clarity and allowed her to write more quickly. I’m not the writer Lori is, but I now take a few moments to let go when a scene isn’t coming together. Instead of chasing an answer, I rest my mind. Creativity is important to me and is a chance to let my mind play.

    In my workout classes we’ve started a breathing practice at the end of class where each exhale is to let go of anything that doesn’t serve us. Deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system that puts us into a relaxed state. An increased intake of oxygen lets our brains function well, improving clarity and allowing us to feel grounded and productive. Angst vanishes and the possibilities open up. 

Photo by Fabian Møller on Unsplash

     We can’t let go of all the daily decisions we need to make but making time to breathe and let our minds rest for even a few minutes can allow the answers we relentlessly seek to magically appear in the stillness.

Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash