A wonderful site- Orkney Springs

Shrinemont in Orkney Springs Virgina is a beautiful place with natural springs, beautiful fields, skiing nearby(in the season), many houses with wonderful porches surrounding them, basket ball, pools, wonderful kids, good hearty food (locally grown and well made), and places to have conferences and meetings.

There are firefly's, they amaze me and we don't have them here so they are somewhat of a mystery to me. I love to watch them light up the trees like a Christmas night in the middle of a June evening with frogs croaking, a small glass of wine, a rocking chair and a porch to relax on. It was a magical moment for me, but that happened more than once on this trip.

I can imagine having a family reunion there. Everyone could stay in one house, they are so big and be with each other and yet have some place to retreat to if they wish.

I guess what I went to is a family of sorts, a family of women with a common interest, their interest in creating.

The trees were green and gorgeous.
The thing though that held my interest and that has drawn many a person to this beautiful mountain glen in the Virginia area are the springs.

This is one of those springs, This is the pathway leading up to the spring that has been lined with rock and has a fountain of water coming from it.
If you look closely it seems that a person is standing in the forest. The large rock on top being the head.

Arms spread wide and water dripping down the legs.
The water is almost red in color and the rocks are stained with the iron in them.

It flows at this time of year ice-cold from the mountains. The water is refreshing and tastes of iron.
The blood of the earth.

It is hard to stay away from the fountain, at least for me it was.
The waters are rumored to be healing and I washed my hands in them often.
I love my hands, not because they are beautiful but because they are my tools, the only ones I really need besides my heart and my mind.
The surrounding area is lovely too. The water trickles down in to another glen.

I can imagine Indians staying here and in one of the little store down the road they were selling Indian artifacts that were probably found around there.
Hammers, arrowheads, and skin scrapers.

Walking through the hills I even found some old pottery. One of the ladies incorporated it in to one of her creations while we were there. How cool is that?
I brought the rest back as souvenirs.

All in all a beautiful retreat and resting place in the north American continent.
It is open from April till November if you are in that neck of the woods.

Speaking of Buddha...

 I have been working on this for awhile. I love little shrines and I have a set of stamps that cut them out of the clay. Yesterday my sisterfriend Bella Sinclair http://bellasinclair.blogspot.com/ mentioned that the last face cab I did had a Buddha face. I have always wanted a segue way like that and there it was. So, today speaking of Buddha... here it is.

I am still working on a way to hang this piece. It is meant to be a wall shrine.

Textured foil background mounted on a 4 1/4" x 3 1/4" wood panel. The foil is painted with Super Russet Lumiere acrylic paint.

The shrine itself is made from Gold, Copper, and Verdigris Cernit that is stamped with Pearl-ex ink in Black and Copper.

There are Copper metal leaves hand cut and tooled with small flowers from Black and Opaque White Cernit, Copper metal beads, and Flowers that are made in various shades of black white copper gold and brown Cernit. I have also added triangular silver filigree metal pieces and a couple of different sizes of vintage swarovski crystal flat back stones. The hinges on the shrine doors are 20 gauge copper handmade jump rings.

I know now, by doing the work,+ some of things I will do differently with the next shrine. It was fun to experiment and to find the things that worked and that didn't. I may have to make a couple more of these.

Uh oh, another tangent??