An iris, a frog and a dog.....

I did get the iris done and I like it...  I don't have them on Etsy yet but maybe tomorrow. I know iris come in lots of colors but the old-fashioned purples are my favorite.

The frog was just fun... I didn't want him too cartoony.. Just ugly enough you'd think twice about kissing him and of course he had to have a crown..  Once I have an idea I usually work on 5 buttons at a time... More than that is tedious and boring.. and less I'm always waiting for paint to dry...5 is the magic number.  But there is never really a pattern and each button is drawn separately with brush so they are all slightly different... As you can see here the frog on the right had more than his share of flies...which must be very fattening.

When I color boosted the photo of Morris I was able to get a really nice dark black when I printed it on the poplin... but the green of the vetch became almost neon.  Since I want to incorporate the image into the rest of the elements of the block, I used a small brush and Adirondack inks to tone down the green...I did it before the paper backing was removed and worked slowly and carefully so not to let the ink wick into the white on Morris.

I did a post in May on incorporating your image rather than framing it...  I also did a longer article in Pat's magazine..  Try it...it's fun.... http://olderrose.blogspot.com/2009/05/incorporating-silkie-into-block.html