Overflowing Hope

August arrived yesterday with bouquets of bright, beaming sunflowers.  These sunshine spears always mark the beginning of what we call the sunflower season. 

The hot, steamy temperatures of August just seem to invigorate these solar-flare-flowers

that streak into the sky with a 

Jack-in-the-Beanstalk style speed.

 What an inspiration! They make us want to dance-around and paint everything bright yellow!

  

So, here's a little splash of happy color and inspiration just for you. 

Three joy-filled sunflowers from our garden that seem to say: 

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Romans 15:13 

Sending you sunshine smiles full of hope,
The Velvet Lime Girls

Summer in our Hearts

last late sunflower bloom

Do you just hang on to every bit of summer that you can, even when it's full-blown fall time?  We do!  A few weeks ago, we walked through the sunny side of our studio garden and captured the last remnants of sunshine days. We thought we'd share a few with you today! Perhaps these final flourishes of the season will brighten up your day like they do ours.  Its amazing how a thing of beauty, held in your heart, can make even a rainy, cold day seem like a day at the beach. 

last petite bloom of the salmon colored hibiscus

It reminds us of the thing of beauty we hold inside of us, the treasure we carry around inside of us while on this earth.  The Voice translation describes it quite beautifully like this:

"But this beautiful treasure is contained in us—cracked pots made of earth and clay—so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us." 
2 Corinthians 4:7

purple coneflower fading with grace

We hope our little snippets from the garden remind you to look for the the beautiful bouquet of treasure contained inside each of you.

Holding the beauty of summer and the treasure of God in our hearts,

The Velvet Lime Girls

birth of a late blooming sunflower

spiderwort buds

last burst of color from purple coneflower

                            

Mother's Day Artists

Some kids just have a joyful spark and touch your heart as soon as you meet them.  The young artists we are featuring today are two such people! Their creative expressions simply pulse with life, laughter and love.  Perfect sentiments for Mother’s Day!

These young artists, Madison and Katie, are the daughters of Marybeth Wydock, the creative art director at Velvet Lime Girls.  They began to show signs of their artistic DNA, passed on from their mother, at a very young age.  Here are a few of their early expressions.

Madison Wydock created the piece above, entitled, “Sunflower”.  Who would have imagined that a sunflower could explode with such vibrant color?  Looking through the eyes of a child can be so inspiring!  We love the color washes, the squiggles and the center section filled with circle details. (“Those are the seeds, silly”). We’ll never look at sunflowers again without thinking of Madison’s spectacular interpretation. It just makes you want to celebrate when your eyes are pulled into the party going on in the center of that flower… and then, dance around a bit with those salsa-style squiggles scattered around the petals. If you look at it too long, you may find yourself dancing around the room with a sunflower clenched between your teeth doing the rumba.  Watch out, this painting has passion.

Katie Wydock created this next piece above, entitled "Butterfly”.  You have to know Katie to really appreciate this piece.  Notice the smile on the butterfly.  It’s not just a normal smile.  It’s a larger than life, I’m- about- to–pop-out-of-my–skin-smile. (Or, out of my membrane, green shell or exoskeleton).  He’s grinning from ear to ear, or antenna to antenna, since they don’t really have ears, do they? He has to be the happiest little butterfly ever created and he seems to be holding a surprise.  He knows something you don’t know and he just can’t wait to tell you.  There’s a little flap down his side that opens! Really. A little slit that holds a secret message inside! His smile almost gave it away, but the kaleidoscope-colored wings filled with unimaginable patterns hold your eyes in fascination.  You just have to rest a bit on those wings before you open up this dimensional piece … those wings almost look illuminated. When you do open up that long green body, the sentiment inside gives the butterfly away.  He was really a love bug, with beautiful wings, carrying a message from the heart.  That’s what Mother’s Day is really all about anyway. Carrying messages of love from the heart.

Celebrating Mother’s everywhere,

Laura

Message inside Katie's butterfly.

SHINE BRIGHT

“The ways of right-living people glow with light; the longer they live, the brighter they shine.” Proverbs 4:18

This proverb was the inspiration behind our sunflower artwork and with the sun shining bright in Atlanta today, it’s a promise that is warming our hearts.

We had originally used a translation of this proverb with the expression of living life in a brighter and brighter manner, because of our right standing, our connection with God, made available all because of His Son, Jesus. Today, when we read the Message translation, we glowed with a new illuminated insight. We felt like little lightning bugs pulsing with the presence of God within us.

Warm little lights glowing brighter and brighter and shining the longer they live. That’s God’s description of how our lives should be. Wow, it’s enough to give you a hot flash even if you’re not a woman.

We hope you feel the warmth in our new, slightly revised sunflower. We’re only able to give you a peek, to protect our original work. For a fuller view visit http://www.paintedplanetlicensing.com/velvet-lime-girls.html

Shine bright today,

The Velvet Lime Girls

Sunflower Smiles

Sunflowers make us smile. Every time. Their perky little faces bright with noonday sun just sunbathe you in happiness. When they first uncover their little faces, releasing their solar flare, the whole world lights up. They stand there in the rain, wind, heat and neglect … sunshine spears, unmoved by circumstances. Then, something amazing happens … they sink their roots down deep into their source and grow. They grow tall … I mean really tall. A towering presence in the flower garden, they become lighthouse beacons shooting down every melancholy thought with their shafts of light. They become bigger and bigger everyday … better and better.

We can be like them. An ancient writing of prose says, “our paths will be brighter and brighter” (Proverbs 4: 18). It means better and better. Like sunflowers, we can begin to tower over circumstances and challenges as we let our roots sink down deep into our source, our God. No matter how challenging a day may have been, we can pull from our source and become a shaft of towering sunshine in our own little world.

We hope our sunflowers make you smile today ... and shine. J

The Velvet Lime girls