An October Baby

Last week I worked on a special painting. My friend Sarah had her first baby in October. I decided to create a painting with the baby's name and birth flowers as a gift.

I looked up October's flower and some sources said cosmos and others said marigold. So what did I do? I included both of them!

First I hand wrote the baby's names lightly in pencil: Isabel Winona. Aren't those pretty names? Then I widened the letters and filled them in with watercolour.

I surrounded the names with three each of cosmos and marigold flowers as well as some leaves, stems and a little heart. I worked on it over a period of three days. It was hard not to publish photos of it right when I finished it but I needed to keep it a secret. I mailed the painting last week and Sarah told me it arrived safely in yesterday's mail.

I had a moment of panic after I had put it in the mail. I found a piece of paper in my studio on which I had been sketching some initial ideas. On it, I had written both Isabel and Isobel. (Why? I don't know. It must have been a moment's inattention.) All of a sudden, I was terrified that I might have misspelled Isabel's name on the actual painting! I raced to the photos I had taken before mailing it and was very relieved to see that the painting said Isabel.

Here's my finished painting for a beautiful little girl and her happy parents, Sarah and Dan. ❤