Category Archives: art

A day for a special visit

March 14, 2020art, Familysusanmanzke

Our daughter Rebecca and our son-in-law Andy came out to the farm for a visit this morning–yesterday they celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary.

Today they were nice enough to carry all the heavy bags out of my car: softener salt, cat food, bird food, cat litter–everything I bought at Fleet Farm yesterday weighed 40+ pounds each.

I thank them for their help and for the visit.

If that wasn’t enough, Rebecca brought a treat for me, one of her copper tree creations.

This new copper tree has stone leaves.

I’m always impressed with Rebecca’s copper tree artwork, especially this one because it is MINE!

More will soon be made and for sale. Maybe you’ll be lucky to buy one of your own.

Unusual creations

November 23, 2019art, craftssusanmanzke

I paint small.

Today I’m showing watercolor earrings I just finished.

Here are a few. They are coated to protect the art.

They are $5 each pair and $1 postage from me. There are more at Sissy’s in Seymour.

Thinking of buying local? From the artist? Need a unique gift? Contact me at sunnybook@aol.com.

Movies at Muehl Public Library

October 7, 2019art, funsusanmanzke

It was the last showing at our library. I didn’t know if I’d make it, but somehow I managed to squeeze out three hours to join the fun in Seymour.

This was the second year our little library was included in the worldwide showing of the ten films featured in the Manhattan Short Film Festival.

Imagine little ole Seymour being included in this global event.

The other three showings had more viewers. Sunday afternoon is football time, after all, but we had enough people (all women) to make comments and share reactions during the break. Also, the free popcorn added to our movie event.

I can’t wait until next October when we will host the 23rd Annual Manhattan Short Film Festival.

Picture Perfect Day

September 25, 2019art, crafts, Friends, funsusanmanzke

Today I joined a group of women from the Outagamie County University of Wisconsin Extension – Association for Home and Community Education at their fall Picture Perfect program.

The people there were dedicated to repurposing cards and calendars.

Some of the women were taking old cards, cutting and pasting them together to form new cards.

One finished card example

I worked across from Lois Schwister. We and others were taking old calendar photos, putting them into plastic sleeves, and making flipbooks. These would eventually be used by people with dimension.

The repurposed cards are given to other people to use as they wish.

It was a good day to work with industrious, talented ladies who also made a great pot luck lunch.

Thanks, Bob.

July 18, 2019art, Bob, creativitysusanmanzke

I was checking online for the cost of a hand rest to use when painting. Many times I’ve smudge a work by setting my palm on my painting. I know that there are plastic gadgets can mostly eliminate this problem and that’s what I wanted.

After seeing the prices ($20 to $40) of the manufactured hand rests, I decided to make my own. I took some packaging foam pieces and glued them together. That didn’t work at all. The cross piece just bent and made its own mark on my painting. Ugh.

After hearing my complaints, Bob took two of my tiles and went down to the basement. In a little while, I heard the saw cutting something. Not much later Bob came up again and said, “I made you a hand rest. You can’t try it yet. It’s glued and needs to dry.”

I couldn’t wait to see it and raced down to his workbench. His solution was much better than anything I considered.

Both the 4 by 4 and the 6 by 6 tiles fit. The rest works perfectly, as long as I don’t mess up my painting some other way.

Thanks to my honey I can do the fine work with ease. Thanks to Bob’s own creativity, I now can paint with fewer problems.

Susan Manzke

Writer, Speaker, All-Around Good Person