Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 64
Posted on September 29, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
Being creative makes you a weird little beast because everything seems so bloody interesting for some strange reason.
Inspirational Artist of the week: Mary Delany
Mary Delany began making paper collages, or ‘mosaicks’ as she called them, at the age of 72. The idea came to her while staying with her companion, Margaret Bentinck, duchess of Portland, at Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire. She had noticed the similarity of color between a geranium and a piece of red paper that was on her bedside table. Taking up her scissors she imitated the petals. Upon entering the room, the Duchess mistook them for real: ‘Her approbation was such a sanction to my undertaking… and gave me courage to go on with confidence’. Delany later wrote that her work was intended as an imitation of a hortus siccus or collection of dried flowers.
Hand lettering artist of the week: Cymone Wilder
Cymone Wilder is a senior art director and lettering artist based in Nashville. Since 2013 she has collaborated with amazing clients (Netflix, Nickelodeon, HBO Max, Cosmopolitan, Planned Parenthood and New Belgium) — creating custom lettering artwork for established brands, books, apparel and much more. She is fiercely passionate about producing meaningful and long-lasting work, drawing inspiration from the black experience.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 63
Posted on September 22, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Play is the highest form of research”
—Albert Einstein
Inspirational artist of the week: Nathalie Lété
Nathalie Lété was born in 1964. She lives and works in Paris. She works in many ways, mixing different techniques and mediums, illustration, ceramics, textile and painting… She is inspired by her travels, but also by the mixing of vintage toys and old engravings of flowers and animals.
Her work is colourful, naive and poetic, sometimes strange, to the point of tending towards art brut. Her world is nurtured by popular and folk art from her both origins (her chinese father and her german mother).
She produces children’s and graphic’s books, knitted and stuffed toys, glass pictures, patterned dishes, but also postcards, ceramic sculptures, silkscreen printed t-shirts, rugs and jewels in limited edition… both for herself and for commissions.
Hand lettered inspiration of the week: Snail mail
I absolutely LOVE getting mail from my artist friends!! Works of art on envelopes. Here are a few examples I found that I ADORE.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 58
Posted on August 18, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
—Mary Oliver
Inspirational artist of the week: Henry Darger
Henry Joseph Darger Jr. April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was an American janitor and hospital worker who became known after his death for his immense body of outsider art—art by self-taught creators outside the mainstream art community.
Darger was raised by his disabled father in Chicago. Frequently in fights, he was put into a charity home as his father’s health declined, and in 1904 was sent to a children’s asylum. He began making escape attempts after his father’s death in 1908, and in 1910 was able to escape, walking much of the way to Chicago. As an adult he did menial jobs for several hospitals, interrupted by a brief stint in the U.S. Army during World War I. He spent much of his life in poverty and in later life was a recluse in his apartment. A devout Catholic, Darger attended Mass multiple times per day and collected religious memorabilia. Retiring in 1963 due to chronic pain, he was moved into a charity nursing home in late 1972, shortly before his death. During this move, his landlord Nathan Lerner discovered his artwork and writings, which he had kept secret over decades of work.
From around 1910 to 1930, Darger wrote the 15,145 page novel In The Realms of the Unreal, centered on a rebellion of child slaves on a fantastical planet. The Vivian Sisters, the seven princesses of Abbeiannia, fight on behalf of the Christian nations against the enslaving Glandelinians. Inspired by the American Civil War and martyrdom stories, it features gruesome descriptions of battles, many ending with the mass killing of rebel children. Between 1912 and 1925, Darger began producing accompanying collages, often only loosely correlated to the book. Later he made watercolors with traced or overpainted figures taken from magazines and children’s books. These grew more elaborate over time, with some of his largest works approaching 10 feet (3 m) in length. Little girls, often in combat, are a primary focus of his work; for unknown reasons, they are frequently depicted naked and exclusively with male genitalia. Other writings by Darger include a roughly 8,000-page unfinished sequel to In The Realms of the Unreal entitled Further Adventures of the Vivian Girls in Chicago, a decade-long daily weather journal, and The History of My Life—consisting of a 206 page autobiography followed by 4,600 pages detailing a fictional tornado named “Sweetie Pie”.
Darger’s work was unknown to others until after his death, leading to his association with the outsider art movement.
Hand lettering artist of the week: Edward Gorey
When Tom Fitzharris met Edward “Ted” Gorey in 1974, the two quickly struck up a friendship. Over the next year Gorey sent a total of fifty letters to Fitzharris. Every envelope Fitzharris received was illustrated by Gorey, and filled with surprises: typewritten letters with news and opinions from Gorey’s life, handwritten note cards with unexpected quotes, sketches, inside jokes, and a host of other joyous miscellany.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 57
Posted on August 11, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
— W.B. Yeats
Inspirational artist of the week: Cornelia O’Donovan
Cornelia O’Donovan was born in 1981, and trained at the Royal College of Art, London.
O’Donovan plays with old folklore and poetry, but in a loose and dreamlike way. She draws particularly on tales native to the British Isles, and especially Celtic poetry and myth – from the tale of Prince Llewellyn’s grief at the sacrifice of his greyhound Gellert, to the figurative ballads of Ellen O’Leary and lines from WB Yeats.
Her paintings are flat, stripped of all perspective or realism, their surfaces hazy and meandering like an old tale retold a thousand times. Roughly rendered yet delicately arranged, she creates patterned compositions reminiscent of old tapestries, into which she plants naïve pre-Modern motifs. Outlines of old figures, ancient heralds, esoteric herbs and familiar animals all appear like inherited objects worn smooth by the touch of innumerable hands.
They retain the homespun quality of medieval rustic artworks, flowing across the canvas like a stroll through a country garden.
Hand lettering artist of the week: David Schmitt
David Schmitt, born on March 11, 1994 in Bamberg, Germany is a self-taught painter and printmaker. After studying Graphic Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg he moved to Barcelona to pursue his career as an artist. In his work, he combines an archaic and childlike aesthetic with bold visual presence and commentary, highlighting texture and rough shapes to capture a timeless simplicity.
“I have always been drawn to a certain aspect of storytelling in painting, I think of it as a crossover between Folk-, Pop-, and Cave-art so for me it feels deeply human. There is so much beauty and truth to be found in traditional craftsmanship and old tales of folklore. I hope that we can continue to maintain our appreciation for the involvement of the human hand and mind with all its imperfections as preserving these practices means preserving the soul in the world that surrounds us.”
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 42
Posted on April 28, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that.’ – Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
-Roald Dahl
Inspirational artist of the week…Cornelia O’Donovan
Cornelia O’Donovan was born in 1981, and trained at the Royal College of Art, London.
O’Donovan plays with old folklore and poetry, but in a loose and dreamlike way. She draws particularly on tales native to the British Isles, and especially Celtic poetry and myth – from the tale of Prince Llewellyn’s grief at the sacrifice of his greyhound Gellert, to the figurative ballads of Ellen O’Leary and lines from WB Yeats.
She has designed ceramics for Anthropologie in the past. Her paintings are flat, stripped of all perspective or realism, their surfaces hazy and meandering like an old tale retold a thousand times. Roughly rendered yet delicately arranged, she creates patterned compositions reminiscent of old tapestries, into which she plants naïve pre-Modern motifs. Outlines of old figures, ancient heralds, esoteric herbs and familiar animals all appear like inherited objects worn smooth by the touch of innumerable hands.
They retain the homespun quality of medieval rustic artworks, flowing across the canvas like a stroll through a country garden.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Deloss McGraw
DeLoss McGraw is an American artist known for his whimsical gouache paintings. Inspired by his own poetry as well as poems by W.D. Snodgrass, McGraw’s dreamlike works are often reminiscent of paintings by Paul Klee. Klee like McGraw, was inspired by the works of folk artists and children. Born in 1945 in Okemah, OK, he went on study at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1973. McGraw lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Okemah, OK. Today, his works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., among others.
Words and Wildflowers Creative Prompts – Issue 40
Posted on April 14, 2025
We LOVE research and learning as a way to get inspired and boost ideas and creativity!! So, Kenzie and I are going to be sharing the inspiration that we collect here in our second newsletter…. once a week!!!
Here’s how it works:
We provide the inspiration. You interpret it however you wish… any medium, any size. It is meant to inspire lettering and floral art combined together. But, you can:
- Just do the florals, just do the lettering, or combine them together.
- Use the provided quote for your piece or select your own.
- Use colors from one of the inspiration images or select your own favorites
- Create the floral art… as a still life in a vase, a single flower, a border, a pattern, a bouquet
Hope you will create with us and post your work at #wordsandwildflowers2024 and tag @lorisiebert.studio and @snippetsofwhimsy
Quote of the week…
“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.”
-Mary Oliver
Inspirational Artist of the week…Johann-Jakob Hauswirth 1809-1871
Born in Saanenland, he died in poverty in Devant-de-l’Etivaz, at the entrance to the Pissot gorge. Very little is known about his life.
Where he lived between his youth, spent in the Simmental, and his adult life in Pays-d’Enhaut is not known. None of his documents have ever been found. The only traces of him are to be found in the archives of the commune of Château-d’Œx, which refused him a settlement permit in 1847.
From reported testimonies, we know that Hauswirth worked as a wood cutter and charcoal burner around Rougemont.
He hired out his services to various farms in the area.
When he had time of an evening, he would take out his scissors and start cutting paper. He would leave cuttings as a thank you for meals he was given.
These would be kept as bookmarks for the family Bible or psalter, the lace paper earned him one of his nicknames: The “Grand des Marques”. He was particularly tall for the time and often stood out as he had to stoop to enter the low-ceilinged chalets of the time, hence another of his nicknames: “Trébocons” as he was perpetually stooping forwards.
Hand lettering inspiration of the week: Jonny Hannah
Jonny’s work is a collection of paintings and drawings, screen prints and lino cuts, with a passion for 19th century type faces, and the written word in general. Whilst working he will be attired in correspondence shoes, perhaps a bow tie or French workwear and listening to Charlie Parker, The Skids or Jacques Tati.
The visual language and pastiche in Jonny’s work clearly represents his interests and this in turn has led to commissions that blur the lines of work and pleasure. Folk and folklore are often inspirational reference points in Jonny’s work, but in equal measure so is ‘urban folk’ a more modern 21st century representation of the beauty of modern life. Two of his largest projects to date have been in the North East of England – one for Museums Northumberland, and more recently for Hartlepool Borough Council. He has worked for other cultural institutions such as The British Library, English National Opera and The Royal Shakespeare Company. Jonny’s set of 8 stamps for The Royal Mail celebrate the curious customs of Great Britain. Jonny has worked editorially for international broadsheets and magazines, and created numerous book covers for fiction and non-fiction titles in the US and UK. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park exhibited a one man show of Jonny’s work, and the monograph ‘Greetings from Darktown’ has been published by Merrell.
I’m teaching at the Collage Makers Summit!
Posted on March 4, 2025
Transform your art at the Collage Makers Summit
At the Collage Makers Summit (CMS) you can boost your art skills, learn cool new collage techniques, and let your creativity run wild.
What exactly is CMS?
It’s a virtual gathering of collage artists! The Collage Makers Summit is a virtual gathering of collage artists from all over the globe. Top instructors share their secrets, insights, and techniques, giving students of all levels a chance to step up their skills.
Mark your calendar for CMS
CMS classes begin on Monday, March 17 and end on Sunday, March 30. One pre-recorded video lesson will be available every morning US Eastern Time (UTC-5). You have lifetime access to the videos after the summit ends.
What you’ll learn
The summit is packed with 14 video lessons, each led by a different artist. Video lessons are approx. 30 minutes long. You’ll dive into a range of collage techniques that’ll spark your creativity & help you carve out your own unique style.
Lifetime access & community
The best part? Unlike other online summits, you get lifetime access to these prerecorded video lessons. Watch them whenever you want, at your own pace (sorry, the summit isn’t live.)
Who’s teaching at CMS?
Learn from me and 13 other experienced collage instructors, each bringing our own unique style and expertise.
Tara Axford https://www.instagram.com/tara.axford/
Connor Dainty https://www.instagram.com/phibstuff/
Jessa Dupuis https://www.instagram.com/jessadupuis/
Julie Hamilton https://www.instagram.com/juliehamiltoncreative/
Sally Hirst https://www.instagram.com/sallyhirstartist/
Esté MacLeod https://www.instagram.com/estemacleod/
Lisa McKenna https://www.instagram.com/lisamckenna.studio/
Margarete Miller https://www.instagram.com/margarete.miller/
Delight Rogers https://www.instagram.com/delightrogers_art/
Jackie Schomburg https://www.instagram.com/jackieschomburgart/
Lori Siebert https://www.instagram.com/lorisiebert.studio/
Sarah Short https://www.instagram.com/sarah_z_short/
Barb Smucker https://www.instagram.com/barbsmuckerstudio/
Alison Wells https://www.instagram.com/alisonwellsart/
CMS helps you grow as an artist… at a price that makes learning accessible.
Purchase before the summit begins at the early bird pre-sale price of US$77 and save $20. Early bird pricing begins March 3. Classes begin on Monday, March 17.
Visit collagemakerssummit.com for more information.
Here’s a special coupon code… because you are part of my community…
10offcms-ls
The early bird sale can be accessed NOW!!
At US$77. The regular price of US$97 begins on March 17. The summit opens on Monday March 17. The summit ends and the last day to purchase will be Sunday March 30.
Lori Siebert & Co. 