From Hugs to Mirrors

Who do you give your biggest hugs?  Mine go to my family, of course.

Who floats my boat?  My Guy ‘cuz he always has my back.

All of a sudden I got the urge to sing the Mary Wells song:

No muscle bound man,
Could take my hand,
From my guy.
(My guy)
No handsome face,
Could ever take the place,
Of my guy,
(My guy)
He may not be a movie star,
But when it comes to being happy,
We are,
There's not a man today,
Who can take me away,
From my guy.

 

Another thing I do with lottery winnings? Hire a personal assistant. :) Who wouldn’t want one?  Raise your hand if you couldn’t use someone do do all those mundane chores you’d rather not do. Yeah I don’t don’t see any hands.

When you get to be my age you start looking in the mirror, wondering who that is staring back at you.  Certainly that’s not the 30 year old living inside me….(she used to be 25 for a long time but she’s grown a little.) You wear make up, do your hair, etc… in hopes that “she” will look a bit younger but I hear that after a while you’ll realize that this one is here to stay and you get comfortable with her. I wonder when that will be? :)

How old is your inner self?

Even More Journal Pages

 

I think that at the end of the month I will need a break…..Nah! I’m have a great time.  It’s been fun, not really thinking too much about the pages. Concentrating more on the actual journaling.  I’m not one to write much on my journal pages so it’s been a stretch.  Since I do most of my writing on the computer, my hand writing has been going to pot. While It’s still not great, at least is legible…. If I use the right pen.

The I’m Sorry page is an example of using the wrong pen. The gel pen I used is very juicy, almost too juicy.  The pen put out too much ink and some of the letters filled in.  I know what it says, can you read it?

As I wrote this page I realized that almost the exact same thing happened to me.  When My Girl was three, she and I decided to race from the car to the door.  As I chased her to the front door, I tripped and fell.  I hit my forehead on a concrete step and keeled over. However, even though I wanted to so badly, I couldn’t cry because I didn’t want to scare My Girl. I just rolled over and told her to go get her dad. He ran out and helped me up.

I think some where up in heaven grandma was pointing and laughing.

Thoughts?

A Few More Journal Pages

I’ve been able to keep up with the prompts from Kelly Kilmer’s class but I’m getting behind in posting the images to the blog. So here goes without too much explanation. I’d love to read your thoughts, so please leave me a comment.

Mental health day off is what I used to call a day when I called in sick to work but wasn’t really sick.  Just needed the day off before I stressed out too much. I’m now self-employed so I don’t need to do that any more.

OMG He said what?

The above page is about my dad, god rest his soul.  I thought the image here accurately described how I felt about him and some of his views. I loved the man (the Rose) but he had some odiferous opinions that we argued over many, many times.  However, the time described above, he actually came through for his grand daughter. 

The pin on the lower right belonged to dad.  He used to be a mail carrier for the post office and almost every year he received a good driver pin.  He probably had 20 of them, which I now have and plan to use in my art.

 

I think I’ve written about Lasik surgery before so I will let the page speak for itself about the topic. The face image was combined from two magazine ads. The brown and tan out-of-focus piece on the right shows the view without glasses before surgery and also for 3 months after. OK I admit it, the out-of-focus piece was serendipity and I didn’t notice that worked out like that until after it was all glued down.

I’m still working on the prompt a day workshop. Although I am behind on posting the images here, I am actually keeping up with the class. Finished day 15 and 16 earlier tonight. No telling when they will be posted but I will get around to it soon.

A Frizzy Day at the Beach?

I was born and raised in Albuquerque and the only beach in NM is Tingly Beach which is basically a glorified lake.  Truth be told, it’s really more like a dirty ditch bank.

So the first time saw the ocean (in 1980) was during a weekend trip to New Orleans. I was amazed and it was rejuvenating. It puts all my worries into perspective. I was thoroughly in love with it. So much so that after a year I started having dreams of the ocean calling me.  After a week of these dreams, I knew it was time to schedule another trip. The dreams stopped then but reoccurred every year and would continue until I scheduled another trip to see it.  In the seven years that I lived in NM after that first trip, I managed to visit Hawaii, Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, Mexico, Los Angles, and San Diego. Several more than once and all just to see the ocean.  

Since moving to California in 1988, we’ve visited the beach at least once a year….usually on our anniversary. It’s a must do for both My Guy and I.  I wish we could go more often but we keep further moving east. Why are we doing that, why??? 

My dream is to own a cottage on the beach with a large studio over looking the ocean.  Every week we buy a lottery ticket in hopes that we may one day own that cottage as well as travel to as many beaches as we can possibly see.

The picture above could have been me after my last perm at the beauty shop.  After the rollers came out I wanted to scream.  I told the woman all I wanted was soft curls and this is what I got.  Not only was it frizzy, it was fried. arrrgh!! 

Well, I wasn’t about to let that woman touch my hair again but I had to cut off as much as possible without shaving my head.  Luckily, I found a hair stylist who was able to cut all the frizz off and keep some of the curl. While it was pretty short when she was done, it looked much better. Next perm, I did it myself and it came out nice, if I say so myself. 

From Childhood to High School

More pages from the Prompt-a-Day class:

When I was a small child I used to go to Roosevelt park in Albuquerque, with family or friends.  The park was probably 4 city blocks in size with rolling hills and and many, many evergreen trees as well as other beautiful vegetation. Because of how the park was set up, you could stand in any part of the park and only be able to see a small portion it from that vantage point.  It was large enough to hold hundreds of people and yet you could find areas for some privacy.

What was so fun, for a child, was that there were many places to play hide and seek, or you could play Frisbee (or Frisbee golf) without bothering other people. But one of my favorite things to do was roll my body down the grassy hill over and over again. Yes, I was a dizzy child.  In the one or two days a year were actually had snow, we would take large cardboard boxes to use as a sled and barrel down the hills.  It was so fun. 

When I finally made it to high school this park was a great hangout location. Plus the city allowed kids to cruise the park.  For those who don’t know what cruising is, it’s going around the park over and over again in your car while flirting with the boys in their cars. See, I told you I was a dizzy child. 

Did you ever cruise?

Here’s something I hadn’t thought about in ages.  This page brought about the recall.

When I was in high school I was shy, very much like I am now. On the last day of my Junior year I had a guy tell me he had a gift for me from a friend of his. I didn’t have a clue who the guy in from of me was nor did I know who the gift giver was.  However, not being one to turn down gifts if nothing was required in return, I accepted. (I going to date myself now. ) It turned out to be a 45 Single of the Blood Sweat and Tears song “You've Made Me So Very Happy.”  My first thought was “I do?  I don’t even know you.” :)

Turns out this boy, Louis, was a senior who had a crush on me for sometime but waited until the last day of school to let me know.  He had also signed up to go into the Marines, was leaving very soon and wanted someone to write to him while he was gone. We wrote to each other regularly while he was in boot camp and even dated once when he came home on leave.  He was cute but he was going to be gone for quite sometime so the romance didn’t last long.  But it did create a nice high school memory.

Do you have any good “men” stories you’d like to share? I’d like to hear them.

3 days in the life of….

I’m still working with Kelly Kilmer’s Prompt a day class and the 9/3/09 prompt dealt with tattoos.  The page says “While several members of my family have them, I have never seriously considered getting a tattoo.”  But I remember when My girl was in high school and she tried to talk me into letting her get one and I said no, no and no.  After she turned 18 she got one and was afraid to show it to me for fear I would get mad.  LOL, I didn’t.  I guess she didn’t remember me telling her that she could get one when she was 18 if she still wanted one.  My theory was that if I let her get a tattoo when she was under 18 and she later regretted it, it would be on me.  If she got later and she regretted it, it would be on her!  ha ha!

The crown image above was actually a photo of a person’s entire back but when I took a closer look at the picture I noticed they had zits….ewww! So I cut them out. 

 

Don’t we all have a family member or friend that talks entirely too much?  I have my cousin K.  Lovely girl but she can talk a mile a minute. When I showed this page to My Guy he knew exactly who I was writing about.

 

This is a self-portrait stencil I did in the stenciling class I took earlier this year with Mary Ann Moss. I’d been waiting to use it and  9/5/09 prompt seemed like the perfect time since it’s about my (highly abridged) living will. 

Did I ever tell you about my birds?

When I was in college I had a parakeet named Julie. She (he?) was named Julie because I got her in July.  Clever huh? Julie and I lived in a small studio apartment and she was one messy bird. Not only did she shed feathers every where she also spit her seeds every where.  I could hardly keep up.  I never had a cover for her cage so she always woke me up early. Even on days when I’d been up all night partying she’d start her sing song routine as soon as the sun came up.  I was actually fine with it because back then my cure for a hangover (who me?) was a 7 am bike ride down to the corner store for a bottle of OJ and then a trip around the university area on the bike.  Sunday mornings were great for bike riding. The air was crisp and fresh and the traffic was light and it cleared out the cobwebs from my head. I’d get back early enough to clean up more seeds and do some studying. ( Yeah I say that like I studied a lot. )

One day I thought I’d be a good bird momma and get her out of her cage and try to train her to sit on my shoulder. Not.a.good.idea. What I didn’t know enough to do was close the window shade before pulling her out of the cage.  Little Julie thought she was free, free, free. Well until she hit the window…splat! and fell down straight down.  OMG I felt so bad for her.  She wasn’t hurt too bad but it freaked us both out.  She because she just knew if she tried one more time, she could be free to roam the wilds of Albuquerque. I told you she was silly.  And I was freaked out because I couldn’t catch that darn bird and I was chasing her back and forth across the room. It was comical. I finally got smart enough to close the shade so she couldn’t hurt herself anymore. You know, if we hadn’t been in a one room apt she might still be loose today. 

I finally got a bath towel and threw it on her.  It blinded her so she couldn’t move and I was finally able to get her back in the cage.  Whew, we were both exhausted.

I’ll tell you about my other bird, Flower, another day.  Do you have any crazy pet stories you’d like to share?

I probably should mention that the journal page above and the coffee page from two days ago were inspired by the Prompt a Day workshop I’m taking from Kelly Kilmer. 

Hey, Where the #$%!@ is my coffee?

This probably isn’t unusual but I can’t start my day without my morning cup of coffee. I love coffee, I adore coffee, I’m addicted to coffee, I.must.have.coffee.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not addicted because of the caffeine, I gave that up a while ago. I was drinking the brew at all hours of the day and into the evening and it was messing with my sleep. No, I just love the taste of coffee. 

Unfortunately, my taste buds are not cheap. My taste buds  H-A-T-E Folgers. (Sorry Folgers Company but it starts to taste like lighter fluid after a while… OK don’t ask how I know what lighter fluid tastes like, I’m not telling…oops I digress.) NO these taste buds love the fancy flavored coffee beans. Hazelnut is my favorite but I also love Kona and Antigua and …ok don’t laugh, I love the coffee they serve at Dunkin Donuts, yum.  Why, oh why, don’t they have a Dunkin Donuts in my town? sob…. oops off topic again.

That’s not to say that I go for all permeations and concoctions of coffee based drinks they serve at Starbucks, I can’t say that I do.  Heck I recently had to ask what they meant by “Do you want your cappuccino wet or dry?” Wet or dry?  Are they serving coffee grounds without brewing it these days? Nope just straight unadulterated, don’t mess with my coffee, coffee.

These days take my coffee black, no sugar and  made from freshly ground beans.  I used to drink it with cream and sugar until some time about 20+ years ago when I was on one of my many diets (that may or many not have worked temporarily).  I quit the cream and sugar because you know just how calorie laden one teaspoon each of sugar and milk are. Thinking about it now makes me roll my eyes at myself.

Oh and just so you don’t get the wrong idea about me: 

  #$%$^ = fudge

Colored Pencils and Scrubbed Paint

I fully intended to paint this girl but some how the colored pencils kept whispering “use me, use me” so I did for everything except the gleam in her eye. For that I used a Signo white pen. 

I didn’t draw the face with anyone in mind but she reminds me of someone. I don’t know who.  If you know who it is, let me know.

 

I’ve been playing around with layering paints to get texture. I’ve always loved the look of layering but how to do it never really gelled until recently. What I’ve been doing is scrubbing the paint before it dries. The process of scrubbing the paint to create texture is very interesting. One thing I have learned is that not all paint works well with this process.  For example when I try to scrub Liquitex Basics, the paint lifted the layer of paint under it and left an unsightly ring. It’s hard to describe but suffice it to say it’s not a look I wanted.

 

Do you have any favorite methods for creating texture?