Trying to get out of my funk

I’m back to blogging after two weeks away.  As you know from my last post, I went to NM two weeks ago to visit my girl and her husband.  We had a really fun time and I really hated to leave.  If I hadn’t also missed my husband while I was gone, I might have extended my stay.  But since I’ve been back, I’ve been in a funk.  I felt like my heart is split in two, one part here in Cali with my husband and the other in NM with my girl.  sigh…..

It’s helped that we have spent our weekends working on the bedroom/bathroom remodel.  We now have two walls up, complete with sheetrock and another is almost stripped away so we can add the third.  (I meant to add some pictures today but they are still in the camera.) And yesterday we bought the most beautiful frosted glass door for the bathroom.  It’s gorgeous!!

I also signed up for the 30 Day Art Challenge on Gary Reef’s Mixed Media Arts site.  It started May 1st and the idea is to complete one piece per day. and we are not supposed to go back to the piece another day to finish it.

I’ve decided that the main focus for the 30 days will on abstract art.  I may need to vary from that sometime in the 30 days, as I have to make 3 ATCs before the end of the month, but so far I’m staying on track.   Now I’ve never created abstract art before but  I thought I’d give it a shot. As you’ll see in a bit, it’s quite a stretch for me.  Not sure I’ll get the hand of it but if  one turns out good I’ll be happy.  …..OK don’t laugh ( well at least not so loud that I’ll hear you), here is

May 1st:

May 2nd:  Falling into place

May 3rd: Going in Circles

 

How do you stay inspired?

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot

My dear friend, Aimeslee of Paper Paisleys, nominated me for the Kreative Blogger award on March 31st and I forgot to thank her for the honor and I also forgot to follow the rules of the award.  I meant to do this a long time ago and some how time just got away from me and it slipped my mind.

The rules governing this award are as follows:
List 7 things about myself:

1. Even at my age I am still a jeans and tee-shirt kind of woman.
2. My favorite dessert is cheesecake.
3. Spumoni ice cream is one of my favorites.
4. I love Greek food, especially Gyros.
5. Last summer we grew eggplant and we had so much I had to freeze it.  I have had to learn so many new ways to make so we don’t get bored. This is one of my favorites:  Melitzanosalata Agioritiki (Athenian Eggplant Salad)
6. I drive a red Mustang convertible.
7. I used to own a red Triumph convertible that I named Scarlet. I loved that car.

Here are a few bloggers I think deserve this award:

Adagio - http://adagiobeadcrafters.blogspot.com/

Giggles - http://happytiler.blogspot.com/

Connie -  http://alteredroute.blogspot.com/

Renee - http://circlingmyhead.blogspot.com/

Kim - http://kimsartbythesea.blogspot.com/

Jean Marie Lemire - http://jeanmarielemire.blogspot.com/

 

Be sure to visit them as well as Aimeslee at Paper Paisleys

Painted Flower

 

This is one of the paintings I’ve been working on.  I really like how it turned out.  I’m a little sad that the image doesn’t do it justice.  My scanner is on the fritz and camera phone was a very poor second choice.   I couldn’t adjust the color properly to make it look like the actual painting. 

I’m flying tomorrow  to visit my girl, her husband and my mom in New Mexico.  I can’t wait to see them, especially my girl.  Even though I talk to her 4-5 times a week by phone I still  miss seeing her beautiful face.  Unfortunately, it will be a short trip. I’ll be back on Monday morning.

Creativity Where I Can Find It or What I Did Last Weekend

And again I haven’t had much time to finish any art work this week.  My creativity had taken on a much larger project.  What am I doing?  That really should read ‘What are we doing?"  My guy and I have been planning a bedroom/bathroom remodel since we moved to this house almost three years ago.  And for one reason or another the remodel has off and on and off again.  The biggest reason is the economy and believe me when I say we knew the problems with the economy were coming even before it was officially called an economic downturn.  So after receiving several $50,ooo estimates for the project we decided that it wasn’t a good time to go forward with it. 

However, I knew that if we really wanted to, the two of us could build it ourselves (excluding the plumbing, that we’ll have to hire out).  But it took quite a while convince my guy that we should do the bulk of the work.  He kept telling me that he was too old to be doing that kind if stuff. Please, he’s only 50… and I’ve got a few years on him and I think we can do it if we set my mind to it.  After all, the two of us remodeled the kitchen in our last house and it turned out beautifully.

What really helped my case is that my guy’s older sister (she’s my age) and her husband built their own house with the help of their daughters (no sons to help). Literally, built their own house, walls and everything and they did it in a year.  

Mind you this project has been planned out for a while now. We have our drawings, and above older sisters husband who is an architect has been here to give us lots of advice and it  has been discussed to death.  So we finally decided that we really needed the closets, badly, and that’s where we would start. and we would do it slowly so as not to kill ourselves.  So three weekends ago we went out and bought lumber, hauled it upstairs and let it dry for two weeks.

Then last weekend we started. we cut the wood and framed out three walls of our closet.  Here is a picture:

 

Do you see the walls behind the framing?  This weekend we will be putting up drywall so when we knock those walls down we won’t get a lot dust in the bedroom. 

My closet will be on the left and my guys will be on the right side.  They will each have high ceilings for the extra storage. The break between the framing will be a hallway that will eventually lead to the bathroom.   The inside will be made up of Ikea closet units. I can’t wait because ever since we ripped out the bedroom closet (it used to be behind the white door on the right), we have clothes in all the closets in the house. I can’t find anything.

My advice to anyone considering doing something like this?  Get a framing nailer.  It saved us and each section of the wall was put together in ten minutes. 

Well, I haven’t been totally art free but I just don’t have anything finished to show you. I am working on two paintings. One is a floral inspired by Georgia O’Keefe due to the Gray Reef ning site. And the other is the portrait I’ve talked about before. When I get done with the floral, I’ll post it.

Saints and Sinners

The Saint, on 6” x 6” canvas

Here’s a project I’ve been working on for a little while.  It’s of Saint Anne, the patron saint of seamstresses and tailors.  The background papers are sewing pattern paper and a page from a book that just happened to be about sewing.  That was serendipity as the book itself was not about sewing and the page was the first one I opened to when I picked up the book.  

The background color was a blend of several colors from my pastel box.  I really love using them for backgrounds because they blend so well.  I used Krylon Fixative to set the colors.

I found the image of St Anne and printed it on my laser printer and transferred it to the canvas using the Chartpak blender pen I wrote about earlier.  I enhanced the color using acrylics and colored pencils.

The scroll at the top is a rub on and the flower is from scrapbook paper.

 

The Sinners:

In my last post I wrote that we were going to Stinson beach for the weekend.  We did and had a wonderful time.  We walked on the beach for hours just talking and laughing and getting sunburned noses.  We enjoyed every minute of our time there.  My husband is such a doll…dreamy sigh. 

Here’s the sinner part: While we were sitting outside a local restaurant waiting to be called for dinner we saw a big SUV pull out of it’s parking space and smack right into a Mercedes car parked on the street.  As he pulled forward after hitting the car, there was a huge dent on the car door.  OUCH!  However, when the guy pulled forward he acted like he hadn’t hit the car.  I could tell he didn’t  intend to leave a note or offer to pay the car owner for the damage he caused. 

I didn’t want to confront the guy but I couldn’t let it go either. I decided that the best thing to do was give our name to the restaurant hostess in case the car owner came looking for information.  The hostess went out and got the license plate number of the guy who did the damage and left a note on the car after the SUV driver left.  I don’t know what happened as the car owner hasn’t called. But I felt better after leaving our number as witnesses.   Years ago I had a similar thing happen to my car but I was lucky because the guy who hit my car left a note for me.  I just wish these guys had manned up and left the note themselves.

Twenty Two Years

 

 

 

Today is my 22nd anniversary.  I have been married 22 wonderful years to this gorgeous hunk of man.  For our anniversary we will be going to Stinson beach, which is close to San Francisco, for the weekend. We'll spend the day at the beach, then have dinner. Later, if we can find the place, we'll go dancing to some blues music at a local pub.   We don't go out dancing but once or twice a year but when we do, we cut a mean rug.   :)

Very little art this week

I’ve been in the middle of a work related project this week and haven’t had much time for art. But work didn’t stop me from signing up for a couple of ATC trades at ATCs for all. I made the ATC on the left for one of the trades. The other was just something that started out as an abstract and evolved into a doodle.

The journal page below stems from a week full of cloudy days that was making me feel gloomy. I consider this the opposite of a rain dance and it made me feel a bit better. I gesso’ed the page, painted it pink, then used a bunch of rubber stamps and scrapbook letters. Easy but effective in brightening my mood.

How is your week going? Any plans for the weekend?

Using a New Tool

I recently found this new (to me) tool for transferring laser printer images.  It’s called the ChartPak Colorless Blender and it is the coolest thing.  You take your image, place it face down on the substrate you want it on and run the colorless blender over the backside of the image.  The blender “wets” the image to transfer it from the printed page.   

I’ve had a great time with this tool because it is so easy to use.  I started with ATC’s because I can try a variety of things in a relativity short period of time.

The first is on Pink Prismcolor marker background with the image transferred on top of the marker.  The second image is transferred on top of sewing pattern tissue. 

            

The third, but the fist one made, is on scrapbook paper.  The image was a scanned antique photo that transferred very lightly and I colored in with colored pencils.

 

The only problem I had with the colorless blender was the smell. The smell was hard to take.  I had to step out of the studio for a few minutes. 

Edited to add: I probably should have posted that the pen is only 2.50 through Dick Blick art supplies. It's a great find

Learning Digital Collage

I’ve been taking a Digital Journaling class from Christy of  The Average American Girl.  The class focus is on designing, maintaining a blog and hopefully make it more interesting.  Christy’s class is being held at ArtisticAvanteGarde which is a ning site. The first lesson is learning  to create a digital collage image for a blog background. 

So I’ve downloaded the trial version of Photoshop Elements 7 for use in the class and I’ll tell you, the program is not that  easy to figure out. It has so many functions, which is great, but I think I’ll need to buy a manual to learn how to use them all.   For many years I’ve used Ulead’s PhotoImpact and have gotten quite proficient in it.  However, the version of the program I use doesn’t work on Vista and it doesn’t use layers.  Since the class requires the use of layers, I had to try something new.  Thus Photoshop Elements. 

While waiting for the second week’s lesson to start up I have been busy downloading all the cool brushes I could find.  There were tons of free brushes made for PhotoShop but usable in Elements.  I used some of them to create this digital collage.  All the flourishes were created with the free brushes. I just love them. 

 

What imaging program do you use? 

Do You Wave at Strangers?

I consider myself a friendly person and I don’t have any qualms about waving to people as I’m walking or driving down the road.  Nice thing is that most of these folks will wave back and smile.  It makes me feel good and, if nothing else, I have made someone smile for a minute? 

However, I have a neighbor who I have lived down the street from for the last two and half years.  When he is outdoors, I wave hello to him every time I leave the house.  This guy never does more than just look, not even a smile.  He appears to be of Middle Eastern descent  so it may be his culture not to speak to strange women but it doesn’t stop me, I still wave. . . . Maybe someday he will wave back.

But in the mean time I dedicate this journal page to him.  

How about you, do you wave to strangers?