My Walking Stick

 

“The best, the most exquisite automobile is a walking stick; and one of the finest things in life is going on a journey with it” ~~~ by Robert Coates Holliday

 

I post or so ago, (it been so long I’ve forgotten), and before I left California, I wrote that I was working on a walking stick.  This stick was one I cut off of the big butterfly bush that was growing in the back yard of my house in Woodland. Every year I had to trim this huge bush because if I didn’t it would grow to be well over 9-10 ft tall. And when in bloom, it would also be full of big, fat, round, scary, black bees.  What I didn’t realize when I cut this stick was that it would become a beautiful walking stick (Well I think it is anyway.)  It was so sturdy and firm and miraculously shaped just right for my height and hands. 

When realized what I had, I decided to leave it be for a while and let it dry, then paint it. I didn’t know how long it would take to dry out so i left it for a year… more than enough time. Then I took my Dremmel and cut off and sanded the nubs.  Then painted it with gesso and acrylic paint. Then added some doodles and finished it off with several coats of outdoor Polyurethane.  This is the finished product:

 

I’ve taken it out for a spin, very nice. :)

Well, here we go.

Saturday will be our last full day in California. We're almost done packing and we leave Northern California on Saturday morning.  We'll be on the road all day and spend the night in Needles. By Sunday morning we'll leave the great state of California (and I do mean that sincerely) and head to our new home and new life in NM.

It's hard to believe it's already time to go and, at the same time, it's taken a long time to get here.  I've made my peace with the notion that we are moving and, in fact, I'm really looking forward to it. Excited you might even say.  I have plans.... big plans. They involve children, grandchildren, reaching out to family and friends, a new art studio, hiking, biking and more.... My head is spinning just thinking about it.

Needless to say I haven't created much art lately, well, not unless you call lettering "Studio" on packed boxes art. No, I don't either.

Good news, my guy got a job offer in New Mexico on Thursday and he starts October 11th. They are giving us a lot of time to get there and get settled before he starts. The timing couldn't be better. It's such a relief. He's been looking a long time. So I guess it's all meant to be.

It's late, got to pack some more so I'll say goodbye from California.  Talk to you again from New Mexico.  Wish us luck. Waves Bye. 

New Journal Pages

You can tell when I have visited Teesha Moore’s blog because I add borders around my journal pages.

 

The week I created this page I was having an obsession with paper flowers. I actually made a few to put on the kitchen table.  I’ll probably leave them in my studio for the new owner to find.

Did I tell you I found the Sharpie poster paint markers at Micheal’s?  Yeah, they come in all sorts of colors and I love them.

Saying our goodbyes to our favorite beach

As you may have read, we are moving to NM soon and in these last few weeks that remain, we are visiting some of the places and restaurants we have loved in Northern California. Saturday, my guy and I went to say our goodbyes to Stinson Beach.  We’ve celebrated our anniversary there a few times and spent many a weekend walking the long stretch of beach over the last 23 years both with and without our daughter and her assorted friends. There were a lot of great memories created there.

Here is my guy looking out at the ocean after a long walk.

My feet in the water. It felt so good.

Do you see where the hill tapers off into the water?  That’s where we started our walk. There’s hardly any one that walks out this far unless they live there. (There are houses to the left of where we were standing.) It was our “3 hour tour” but, alas, we didn’t get stranded on a lovely island.

Here is my tribute to our lovely weekend.

Yes, We Have No Piñatas

Just a page I created to get something off my chest.  I feel better now.

I have a “blogging without obligation” motto for my blog but I still feel guilty for not posting more often. In my defense, I have been working on several projects at the same time, but they are in various stages of incompletion. So I had nothing to show except my piss poor attempts at humor.  Here is what I have on the drawing board:

I have a painted walking stick, taken from our Butterfly bush, that I actually plan on taking for a walk. It’s almost done.  It just needs some varnish to protect the finish.

I’m also making a new 6” X 6” journal. The cover is made with recycled materials. You may be surprised at what I used.

And I have a 14” x 17” mixed media painting/collage that needs some lettering done on it.  I’m really liking how this one is turning out so I don’t want to rush it and make a mess of it. 

Of course, I have my art journal that I work in sporadically.

And I’ve also decided to practice sketching faces in the Sabrina Ward Harrison bound sketch book I purchased last time I was in Albuquerque. It has too many pages to paint in. It would get too bulky so I’m just going to sketch in it.

In the weird but true category: Lately I seem to see faces  in all sorts of odd places. No, not faces of Jesus, just faces. For example, last night I was watching an artist interview on Ovation TV and in the background was a curtain hanging in such a way that the light and shadows created an image of the face.  It passed so quickly that I had to rewind the interview so I could see if I imagined seeing it. It was 1:30 am after all and I’d had a Margarita earlier in the evening….so you never know.  So I paused the interview at just the right spot, ran and got my sketch book and sketched it.  I’ve decided that if they are going to appear to me, I’m going to sketch them.  They’re there for a reason, don’t you think?

 

How happy can a chubby girl be?

Just a couple of pages to show you today:

The first was from a vintage ad that had this woman along with the words:

“How happy can a chubby girl be?” It was an ad for clothing. I don’t think the manufacturer would dare to run an ad like that today.

 

This page is a simple one made with tape from TapeSwell and Michael’s.  In order to add the black charcoal I had to paint the tape with clear gesso. Once the gesso dried I added the smudged charcoal and set it with Krylon Fixative so it wouldn’t rub off.

The flowers were some extra die cuts I had leftover from another project. Now when I look at them, they seem to need some definition.

Thanks for reading.

Love Comes in Tiny Packages

I’m back home and I’m back to creating in my art journal and of course one of the first subjects had to be Lil G. (in the middle of the night he’s known as Notorious G.) I cried the day I left Albuquerque to come home.  I miss him and his mama like crazy. Yes I have a new obsession and you’ll probably get sick of my talking about him and all I can say about that is you were warned. :) 

What have you been up to?  Seriously, what have you been doing?  Leave me a comment.

That’s it for today, I’ll have more soon.  Don’t want to overwhelm you with my wonderfulness…. OK don’t laugh cuz I can hear you. :)

Welcome Little G. into the world

Saturday morning at 3:20 am, my daughter gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy named Gregory Charles.  He was 6 lbs 11 oz.

He is our first grandchild and I am already so in love with him that I am busting at the seams. I can see that he will become a wonderful source of journaling material.

 

I want to thank my girl and her husband for letting us, my guy and I, be a part of the birthing process. We were with them through all of it and while it was so difficult to witness her pain, I am so grateful that we were allowed to help them. It brought us even closer together than we already were.

It was through this experience I learned that my daughter is the strongest woman I know. She had to go through so much to give birth to this beautiful little boy and she barely cried even though she was in a tremendous amount of pain. I AM SO PROUD OF HER. She is going to be a wonderful mother.

Now you know what I’ve been up to. What about you?  What have you been doing?

Yes, I’m still a Twirp.

A few weeks ago I was reorganizing our collection of family photos and memorabilia and I came across a scrapbook I kept when I was in high school.  Among the photos of my high school buds I found my old learners permit and a “Twirp License.” Have you ever heard of a Twirp License? 

Every year we had a week long school event called Sadie Hawkins week and at the end of the week we had the Sadie Hawkins dance. In order to go to this dance, the guys had to be invited by a girl and the girl had to buy a Twirp license if they wanted to do the inviting.  (Now I’m wishing I hadn’t packed away the photograph of me with my date. Talk about looking like a Twirp.)

The dance was a lot of fun and I was able to get close to the boy I may have never had the chance to know well had I not acted like “a Twirp”.  (Unfortunately he met his demise a year or so later but that’s another story altogether.) The lesson it taught me was that sometimes you have to risk getting embarrassed to get something you want.

I took that same type of risk some years later when I first laid eyes on my husband. He walked in to the bar where I was having drinks with my girlfriends, I took one look in his eyes and knew I wanted him in my life. I immediately wondered how I was going to meet him and still not look too forward or trashy. As he stood talking with some friends, I walked past him and as I did, I reached over and lightly touched his hand with my fingertips and said Hi….That’s all, just Hi and kept walking.  Lucky for him he followed me (LOL), and the rest is a 25 year history.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened had you taken the risk you were too afraid to take? Or did you take the risk and reap the benefits? Tell me about it.

Starting Over

I bet you though I’d disappeared never to return.  Nah, just been so busy I haven’t had the opportunity to create art.  Although I have been working on a big project, not a painting, that I can’t discuss or show you just yet.  But I will when it’s complete.

If you’re a frequent reader of my blog you know that there has been some turmoil around Casa de LittleBit. Well, decisions have been made and all for the better I might add.  Except that while I know intellectually that the changes will be good for us, my emotions are still fighting it.  Giving up on this life is H-A-R-D. 

We will be putting our house on the market soon and are now in the process of cleaning, decluttering and purging ourselves of unnecessary household goods. How do you collect that much stuff in just 4 years?  Unbelievable.

To what end?  We have decided to move back to our home town in New Mexico. That is where my husband and I are both from (although we never lived there as a married couple.) My daughter lives there with her husband and her soon to be born son as does my step-daughter..  While I am beyond thrilled that we will be living close to our precious children and grandchild…… I never planned on living in NM ever again.  It’s not the place I really want to be. And yet…we’re going because that’s where we should be … with our family.  We decided we need to be in our grandchild’s life much more than we hate living in NM. So that’s where we are going to be starting over.  But I don’t know when just yet.

My journal page reflects the conflict that’s been plaguing my mind:

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. “

 

Have I told you that I love the movie “The Crow” with Brandon Lee? No? Well, last weekend as I watched my 10th or so viewing of it, I took this photo of the TV screen with an Iphone app called Procamera, then used the PSMobile app, to alter it. I think it’s cool. :)

 

What’s on your mind these days?