! Birthday !

Boy

is today a special day for someone very, I mean super, close to moi.

I want to thank my Mother in Law and my Father in Law for this wondermous & fabulous gift of love they gave to me.

Happy Birthday my most Beloved!

No...Wait!

Don’t fire me! Not from my own blog.


Ah my dear internets I wish it would rain at our house. Have I complained about this already? Matters not, my rain barrels are dry, our yard is as crunchy as Grape Nuts cereal and the same color too…okay so there is a tad of green near the tomato bed. I feel bad wanting rain when so many are flooding throughout the greater Mississippi and Ohio River valleys; Their homes and lives being devastated when here in Texas we have wild fires. Last week there was one blazing a few miles from my home, thank God the firefighters were able to extinguish it within several hours.

I have been busy this day. Really I finished writing and editing a couple of poems, I would share them but they are a bit…umm let me just say they are on the adult side.

So um, I’ve been doing an online art journaling workshop…21 Secrets. It’s purdy neat and now that I have finished up a few ATC commitments and a class at the college is winding down I can really delve into the workshop and relax.

Here is that “under painting” Brian asked to see, now mind you I drew this with the canvas in a landscape orientation and bam a lam it’s supposed to be portrait orientation. Weird a$$ed art, hum maybe I should look at my poetry from a different angle…lalala

So really that’s all I have for y’all today. Please pray for all the flood and fire victims.

Someone Got Framed!

Who wants to see the picture I finally had framed? The title is Peach Girl, by Daniela Ovtcharov, it is a “Gicle’e” print, that I picked up at the Bayou City Art Festival down in Houston last fall. The one I had the wall painted that certain “mulling spice” color for. Y’all member. Well here she is for your viewing pleasure and as silly as it may seem lil’ Peach Girl makes me smile when I walk by her.

No. The green/jade looking frame was not part of the professional framing, it’s one I got for $3 on clearance at the hobby store. I had this grand idea to hang multi frames of various sizes and colors around Ms. Peach to make her the central point in some sort of artistic creative a$$ed way…but when I held this green frame up my socks were knocked off and volia- she is framed twice over. Do ya like?

And here is the silly fun piece I did for the back wall of my renovated kitchen. I painted the background of a blank canvas,

modge podged some roosters on it, painted over it a bit and then sealed it Finally I added a clock with my repurposed (cake decoration) sunflower for the center. Not as fancy smanchy as the end tables, but it’ll do.

And now, tell me what have you painted lately: Walls? Canvas? Nails? Face?

The Woodlands of Texas

I know, I know this was almost a month ago, but hey I have good reason for not telling y’all about it. Just give me a few minutes of your precious time and I’ll let ya know what that reason is.

Feature Artist

I love looking at and touching art even the pieces that are not necessarily pretty to me. We went to The Woodlands Art Fest back on April 11th and I had a good time. Looking and talking to some artist and taking a few pictures and what not. Nope I didn’t buy anything, I tend to be cheap these days. Speaking of which, I, for the life of me, can’t figure out why some of it cost so much. I mean come on $5,000.00 should get ya more than an unframed 24 x 36 painting. With that said I don't know what these artist prices were. (hint this is a disclaimer) Hah, I should be an artist!

Oh wait I am. Where’s my $5,000?

Beautiful dancers

So’s anyway I still love it. And I suppose they do need insurance and junk, and dear ol’ Uncle Sam insists that they pay taxes, and they need electricity to work by or even use in their art, and then there is the cost of materials for the art…holy cow it’s amazing how expensive some of the stuff I use is. No wonder they charge so much.

Now why did it take so long to post this, well I was busy planning to have lunch. Yes sometimes it takes a while to get up the nerve and set up a place and time and stuff. especially when one is meeting a blogging friend. Which I did. Go ahead ask me who… Okay already I’ll spill the cheese cake Dorriane Darden of Free Ice Cream. She is such a beautiful person! Inside and out, not that I saw her insides or anything. We talked about everything. Lunch took a while. We laughed and poked fun at people, not really I just thought it would peak your interest. Did it?

We did talk about Jai, who we have deemed to be a beautiful caring soul and it must be so, cause we said so. And back to Drain, she has studied hard to become the writer and author that she is, a struggle I’m sure some of you, my dear internets, can understand. Me, well I don’t study writing so much…with its intricacies of grammar and how to say it so that it’s understandable, by people other than one’s self. What the best’est way to write dialogue is and use a specific dialect while doing it. Not to mention the research that is involved, cause a good writer better base something on fact, even in fiction writing. IMO That is what helps to make stories believable. (in case you didn’t know) Holy dictionary ya know that is a lot of work. That’s why I write poetry - no grammar (not much, well by me anyways)

Oh in case you are curious the lunch was awesome, I highly recommend eating at the Cheesecake Factory. And according to dear Dorriane my accent is not that bad hick-i-fied!

Alas I have fallen behind, but just a bit on the PAD—don’t tell Robert. I’ll catch up, heck I bet it won’t take me 2 seconds. In fact I’m sure I’ll spend more time thinking about it than it will take me to write it. Y’all do believe me, right? ah, I know you do.

Now I’m off to the grind stone to sharpen my quills and pulverize some walnuts (for ink), after all I have to catsup. Oh shoot, where’s my paper making junk…

It's ALIVE

Okay, my dear internets I survived. Yeah and thanks so much for your prayers, one can never have too many of those. Gonna keep it short today. Photos here…don’t be scared.




Honeymoon was great. We went into Houston for the Bayou City Art Festival, more of an art market and I was so enthralled at looking at the art and talking to the artist that I didn’t take many pictures. Beloved did take some really good ones I’m very jealous, but please don’t tell him.

That’s all for now... Okay stop complaining...enjoy a bit of eye candy.
Un croped an un-doctored (un-like me)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

OOps!

Altered

When I posted this Out and About Nothings, Aunt Amelia’s comment said, “Actually, I'd not be a good one to comment on your altered book, anyway. I never got my mind around "the why" of Altered Books.”

So here is my long-winded version of whys and wherefores and a surprise offering.

To alter an existing book is taking something that would be discarded; in this case a book I bought from the Goodwill. But a person can take any notebook to decorate (alter) or even various pages (think scrapbook) and affix them into a book. They can be themed or a hodge podge. Assembling of found or castoff objects into a pleasing and cohesive design adding paint or doodles or just about anything, imagination is the only limit. A lot of time these books have some sort of interaction between the reader/viewer and the pages they can be -pop ups, disc to turn and change a view or give surprise perspective to the page. It is a different type of medium that offers art that can be touched, smelled or whatever. There is a certain 3 dimensional aspect to altered art / altered books.

This is a venue that I am still learning, it is something that cannot be hurried as one must wait for glue or paint to dry. I think my attraction to this form of art is that one takes things that are textural and combines them with visuals to create something emotional. They are great for gifts of the heart because they can be so personalized. Well like … who remembers ‘This is your life’, I don't but I heard it was a TV show about someone’s life, yeah sorta like that, but about the theme or not of your choice.

I could see you, Auntie, taking seed packages of flowers in your husband’s garden, a tiny bottle of it’s soil with perhaps dried petals pasted to pages and some of the lovely words you write about it or some of the letters you get and placing them in an old gardening book. There see Aunt Amelia your very own altered book.
OR
Lets say for instance you like to walk in the woods or on beaches and take photos or make drawings. One could put these in a book along side tree bark, leaves, feathers little rocks (without damaging nature of course). One could mention the way the air felt or how is smelled on that particular day.
OR
Maybe you could to do one of your pregnancy or on the birth of a grandchild. Do a book teaching your little ones numbers, letters, colors and nursery rhymes, where they get to decorate the page. Guys, you don’t have to be left out, there are many “manly” subjects out there, you have the whole array of outdoors activities, sports, cars, outer space, tools, bb que or whatever you men do. The limit is… well there is no limit.

Just curious here, how many of you dabble in art and or crafts? Would any of you care to win a book about beginning Altered Art? I’m just asking cause “indoor” weather will be here before you know it and you may want try out something new to do with the kids and this is so kid friendly. Guys may want to make a special gift for their partner (keep it clean fellas) And maybe I can have a give away, but only if more then… lets say 5 folks were to be interested and if so maybe I will.

You tell me.