Possibly the Last Blogger Entry...

A year and a half ago, I got a domain address and made a nifty little weebly website to gather all of me into one nice place. I did a long trial run of blogging directly on the website (instead of linking to here) and have been pretty much keeping two blogs at once.  While I love both of them, it's awfully tempting to cut out about half the work, and so I am choosing sides and moving the blog over there. 

Won't you come with me?

The photos and videos are much larger on the other side of the fence :3

New Additions

Listing things in the shop can become overwhelming and time consuming at times, so it is no surprise that a few things have been forgotten among the confusion. I found a small stack of paintings that I'd forgotten to list or just didn't because maybe I didn't think they were interesting enough! Some of them are listed at sale price because they feel more like "studies" to me. Clicking on an image will take you there, check it out :)

Art Journal Video - Autumn Still Life

Watercolour Collage - "Make Noise"

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Make some noise.

I pretty much had the background done first and LOVED it, but then wasn't sure what to do with it. I threw a stellar jay on there because I saw one the other day and realize that this year was nearly empty of stellar jays. Either they've all carried on someplace else or they're being extraordinarily quiet this year. 

 

Available Here. 

Painting Sneak Peek - "Make Noise"

I didn't quite finish a random painting today but I am pretty darn close... It's a bit similar to one of my journal pages. Guess which one!

What Happens On Holidays

So it is some kind of Thanksgiving holiday today in Canada, though we usually just see it as an opportunity to make a big turkey because everyone else is doing it! Woo! In between sanding and priming the bathroom, vacuuming and dusting the place, I added a few pieces to this painting and scrapbooked the last of the pre-summer photos. I got as far as stitching a fabric branch and placing a couple of sweet crows over top. I feel no more clear about where this one is going than I did when I started!

Art Journal Video - Autumn Watercolour

Intuitive Fly By The Seat Of Your Pants Painting

What. Why? Why did I do this? Why did I spent 2.5 hours covering a page with diamonds? Seriously. And my arm is particularly sore this week. It hurts to touch things with my index finger. So why the heck am I painting this? I don't even like it. 

Oh geez. What the heck am I doing now? I can't even draw perfect ovals. I just covered up an hour's worth of triangles that I painted for no reason. What am I trying to do here, art nouveau? The pattern is still blindingly bright. 

WHAT HAVE I DONE. What. You can't use heavy gel medium as a glaze, you just can't. Nice try, wiping it off of a WATERCOLOUR PAINTING. You just wiped off another hour's worth of diamonds and covered up the rest. Sheesh. Nice planning. 

On the other hand, it's looking a little bit more like a painting now. Looking all "weathered" and shiz. Yeah. Not nearly as blinding. I'd say it has potential now. What could be next?

Painting Little Patterns

Painting repetitive shapes one at a time... meditative or just plain tedious?

Art Journal Video - Ginkgo

Very Long Days

If you are ever in the White Rock, BC area, take a walk down to Whitby's Coffee House on the west end of the shops and you will see three small paintings of mine hanging on the walls. I was very lucky to meet a new friend who insisted on taking me there! A very humbling experience. And terrifying if you count the part where I was driving down an incredibly steep hill chanting "oh please, brakes, please hold out!" It's a doozy. I would have brought photos but I left the memory card at home - as always! Grrr. 

Covering a Blah Journal Page

I simple way to cover a journal page that's going the ugly route: a warm coloured glaze and a painted heart. This is how you get "omg layers" by accident.

Art Journal Page 9/30/13

Well, it happened. Summer ended. A few weeks ago I know I was getting impatient with the heat and being all "when will this ever eeeennnnndddd?" As soon as my friend's wedding was over, the rain fell. And fell, and fell. Before the wedding it was a cool 20C. After the wedding, it dropped to 10C. 

Here I am, still painting butterflies in some artistic form of denial.

Hello, Desk. We meet again. 

There is supposed to be some kind of windstorm happening (I am skeptical), and so the blueberries and the calamondin are huddled together inside where it's not gusty. The calamondin improved so much this year - I've never seen so many leaves on it! It's hard to believe that it was once the size of the shorter blueberry. 

Art Journal Page - Rainy Day

Mini Painting - Web

There is so much to do again! Augh! Here's a little mini painting I did last night while watching Men In Black on netflix.

For serious. 

Aliens, yo.

We were betting each other whether or not the MIB music video would play at the end of it and we learned that it would not (I win). The thrill of waiting for the last bit of tape on a VHS is gone, I suppose.

"Web" is available here.

Slow Scrapbooking

My legs are still crazy sore from all the dancing this weekend! Today I did one scrapbook page. Just one. They almost always look the same. I figured if I paced myself instead of throwing all of my photos into the book at once, it might be more fun to peruse later. And here I am, working with photos from July, with a memory card jampacked with new ones yet to be printed! Some days it feels like the world is spinning much faster than I am. 

Art Journal Video - Peering Frog

Saving Dates

It's Super Bridesmade Cake week so I will be crazy busy starting NOW (aaah!!)  but I just wanted to pop in and say hello. Things will be very quiet around here on the weekend. 

Chances are good I will be scribbling in my journal, so to save time I've got this Smash date stamp to play with! 

I like having uniform dates instead of the chicken scratch ones, but I'm usually too impatient to pick through the alphabet stamps to spell out days and months. There is a selection of short phrases on this stamp but none of them are particularly useful. If it were a list of weekdays that would be way better. I like to know which day of the week I've written!

Grass Box Update

The birdseed made a couple of different grasses, a cushy uniform short grass and a speedy tall grass! The cats recognize that it isn't much of an "eating" grass so here Maggie is watching me trim it with scissors! 

Milo is feeling the cool softness against his pink toes.

One errant sunflower seed grew into this. I have no idea what kind of sunflower it is, but it will probably turn into nothing, this late into the year and in such small a box! 

Art Journal Video - Circle

Watercolour Painting - Raining Sun

There are lots of dry spells where I don't have any ideas, but it's not good to keep waiting and waiting. Sometimes you just have to jump in and scribble a bit. This one reminds me of those days where it's hot and sunny, but suddenly raining at the same time. It's like a happy rain. Those are usually rainbow days.  I did this one really quickly so it's priced much lower than my other ones.

Available Here.

Cake Poll

I've not been doing much creative work or journaling this week because I've been all excited and impatient over this wedding cake for a friend! So maybe you can help me make a decision about flower placement! The left image is what I originally envisioned (except without the flowers on the very bottom - there's not much room there), and the right image shows another "swag" kind of style. I don't know, I still kind of like the first one because it looks more "open". What do you think? Left or Right?

Journal Post 9/9/13

Blank pages can be frightening; Lots of people are afraid to use up nice papers or start their first page in a brand new book. What if you ruin it? What if the first page is so disappointing that it causes you to cringe whenver you open the book? What if what if what if...

But blank pages can also be a fresh blanket of untouched white snow. Or an undisturbed body of water that is so smooth and reflective that it looks like glass. Our first reaction is to destroy it - to stamp a network of footprints through the snow. To throw stones. 

 

But papers and canvases! These are the things that cripple us with indecision!

Sometimes it pains me to use a gentle hand and a light palette in my journals only to later destroy the whole thing with dark, inky words...

Art Journal Video - Growth

Turning Art into Paper Jewellery

The other day, I put on a random pair just to see if I could still wear them, and I kind of liked it!  I experimented a bit and made a few pairs of paper earrings. Now, I can wear tiny paintings whenever I go out - ha! They're coated with Aleene's Paper Glaze, but I'm not sure how protective it really is (it seems to smudge pen ink) so I'll have to experiment a bit further I think.

Rainy Day

Rainy, rainy, rainy day. Milo cat is snuggled up under the blankets and Maggie cat is spending another long day out on the balcony. It is a day of quiet reflection. Complete clarity in dreams. Mysteriously accurate tarot cards. Slow movies. Swing shift. Creative play!

I might as well appreciate it now, because in three months I will already be dead sick of rain!

Garden Update - Grass Box

Since the nasturtiums died, I bought a bag of finch birdseed at the dollar store, soaked it in water overnight and then tossed it all into the planter boxes. My cats are apartment cats so I thought maybe they'd like a grassy place to sit on the patio. 

People grow grass from birdseed by accident, I wondered how difficult would it be to grow it on purpose?

This is a photo of Milo on the box less than a week later! 

Art Journal Video - Old Rose

Building With Marshmallows

Today I am making pretty roses out of marshmallow fondant for a wedding cake that's due in a few weeks.

I've also ripped up all of the dead nasturtiums out of their planter boxes and hope to grow some friendly grass there for the cats to lay on, using bird seed. Weirdly, not only has the bird seed developed grasses in only three days but I've seen about zero birds come around for it. Huh.

Back to Watercolours

Here is a post in which I am likely to break a few hearts. You see, I really wanted to try out one of my more recent journals with the multi-hued papers... and I meant to grab the blue herringbone journal as it was less popular than this one but I guess my heart just slipped, Sorry! I blame the migraine. 

Yes. That will do.

I love the way this paper soaks up the watercolour. Now I can use sprays and stencils again, yay!