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!