'Art Retreat' stuff

The Singer dummy was the best company you could have whilst away. She wasn't in the least bit demanding, never wanted to know what was for dinner, didn't want endless cups of coffee or where were her new jeans.....have I washed them yet. Didn't gloat about her hour glass figure or frown at me when I ate 2 icecreams and she watched over me every night like a guardian angel and didn't even snore. (Apparently I did....very loudly....scared the cat)

Well I don't seem to have much to show for a whole week of doing nothing but art. Here are some twinchies (2" x 2") I did. Top left looks awful but it was a technique I was trying out to get the look of encaustic without the wax. It looks better in real life. Bottom left is an exercise I tried after reading it on some ones blog. Pick up the nearest book to you, turn to page 56, find the fifth sentence on that page and either use it as a prompt or a quote. I used it as a quote A lot of stuff I did will never see the light of day. Some went in the bin, a lot will be cut up as backgrounds for inchies, twinchies, ATC's and skinnies and quite a bit will be painted over. But I had fun!

Fishy tale continued.

Well as you know the fish died and I was unsure of what to do. Well I made an executive decision and scooped it out of the tank with a soup ladle and buried it in a large pot that has a Bay tree growing in it. I just felt that it had been dumped unceremoniously with little thought, so I set out to somehow memorialize the poor wee thing. A cross was the obvious thing but my supplies were a bit limited. I needed a couple of popsicle sticks and I wasn't about to buy a pack of 100 only to use two, so of course the next best thing was to buy .........icecream......a 6 pack of Magnum mini's 3 vanilla and 3 peppermint to be precise. Then I had to eat at least 2 of the said Magnums in the interest of art....... of course. I scrounged around the house and found the fish eraser and a small fish punch and here's the end result.

Here it is in the pot. My sister rang me when the arrived home and thanked me for taking the trouble to memorialise Sorah but an unfortunate thing happened. Astro the wonder dog who had been staying at Club Med for canines arrived home and promptly ate it!

What do I do?

Gawd..............the fish died!!! Do I scoop it out and bury it, or put in the rubbish, or wrap it up in plastic and put it in the freezer so they can bury it with a suitable funeral when they get home? Help......any suggestions?
The cat vomited as well, great start to my art retreat.

Art Retreat

Well here I am on my own personal 'art retreat'. Every year my sister and her husband and their son go down south for about a week and I house sit for them. Feed the cat, water the plants, feed the fish and just generally make the place look lived in. This year I'm a bit nervous as the cat who is 17 years old is not well and the Siamese Fighting fish is on it's last legs (fins). Just my luck they will both go to God on my watch.
I've come here with one bag of clothes and toiletries and 5 bags of art stuff. I do it every year and always bring way too much with me, so this year I decided I would bring just the bare minimum of art equipment and just make do and try and stretch myself a bit. But I don't know.......I just kept looking at stuff and thinking I might need that, or I'll probably kick myself if I don't put that in the bag, I need images, gesso would be good, a bit of texture paste would be nice, I should try out the new Tim Holtz metallic crackle paint I just bought, so 5 bags later here I am with it all spread out on the table.
But it is so lovely not to have to worry about cooking, cleaning, washing and work. If I want to sit at the table from 5 a.m. till midnight I can. I can leave the whole table covered with stuff and not worry about clearing it all off to make way for dinner. Bliss!
Plus I get to watch whatever I like on TV and I eat frozen dinners and takeaways all week.
Hopefully at the end of the week I will have some art work to share with you.

Simply Skinnies

Well I've joined another challenge. This one is called 'Simply Skinnies' and the challenge is a 3" x 5" card and the theme for challenge #12 is Childrens Stories. Well mines not quite a childs story but it is something that I loved playing with when I was little and it did stimulate the imagination enough to make up a story about my Paper Dolls. I really loved them and can remember quite vividly changing their outfits so much that the tabs eventually fell off. White cardstock sprayed with Glimmer Mist Black Gold and Antique Brass, Black Versafine Stamp Pad and Stamps from Character Construction. The images I found in a magazine. Check out the other creative people at here.

Arty Girlz Challenge #67

Weird girl. I love this stamp.

The challange.........'anything but a card'. Watercolour crayon background, stamps and embossing, black and white gesso. Some silver fab foil added to her hair and just under her legs. It never shows up in the scans which is a pity. This will eventually go into a journal.

Here's a link so you can see all the other very creative people who have joined the challenge.

http://artygirlzchallengeblog.blogspot.com/

New Years Eve

Not a fan of New Years Eve and tried to get out of celebrating it this year by tempting the other half with staying at home and having a feast of seafood, crayfish, prawns, crabs and me(thanks for the idea Carmen). But noooo......he wanted to go out. So off we went to Gloucester Park (again). It was as hot as Hades and a million other people had the same idea, so after trawling for a carpark and then making our way through the throngs of people we finally got inside and fortunately SIL had managed to find a table and chairs for us.

Now I'm not a great punter and usually just look for horses with quirky names. Things like "Maybe Mortadella" or "Could be Glue" but alas there wasn't a quirky name amongst all those horses so the only way I could amuse myself was to sit and people watch. We had the perfect spot because we were sitting on one side of walkway that went from one side of the track to the other and it was just a passing parade of weird and wonderful sights. The funniest being all the young girls that teetered and tottered past us in their 15cm stillettos (sp). I have to tell you that there were a lot of 'cankles' that shouldn't be within spitting distance of a pair of very high, strappy slingbacks and a lot of 'thunder thighs' that have no business poking out from under a micro mini dress. Oh dear! And don't get me started on the young thing that sauntered past us in a French Maids outfit, I kid you not, right down to the thigh high stockings and little frilly apron.

All our respective husbands, partners and boyfriends wanted to know why we didn't dress like that when we did the housework. Needless to say after wiping various cocktail concoctions off their faces, they went back to punting!
And the blokes.....what's with the fashion of the baggy hipster jeans. They should be called 'dickster' jeans because another half centre metre and that's exactly what you would see. The back pockets are halfway down their thighs along with the crotch and it really does look like they've had an 'accident'. Oh dear! Give me a guy in a nice pair of Levis 501's anyday. But the funniest sight of all was at the end of the night watching all the girls in high heels hobble back past us and I knew exactly how they felt. The balls of the feet stinging and burning, the toes so cramped that they feel like they will never straighten out again, legs aching and all they want to do is sit down and kick off those heels and have a good long soak in Radox.

The fireworks were spectacular and the best part of the whole very long night. So that was the end of another year. A year that has gone too quickly and each year seems to fly by quicker than the one before. Hope this year brings you all Health, Peace and Prosperity. Happy New Year.