Photoshop Sux

I hate Photoshop. I could happily 'lasso' that teacher, push him into a 'marquee', drop 3 'layers' on top of him and 'collapse' them, pour the annoying 'paint bucket' over his stupid head and shove the 'magic wand' up his 'metadata'. That's how much I hate photoshop! Now I'm going to meditate on the picture my 10 year old nephew has taped to his bedroom door and try and calm down.

Op Shop finds

Scouring the op shops the other day and came across this. It's a beautiful box covered in pale gold satin with olive green embroidery, open it up and inside is a photo album covered in the same fabric. I can take all the plastic sleeves off the pages and maybe turn it into an art journal. Or just take the guts out, make journal pages and use the cover. Who knows what will happen, it might just sit in a box with a whole heap of other bits and bobs the I have great ideas for. It was $8.00. The pale beige strip across the front is a suede fabric.

These are canvases that are about 11 cm x 24.5 cm and I'm not sure if they were commercial prints or someones home made ones. The backs are all covered and they have ready made hangers, so it's a bit hard to tell. Anyway I'll probably paint over them and do something with collage, stamping and perhaps just leave parts of the original prints showing through. They were 50 cents each. I also managed to get a couple really old knitting patterns, so old they were still priced as 3 shillings and fourpence. (Gawd, I remember using pounds, shillings and pence so that makes me really old). And I picked up an old childrens basic reader book published in 1962. It's got some cute pictures of little girls in puff sleeves and peter pan collars and mothers wearing frilly aprons. Those were the days!

Demoralised and Deflated

My best friend Carmen and I talk everyday on the phone, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. The main topics of our converstations are cooking, cleaning, kids (well adult kids) the state of the world, TV and the best way to remove soap scum from the bathroom tiles and not necessarily in that order. We both hate cooking even though Carmen is a fantastic cook. She could turn a can of spam, some grated lemon rind and a bunch of wilted broccoli into a gourmet meal, I kid you not. Me, well I'd just phone Dominoes. This is a conversation we had a few months ago which will explain the title of this post.
C. Hi you, what have you been doing.
D. Lord, I'm exhausted I've just finished cleaning my bedroom from top to bottom.
C. Did you dust the ceiling and walls?
D. Whaaaaa! (note to self, find out if other people do that)
C. Did you shift the furniture away from the walls and vacuum behind?
D. Are you kidding? I'd need 3 sumo wrestlers to lift that bloody dressing table.
C. Did you empty all your drawers, vacuum out the dust, get rid of the junk and put everything back neatly?
D. No (Lord, that would take a week on it's own)
C. Did you empty the wardrobe, vacuum inside, pack up all the clothes you don't want for Good Sammys, put everything back colour coded?
D. Nooooooo.
C. Did you take down the curtains, wash them, iron them and then re-hang them?
D. Are you kidding? My double bed sheets that have been masquerdaing as curtains for the last ten years. They'd disintergrate.
C. Did you dust and polish the skirting boards?
D. Get real!!!!!!
C. Did you wash the windows?
D. Don't be ridiculous!
C. So what did you do?
D. Changed the bed sheets (king size bed, you know how hard they are to make), vacuumed and dusted all the obvious surfaces, oh and windexed the mirror. I can actually see my reflection now. Blech!!!!!
C. Ok, talk you tomorrow.
D. K........bye. Oh, I confused you. You thought this was my bedroom? As if.......... in my dreams.
And if you want to know how to get rid of soap scum. Easy, never, ever, under any circumstances allow bars of soap into your bathroom. Put them in your knickers drawer or linen cupboard (smells good). Use shower gel.

Photoshop, bushfires and some art

Well Carmen and I had our first Photoshop lesson last night and I don't know about her but my head is still spinning. Got on the computer this morning and tried to do some of the things we did last night and it's just completely gone, empty head, mushy brain and I can't even decipher my notes that I scribbled down. Lord, I hope it gets a bit easier as we move along, or that's $180.00 wasted. Carmen and I got the giggles as well, damn it, (that always seems to happen, we're like a couple of school kids sometimes) after the teacher had made this great long spiel about how easy it is, and the wonderful things you can do, and we'll pick it up in no time, we just looked at each other and thought, no not dumb and dumber sitting here mate, and then couldn't stop giggling.

This morning I went to Coles to do the grocery shopping along with every man, woman and child in Perth it seemed. So great to see everyone supporting the victims of the terrible fires in Victoria. People had trolleys filled to overflowing, almost like they have shopped for the next month just to be able to have the money they spent donated to the cause. The lines at the checkout were so long and the wait was pretty close to 30 minutes before I managed to get through, but unlike most times when standing in line and waiting, everyone was very good humoured and patient. Thankfully the lady in front of me had a sense of humour because I told her I would break her dozen eggs and squash her sponge cake if she even dared have a 'price check'. People have lost loved ones, homes, businesses, everything they own so a 30 minute wait in line was a piece of cake. This piece is 4" x 6" watercolour paper with several coats of paint and tissue paper and old postage stamps and some antique lace. The image is from Designs Galore.

Now with this one I've kind of gone out of my comfort zone a bit. Much brighter colours and quite a bit bigger than I normally work. It's A4 size and I could tell you that I imagined that the black dots across the centre made me think of a path and I just happened to have the quote at hand and the butterfly on her ankle was metaphorically helping her to fly down the path, but that would just be a whole lot of bull$#%. It just worked out that way and ok.......there may have been an incident with the scissors, and I might have accidently cut off her stilletto..... so I had to hide it.....if you must know!

This image is from a magazine and I hand coloured her dress with oil pastel and there is random stamping, splotches of gold, circles and flowers and a butterfly and the quote is another closest book, page 56, 5th sentence down. They're a bit spooky sometimes because 9 times out of ten, the sentence you get just goes with whatever you're doing. Very strange and somehow almost 'twilight zone-ish'. Cue the music.

Zentangle

When I was staying at my sisters and trawling the net I came across this site http://zentangle.com/index.php. I suppose the best way to describe it is as a meditative kind of doodling. I did this yesterday while sitting in the dentist waiting room, waiting for the continuation of my root canal (oh joy!) I can hear you all groaning in sympathy with me.....thanks, I feel so much better. But when you go here you will see some incredible examples of zentangles by a very talented lady Penny Raile. Also here is another talented artist with some examples. I like how she has cut hers up to use as inchie backgrounds. The top left of this is a bit wobbly.......I was starting to get nervous because I could hear the dentist finishing up with his patient and I knew I was going to be next. Also the pen I was using wasn't quite right, I think something a bit finer is better to use. But you can get lets of info from the Zentangle site, even buy kits etc. I just cut 3" x3" squares of plain white cardstock. The whole concept is small enough to carry around in your bag and it's a great way to pass the time if your in a waiting room, or your husband is watching cricket on TV (groan) or you just feel like doodling.

Weekend

It has been so hot this weekend and the humidity is unbearable. In my lounge room it's currently 27.1c with 71% humidity and it's only 9.00 am. Roll on winter! And because it was so unbearable the last two days, well I just had to sit at my desk and try not to move too much. Even with the aircon on movement of any sort was a no-no. So here's what I did to pass the time and to try and keep cool. An ATC using scrap paper (I think I used it to wipe the paint brush and clean a stamp), trying to use up some of my vast amount of letter stickers so that's what the question mark and quote are from. Then I edged the whole thing with Tim Holtz metallic crackle paint 'Brushed Silver'. I quite like the effect.

This one...... the same sort of scrap (clean the paint brush) paper with an image from a book, some stamping and stencilled through some sequin waste, the quote was just a piece of paper floating around under all the mess and some german scrap.

Here I've painted (at least 20 coats) a piece of 12.5 cm x 20 cm grungeboard. Dress, hat and the underneath of her wings are wallpaper, (another thing I'm trying to use up) face and legs are magazine images and the quote is another.......closest book, page 56, fifth sentence down. I think someone needs to take charge of her wardrobe......lord, that hat is a sight to behold!