I'm sick

I've become my own snot factory and grown real tired of blowing my nose.

I take a serious amount of vitamins (and am consistently adding a new one when I hear of the benefits ... ie: Dr Oz says to add some vitamin D, many people in the country are lacking... and since I can count on one hand the days of sunshine we've had here since we got back from Florida in November? good idea !). Apparently all those vitamins doesn't give me any super immunity against whatever is causing me to buy stock in Kleenex.
For what it's worth, I do actually feel pretty good on all those vitamins.

I hope to post some new art soon!

I'm no foodie

I hate to cook, but love to bake. I especially hate to cook dinner - if we could have cookies or brownies every night, I'd be good with that...
However, I have become totally addicted to this roasted garlic as well as the mashed potato recipe on Pioneer Woman Cooks blog.
Just thought I'd share :)

Marbelizing Paper

I spent the past two afternoons marbelizing paper. They aren't scanning quite as nice as they look in person, but here are a few of them:

Valentine's Secret Sister stuff ! yeah !!

The wonderful Mija Marie was my secret Valentine's sister in one of my yahoo groups. She gifted me but good !
Here's a picture of the whole thing:

And the closeups:

Anatomical pages (my heart skipped a beat at these!):

The bottle cap bracelet that Mija made:

It's hard to see in this picture, but the paper is actually braille ! really cool stuff...I wonder what it says on it, but I've no blind person to ask.
Stamp carving goodies...now to decide what I'll make.
A box with a box of goodies in each "drawer". I hoped someone would give me items to help keep me organized - this, and that everything came in a plastic bin will help a lot.
let's get a little closer - that is a whole box full of yummy tatting ! and some cool craze and crackle paste which I've never seen before. Mija also sent some chip board shapes and I put some of this paste on there today and am awaiting the results !
Not pictured here is the awesome cd entitled "Controlling Creative Clutter"... that is in my cd rom drive and I read it throughout the day. It's really inspiring me to finish up in my studio and giving me some good ideas how to accomplish that better.

Oh, also not pictured is the candy she sent - I ate that already ; )

Thank you Mija !!

Thrift store finds

I took pictures of the vintage thrift store finds from the other day, but I was going to wait until I could get this cool silver vase cleaned up... well, that is taking me much longer than I thought it would. The DYI channel tip about putting it on aluminum foil with baking soda - not working. Scrubbing with baking soda - working a little. Putting it in my ultrasonic jewelry cleaner works, but I can only dip about an inch of it in there... back to the drawing board on that (tips welcome!)

I love the color green of this planter and it didn't even have one chip in it ! I've planted hyacinth bulbs in it (I got a mix of bulbs so I'm really hoping NONE of the ones I planted in it are red).
This hilarious "bottoms up" cup. The bottom actually moves when you tip it.

Photo Painting and winter seed sowing aka What's Going on at My House

Today I went to the art store in Henrietta and got a big (bigger than I planned, for sure) set of Marshall's photo paints to paint some black and white photos.

Here's my palette:

Here's how the dining room table looks while I'm working on some photos. Yep, that's the b/w rose one I took the other day and the sled one that's on my other blog. I should have been working in my studio, but spreading out on the dining room table was a good change of scenery.
I also got a 5x7 of the sled picture and I was working on that too.
I really, really dislike oil paints. They are way too "smushy". However, I had one of those art experiences with painting these photos where you completely lose track of time and are totally absorbed in it. It was awesome and I plan on making a LOT more of my photos black and white and painting them up. I'll scan the photos when I'm done - right now they are all drying.



What else is going on when it is like 8 here ?! Look at the forecast :(



Well ! we are doing a little winter seed sowing. I've never done this before, but essentially you sow your seeds in containers and put them outside when it's cold. Then, let nature take it's course and see when they sprout. Apparently, the seeds are supposed to be smart enough to know when it's a good time.

There are many, many more trays, but the other picture came out terrible.

We are going to plop these ones outside and the other ones we are going to put in my new (unheated) greenhouse and see what happens without them covered. I feel like a mad scientist (or perhaps biologist, eh?) I got ummm hundreds of packets of seeds from my friend who's job it is to test the germination ... so, it is like a double blind test since you're never sure how well old seeds will germinate anyhow. Very exciting stuff.

Rose study

Today I started taking photos of my bargain roses from Aldi's. I thought it'd be a good time to test out the color settings on my camera. I think the results are interesting and surely they'll find their way into some of my mixed media pieces.

Close up of the vase with the drop of water on the leaf from me filling it:

My lovely thrifted vase (49cents! and it's green):

Camera set to "warm" color:

Camera set to sepia:

Camera set to black and white:

Camera set to "natural" - and this is actually a true color representation. They are the softest pinks and yellows and smell really amazing. That doesn't happen much with roses when you buy them anymore.

Then, I started messing with it a bit - wouldn't this be lovely on a Valentine with some soft white scripty text?

One of the other roses. It looks so lovely that I wish I could just crawl into that center section.

Passing on my award...

I had a really hard time of this... I visit so many blogs that I've literally got 6 separate folders with blog addresses (which I tried to organize and now have a hard time finding what I'm looking for). I tend to visit a lot of different kind of blogs, and what I noticed in trying to narrow it down to 10 is that all of them have a LOT of eye candy and that is usually combined with writing that inspires me or intrigues me to learn something new.

The rule is:“Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.” (I can't copy/paste the image to my blog posts, so I just saved it to my hard drive).
So, without further a do:
These people make my day:

1- Cindy at My Romantic Home - Cindy inspired me to start thrifting again and really inserting more of myself into my house

2- Layers upon Layers - love this blog...lots of artsy information and inspiration!

3- snipHits(or misses) aka Geek Betty - talentented writer, fantastic photographer, and can work a vintage dress better than anyone I've ever known.

4- Tracey at Notes from a Cottage Industry - Tracey inspires me in so many ways, but mostly to lead a more beautiful life

5- whatever - an eclectic mix of home and plain ole funny stuff with fantastic photography

6 - Adventures of the Card Lady - oh my...her cards are to die for. I wish I had an occaision to order some from her. I really admire people who can make just one thing. I'm just not that disciplined.

7 -Sweet Paul - warning ! do not look at this blog if you are even the tiniest bit hungry because you will be drooling at his photos. When I was growing up, it never occured to me that "food stylist" could be a job. I'd only want to photograph deserts !

8 - Susan at Ilka's Attic - more eye candy and inspiration. Susan is really generous with information too.

9- My Canadian friend Debby and her Inner Reflections - more art! (and hey, I own some of it)

10- Ginny at Ginny's Small Studio - more art...I aspire to have a studio as clean as hers...someday!

my first blog award !

wowee ! I got a blog award ! this is a really wonderful surprise for me as my internet has been down for two days... the cable guy came today and it turns out the internet was going through the regular cable lines (I live in the country/small town and I got cable when it was first available...8yrs or so ago? and times have certainly changed). Anyhow, he was awesome and ran a ton of extra cable all over the place and my cable is now running super fast.

I want to think about who to give this to and get a little caught up with my online "stuff" before I pass it on.

Please stop over and visit M & Co who blessed me with this award. I visit her blog every day and it's like a little piece of Norway in my home :)

blog makeover

my blog has a new look !
I liked the other one, but it was starting to feel like too much white space on the sides. I'm really happy with the green (of course, hehe).
I also have a new header. One of the unexpected benefits of taking photos for my 365 blog is that I have a lot more photos to play with. I'm really pleased with the header too ... for those of you who may have been trying to view my blog whilest I was editing, my apologies. The ole html is finally coming back to me and I had to really struggle with getting the header to show the right size and not be slammed against the top.

I spent (way too many hours) perusing dafont.com thanks to an older post of Michelle Ward's.
Michelle kindly helped me find a font I wanted. This was especially great because if anyone asks me which font something is, I probably don't know.... I could also own a cd, hear the song, and not be able to tell you who sings it. I can only quote from one movie - Rock n' Roll Highschool.
oops, got off on a tangent - anyhow, to the talented and generous Michelle:

Today's Art

Bird Girl

close up:

Winged Woman:
finally, finished my nevertheless canvas for my studio- yeah!

Marbling Paper

I thought I'd marble some paper as a reward to myself for all the cleaning out of my studio that I've been doing. I got some pretty mixed results and probably was more frustrated than enjoying it.... witness the results:

The good:

The bad:
and the ugly (even my scanner won't scan the whole thing!):
I need to get some different stuff to treat the water since what I have works great for the first few and then, not so much.

My Valentine's Day mantle

I've gotten caught up in a ton of home decor blogs lately which inspired me to do a little sprucing up to my faux fireplace mantle.

It's pretty difficult to get good pictures because it is really dark here (and that weird snow/rain/freezing rain/ice temperature) with of course, no sun...again *sigh*

this isn't the ribbon I picked out to hang my coffee filter rose wreath ... remember I am cleaning up my studio? you know what that means...now I can't find anything... oh well, this one looks ok.

I got the red feather tree at Target 90% off.



Closeup of cupid on a candle:

the pages Sanna did in my Artistic Journey journal, with a tiny nest:
right side cupid:
the looove nest:

Cool things in my bathroom

Chopper Hoppers in a little cabinet (they're vintage denture holders):

potpourri: