Pieces of me

friday night.......pizza night

Love Fridays! It's been a long-standing (well, 8 years) tradition in our family to forgo any 'slaving over the hot stove' on Fridays, and John goes back to his primal hunter nature and provides the food for the family......ergo.....swings past the pizza joint on the way home and brings back 2 pizzas......his choice....as long as one is hawaiian. Bring on the chest beating. Love it.

I was totally wiped out after working on Friday/Saturday/Sunday last weekend - managed to drag myself to boxing class on Monday morning, but couldn't face Body Bar (weights, cardio, etc) on Tuesday, so I sat around, read a book, took a nap, watched my new 20th Anniversary Dirty Dancing DVD........and, you know, no one puts baby in the corner.......... still. Love, love that movie. I've bred another generation of Dirty Dancing-ites.......the girls love it too. The DVD came with a iron on transfer which Alana latched onto right away. The male cashier at the grocery store (where I bought the DVD) informed me, very knowledgeably that, there's nothing a bit of Patrick Swayze can't fix.......I don't know if we were both thinking about the same bit (or, maybe we were...).....but.......errr....I guess not. LOL. we then debated the relative merits of Flash Dance (him) compared to Dirty Dancing (me). Love my local safeway :)

On the scrapping front - Erin and I are working on a project an all about "Erin - 10 years 3 months" book. She absolutely loved taking her time capsule book (done a few years back for a Murdoch publication) to school, and apparently it was a big hit, so we're going to do something similar in a different format - this time I'll get her input to help with the process - should be fun! I've done the cover - it's going to be a bit of a free-form book with random size pages, etc. I just need to get some current photos on the weekend then it'll be full steam ahead. With any luck it'll be done next week.

Work tomorrow afternoon/night, then the rest of the weekend free!! Have a great one!

hx

playtime......

so.........my muse didn't turn up..........I've been waiting for the applications to roll in - 'cos, even though I haven't got any yet, you all know they're coming. Like who wouldn't want to be my muse? Right? Right? Older women are in, aren't they? And, you know, I have all these plans........wicked, wicked things I can do with paints and mediums................ Obviously there's just been some kind of problem with the email..........or maybe they haven't had time to oil their muscles and take a photo.............ANYWAY.......I figured, since I don't have any great works of art in the pipeworks, I would just have a play around with my art journal.

Water lily page - the steps I took to make this are below - hoping you can read the info, as I put the journalling in in photoshop - if not click on it and a larger image will show up in which you should be able to see all :))

The instructions don't show the final pic, but mention the highlighting & shadowing which you can see on this picture on the petals. Love the way the pearl white lumiere shows up on this.

I actually sanded back some of the lines and shading after I took this picture to soften them down a bit more :)

Supplies used:

JoSonja: texture paste & paints. Inque Boutique border stamp. Stamp It Swirl Whirl Stamp (black). Lots of basic grey papers & some paper from my beloved music sheet book. Think that's it.

Well, I had fun with it! Nothing like a bit of meaningless playing around. As mentioned above, I did soften down the lines, and additional shading a bit more after taking the finished photo at the top. A new page for the journal :)

hx

WANTED, ONE MUSE.........

Well y'all know I'm looking for my muse..........and, after an email discussion with the lovely Trina, I decided I would be proactive and wait for her to turn up no longer - in fact, I decided that my muse should be a him. He should also be around 25, buffed and, well, totally hot. THIS indeed would inspire me.

Taking applications now. Send photos.

hx

well, don't you hate that?

Photoshop has been messing me around over the past few days, shutting down on me - always right when I've spend a stack of time editing something. Grrrrrr.

To top off my night, on the way home one of the tyres blew out on the car. Of course, I was stuck on a country road, pitch black, so I tried to drive on a bit further. When the ABS failed, and the noise was freaking me out, I ended up having to call home for my knight in shining armour to come rescue me (aka John), but, he was out rescuing someone else (there was a car crash and the CFA was called out to assist). So, I was on a dark road, no torch, freezing cold with just John's jacket to throw over me while I waited it out. John arrived on the scene 2 hours later in his shining white steed (aka the Landcruiser), and went through the motions of getting me back on the road. Better late than never.

Today it was actually sunny (well, some of the time), so we decided to head to Healesville, get icecreams and I could take some pictures in the park.

Love this one of Erin - don't you wish you could just throw a whole heap of leaves up in the air, let them drop on your head and your day would be made?

And the ibis: I had to sit in the grass and wait for ages till it was ready to fluff up its feathers and give me the show I was after.

When I was watching these birds for a while, I noticed the really scruffy ones with the rough feathers were the ones that were flapping their wings, etc. I'm wondering - are they malting? Is that why they look so untidy, and are they moving more often to help the process along? Anyway - love these pics - particularly the third one where he's up on his tiptoes.

hx

where has the inspiration gone?

I was looking around for an a5 folder to put in recipes (the salads, etc, that I need to remember from my first day of work at the restaurant yesterday) - I thought I had a spare one somewhere, but ended up having to pull out one of my old inspiration folders and get rid of the stuff inside, and, boy, was it filled with ideas - it made me a little sad remembering how ideas used to bombard me 24/7 and how I practically could not sketch them down fast enough - so where did that inspiration go? Sure, I still have new ideas, and get excited about making them a reality, but often the need to create them fizzles before I have time to put it into action. I've spent practically my whole life being excited about making "something" - I don't want to just go through the motions - I want the passion!!! Bring it back!

Autumn has come to Hoddles Creek - normally one of my favorite seasons because of the beautiful days and crisp nights, so far this year it has been kinda blah, it's been cold and overcast most days. When we did have some nice weather, the CFA did a series of burning off that just gave us a cover of smog. Dang CFA trying to help prevent summer fires and save lives, who do they think they are?

CAN SOMEONE TELL ME THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION???

Can images be centred in a typepad blog? or is the only way to do it to save your image with a whole heap of white space around it so it fills the column? I WANT MY IMAGES CENTRED and it's driving me crazy! Do I have to go open a Blogger blog to be able to have more control? I really hate the idea of having to learn html coding - I don't even know what html stands for, but it sounds too scary to contemplate. I have enough trouble cutting and pasting the codes that are spoon fed to me.

o.k., now, to keep true to the anal side of my nature, I have to go type up my recipes........ I need to resist the urge to pretty up my recipe reference with patterned paper and embellishments - can you imagine the laughter if I rocked into the kitchen tonight with a scrapbooked recipe reference? I think I'll probably get enough ribbing over the fact that I've written down the details of all the salad ingredients, method and presentation and typed them up AND put them into sleeve protectors in a little folder. Yep, anal. You heard it hear first.

Have a great weekend!

hx

pffft....

o.k., so they're back. seems all I had to do was do another post............

Been playing around with gel transfers......and mesh......and fabric.

Really love how this came out, though the background is actually cream - not blue-ish how it appears here.

Also created a journal page using the same technique/s.

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Here's a video showing how I put together the layout:

I think I've finally figured out why the music track jumps (to do with editing the text after inserting the track), so should be able to sort it for the next one as it really bugs me!!!

Closeups of the projects:

The flower layers. I finished the metal flower off by brushing with some white paint, though I didn't have that in the video.

A bit of everything here - painted background, transfers & flower :)

The Art Journal page closeups:

it was hard writing over the fabric collage'd sections of the background. The title was outlined with a fineline marker, then filled in with a white gel pen.

Closeup of the flower - I used a texture paste flower for the top one, then a couple of pink premade flowers, then a couple of torn bits of cheesecloth. The tag was reused from another project that I did a while back - really loved how it looks, but didn't want to recreate it. LOL. Lazy, I know!

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Now, some images of the quote project that I showed in the flower techniques video. Really love, love this project as it means I can easily access my quotes, plus have the opportunity to do small-scale technique/projects when I find a new quote that I want to add.

I haven't finished adding in all my favorite quotes, yet, but I'm getting to it.

When I build up a selection that seems to go with a theme (i.e. joy, family, sisters, happiness, etc), I create a title page for them. Here's one of these....

another recycled element has made its way onto the flowers title page - this tag & flower was originally on a card, then the disaster prone flower book which had to be eventually chucked. Though, the tag was saved. Good, because I love it! Hopefully it has found its permanent home :o

John has had me working today.....carting wood down from the old dead tree up on the hill - he had to get up there in his chaps (mmmmmm.....chaps), helmet & chainsaw and cut them down. It's pretty scary up there at around 2 stories high weilding a chainsaw waiting for these huge branches to drop. Anyway, it is done. My blog is sorted. I'm having a bath. I need to contemplate my future (though, I'll probably just read a book!). I was offered a part-time job in a restaurant yesterday, just 2 days a week, so I think I'm going to take it, assuming by the time I get back to the guy, it's still on offer, try it out - see if I like it. I've been wanting a change and this might be just the thing.

Have a great weekend, y'all!

hx

who ever said change is a good thing?

So, I tried to reformat that blog and totally stuffed up the video feeds. I'm trying to figure out what went wrong & to see if I can reinstate them - but as nothing seems to working I'm giving it a break till tomorrow.

Maybe it's just my computer, but can you still see the videos?????

hx

and one more......

This is the video I was editing when I discovered the footage, a couple of quick flower techniques that I used on my quote project. I've wanted a system to store my quotes for some time and decided to use on of those 7g trading card thingies - love how it looks & that I can keep it easily accessible on my desk. I can add new ones when I want & a good format for practicing techniques - I'll take a photo of the project when I think of it :).

I don't know what I did to the music in this video, but it's not as smooth as usual - also runs over the end of the clip, so you need to just stop it after the credits otherwise you'll be looking at a black screen for 2 minutes. I wondered why the file size wasn't reducing when I was clipping!!

hx

collage background

I forgot I had filmed this when I was making the Art Journal Page  from the previous post, it's a video of the background process.

p>And, yeah, I know the patterned paper doesn't show up in the finished result, but it gives a bit of texture. I really didn't know what I was going to end up with when I started, I think the idea of the text "walls" came to me about 1/2 way through.

hx

faces.......

I've had a real thing for drawing faces lately, just sketching and painting in my art journal. They're something that I've not really ever drawn well, and I want to be able to do it, so I've been playing with them over the last week or so, trying to improve.

I've been working from photos (bottom right, and eyes), as well as some artwork (the pixie and top face are my interpretation of some of the fairies from The Faeryland Companion - love the little guy :) - the one in the book looked evil, but I couldn't do it to him!) The face in the middle is just an amalgamation of features. I think I'm getting the  better - but still needing way more practice.

An art journal page that I finished before SIA:

The hand (which I love drawing) is out of proportion to the head, and kinda creepy, but I like it like that! The background is pretty layered with paint, collage, more paint and collage and glaze with the image drawn and painted on top using acrylics, crayons, pencils - basically whatever worked.

Finally found a use for the printers tray I picked up a few years ago:

My original plan was to hang this on the wall to display stamps, but I was never happy with the way they sat in it - too precarious. This now sits on the back wall of my desk - the perfect place to be able to see some of the inks, paints, etc that I like playing with :)

We have 2 new calves - so, so adorable - here's a pic of the first one, born about 3 weeks ago, the other one was born last week. Love seeing them run around together.

hx