Art, Chatter, and A Baby to Close it all out!

Been away for awhile, but I'm still alive and kickin'. Folks been keeping me busy! I'm not complaining!
Looks as though today's post is going to be a long one. We have lots of art, both old and new. We will probably have some story-telling as well cause I've been out on some adventures since the last post. Life has been good!

I did a boatload of art over this past weekend. There was an ATART going on over at AFA (the link's up in the left hand corner). What's an ATART you ask? All-Types-ART-a-thon. Whatever you felt like making was up for trade.
My muse was all over the boards! You'll get to see all that art in this post. There is a lot of it so if you haven't time to take a look then just skip over the art and read what I've had to say. It's all cool!

Guess we'll start with the old stuff first cause that's how they got put here. I pick and choose the pictures as I go and the old stuff was kind of an after-thought.

I think I showed you all this handsome fella awhile back. Pencil on newsprint. I need to clean off that light table and start doing portraits again.

Squirrel Goes To The Beach
This is a crazy collaboration between Susan, Jerry and Myself. It is done on heavy brown grocery paper. The paper itself was from the bottom of a box, used as protective material for whatever was in that box. I've no clue what was in the box. The paper is cut to 6 x 6 inches. We passed it around on the 13th of July this year as we sat at Susan's table with her markers making inchies.
Wild! That was a good afternoon!

St. Francis
I used to make headstones for a living. I was an illustrator and engraver. This is drawn on tracing paper with #2 pencil. The image itself is reversed when it drawn so it can be transfered to rubber stencil which is then cut to reveal the drawing a it will appear on the engraved stone. St. Francis is on a Georgia Gray granite headstone in a cemetary somewhere in Kansas. This is the original drawing. I'm uncertain if I engraved this particular drawing or not.
I enjoyed being an engraver. Illustrating comes natural to me. I had to learn the skill of engraving. I did hundreds of drawings on tracing paper that ended up on someone's headstone...I have very few of the actual drawings in my possession though as they belong to the monument companies I worked for at the time they were drawn. I have even more finished stones in grave yards in five states. Loved that work! Engraving took physical strength and knowledge. Illustrating is not physical work at all! Knowledge doesn't even really come in when know what it is the customer wants. Find a picture for reference and go for it! You all wouldn't believe the number of different tractors, combines, windmills, and other farm equipment I've drawn in this life! It was more like play.
Guess that is why I produce glittery fishes now. Cause it's still just play....
Orange Fish
4 x 4 Chunky Page
Chipboard base, pink paper dusted with silver glitter and then again with red/orange glitter, green cord and novelty yarn, little glass beads. Fish is wall paper painted orange attached to chip board with a googly eye. Danglies are that same green cord with green pony beads tied to the ends. Backside is pink paper with 2 foam fish stickers and my info written in marker.

Blue Fish
4 x 4 Chunky Page
Chipboard base, red paper dusted with fine pink glitter, red netting from a potato bag, green glass beads, red cord, and eyelash yarn. Fish is cardstock dusted with pale bluish silver glitter nd googly eye. Danglies are eyelash yarn.
I still have these two chunky pages. Chunkies were not a hot commodity at the ATART this weekend.

I do believe I've pretty well conquered the inchie goal for 2009. I need to do an actual count and see just how many are in the box and I need to do a recount of those I have scanned. I don't think those numbers jive exactly. We all know I can't count worth a crap!

Penguins on the top row. The last one in line is courtesy of Jerry. I love that one! The rest are mine.

Chicken Mugshots on the second row. I didn't intend to draw mugshots when I did the chickens but when I put them in a row and saw the scan, they certainly looked like mugshots of chickens! So Chicken Mugshots we have!

Wild Things are at the bottom. They are in an envelope beside my desk ready to make a journey to New Jersey, USA.

The other inchies have to stay with me for the time being.

Three Little Blank Books

I told you guys about making these books awhile back. I assembled these books this weekend during the ATART.

Revolutionary Soldier

Stormy

Asian

The soldier is headed to Texas, USA. My trader had an ancestor who fought in the revolutionary war and that is the one she chose to trade an envelope of fibers for. I'm looking forward to the fibers. One can never have too many to choose from.

The Asian book is headed to Washington, USA.

Stormy awaits in my charge.

Fish Inchies! Lots O'Fishes!

I believe 5 x 6 = 30, yes?

I love how they look all together like this! I've many many more than 30 fishes in the grand total for the year. I'm going to have to make something of these fishes and their brethren.

12 of this school are going to New Jersey, USA along with the Wild Things inchies.

I Want A Corndog

4 x 4 Chunky Page

For obvious reasons, I still have this Chunky Page. I have no clue where my muse was headed with this one....The text on the front says: When was the last time Dr. Pettifer came up with one, then sir?"

"With one what?"

"A drama, sir. A what I call a wobbly."

"Oh, way back."

It amazes me how you can manipulate the human form with different parts from different people. The woman who graces the back of this page scares me. LOL I really should have scanned the backside as well. I didn't though. The woman on the front just looks out of place and very unconcerned about that giant hairy spider on her face! I call it "I WANT A CORNDOG" because the woman who scares me has a sign above her head that says just that. It is a very strange Chunky Page (my own admittance!) but I'll probably make more just like it eventually. Remember. This. Is. Play.

Purple Doll Shrine

Matchbox painted purple and covered with purple netting, heart cut from gold paper doily, two glass leaf beads for her arms and copper wire swirly atop the heart. Her head is a wooden bead with hair (thin knobby yarn) attached with copper wire and her facial features drawn with sharpies. Her legs are various brown colored beads wired with copper wire. She's a money girl! Inside the matchbox is covered with gold foil, there's a gold coin, a rolled up fake dollar bill, a tiny $10 bill, and a little chunk of fools gold. I didn't show you what's inside cause the scanner did a terrible job of showing it (as you'll see in a second). She is headed to Washington, USA.

Red Scottie Dog Shrine

Matchbox, outside is gessoed and painted red along with a metal enameled dodad. Inside is all painted red with a heart postage stame, a wooden star painted red and dusted with glitter, gold bead, red fake gem and a little red plastic scottie dog. Copper wire was used to wire the hanger and the dodad ( pearl bead and gold metal heart charm).

Playing Card Inchies

These are the only inchies made this year that were not hand drawn and colored with markers. I do not enjoy collaging inchies. Therefore I don't make a great number of them. Some folks make beautiful collaged inchies and I admire their perserverance because I want to pull my hair out when I try to collage inchies!

More Little Blank Books

Green

Pig

Money

Green pig money. Sounds like a money laundrying scheme.

Anyway....

I didn't tell you all how these are made so here goes. Covers are recycled greeting cards collaged or covered with drawings done on other materials. Inside pages are junk mail that is blank (or light colored) on at least one side of the paper. The books are 3 inches by 4 inches with roughly 25-30 pages. I cut the pages for the books on the guillotine cutter which makes that process go quite quickly. The books are bound with whatever fiber will fit through the eye of my carpet needle.

Green and Pig are staying at my house for awhile longer and Money is going to Washington, USA.

Inchie Envelopes

I traded 3 sets of 10 over the weekend. The envies are 2 x 3 inches (if memory serves me correctly.) Made from pictures from various publications. Magazines, bulletins, junk mail....ect. You get the picture! No pun intended! lol

I accidentally deleted the Green Matchbox Shrine picture. Oops. All you get is a description of it.
Green Matchbox Shrine: little matchbox, outside is painted with white gesso and covered with green mullberry paper, patterened paper, rick rack, a wooden plug painted green with a wire swirl on top of it. Inside is painted green with patterned paper covering the inside back of the box. Contents of box are a tiny metal Brut bottle, a wooden plug painted green, tiny hair brush, cellophane heart painted green and the word 'sweet' atop the heart. White glass beads, wooden bead, gold beads and wooden heart bead are wired for hanger and danglie off the bottom.

A Small Baggie of Words

I guranteed at least 100 words in each baggie. These words were cut from the same kinds of materials as the envelopes are made...magazines, bulletins, junk mail, ect.

I traded 3 baggies of words this past weekend.

Flipflops Altered Postcard

This postcard did have a picture of Webster Lake on it. Now it doesn't. Altered. Get it? This 4 x 6 collaged postcard is traveling naked to Nebraska. Naked being it will not be put in an envelope.

Blue Bull Shrine
little matchbox, outside is collaged with various papers, inside of box is painted with blue ink and wallpaper covers the back of the inside. On the front is a little mirror with embroidery around it, blue and white ribbon, glass leaf beads, fiber, plastic flower with a fake rhinestone. Inside the box is a wooden star painted with blue ink and dusted with glitter and a little blue plastic bull. There's a pre-made silk tassle hanging from the bottom and two glass beads wired for the hanger.

I didn't trade this one. Which was quite fine with me. I like this one the best of them all anyway. I think I'll give this one to my sister for her birthday. She's a Taurus and would love it.

A Sampling of ATC Envelopes

These are made from basically the same kinds of materials as the inchie envelopes only difference is this sample also has envies made from maps and cardstock postcards that come from my internet provider on a regular basis. Anything with nice color, unique graphics or content is fair game for an envelope of any size! I traded 10 of these this weekend. I actually traded the ones pictured. Had I traded more of them...they would have been picked randomly. I have hundreds of these already made and more pages waiting to be cut, folded and/or glued.

There is a never-ending supply of envelope fodder coming into my space daily. I honestly do not have enough time to keep up with it.

This concludes the ART SHOW portion of the post.

Thank you for making it this far.

I believe my last post was made on the 16th. That's been 8 days ago. I've done a lot since then! Sam and I worked in the burned house twice. The kitchen is gone...not sure if that happened before the 16th or after, but it is gone out in the storage trailer house. We've taken two loads of boxes to the burned house from the storage shed and have another load ready to be hauled to the burned house. We are going to totally piss off the trash guys with the amount of junk they are going to be hauling off in the coming weeks. And this week for that matter.

I've been kidnapped three times since the 16th. My brother Sam is the kidnapper! We've gone adventuring in the country twice and to lunch once. We got totally lost up in the hills of open range over in Ellis county. Took us hours to find our way out of those hills. It was a fun adventure though! We got two new rocks for the rock pile and brought home a few pieces of found junk from along the roadsides.

Lunch out was an experience in itself! We had gone north as opposed to having gone south to end up in Ellis county on the day we went to lunch. North took us into Smith County where we found the biggest hole in the earth on Kansas soil as I've ever seen on Kansas soil in my life! A bridge washed out! Been a long while since that happened from the looks of that hole though. We kept finding roads with no outlet. Roads with no outlet that were not posted as such. Four of them! And of course, being the adventurers that my brother and I are, we would have still taken those no outlet road even if they had been posted as such just to see what was at the other end.

We found that giant hole at the end of one of them! We did have to walk a bit on the second road that lead to the big hole, but that's only cause we wanted a different view than the initial finding of the hole gave us. The giant hole was a good find...quite interesting.

We brought home found junk from the sides of the roads on the trip north as well. I'm now the proud owner of a very dirty, corroded "CATTLE CROSSING" sign that Sam found, half buried, under a cedar tree he chose for a bathroom. (He had to take a leak.) I don't suppose he'd appreciate me telling you all that... but it's done and I ain't taking it back. We all gotta take a leak on occasion.

Lunch was indeed an adventure all on it's own! I ordered a hot beef sandwich expecting bread, mashed potatoes, gravy and roast beef all piled on the plate. What I got was a roast beef sandwich with Swiss Cheese on a bun and more potato chips than 12 people could eat. No biggie. I ate the sandwich without complaint. I even ate a good amount of the potato chips which I am not particuarly fond of. I could have been more precise in my ordering. Where I come from a hot beef sandwich isn't exactly a sandwich though. I didn't make that clear enough to the young man who took my order apparently. The mix up of what I was going to get for lunch was nothing compared to the onion slice I asked to accompany my hot beef sandwich though. When I ask for a slice of onion, I expect I'll get a whole slice of onion. On entire slice. That isn't what I found on my sandwich. I opened the bun to slather on some mayo and there sat this lone outer onion ring from a slice of onion. One little ring. Sam and I just laughed about that cause it was totally insane! I think perhaps the cook was off in la-la land when he read that order.

I was hoping to find RW cooking at the BI that night but that wasn't meant to be! We went by RWs house after lunch and he wasn't even home so I didn't get to see him or anyone else at his house that day.

Life is good these days! I had to go see the doctor for some scheduled lab work, a medication review and just cause she insists I come see her on occasion to keep medicare happy. I saw three different vampires in two days time to take my blood. The first one got half a vial out of me after giving me four new holes I didn't have before I saw her. The second one got three vials out of me on the first shot and if anyone had been thinking, me included, I wouldn't have had to get stuck five times on Tuesday. I could have got stuck only once on Wednesday when I took my 24 hour urine sample to the lab where they needed yet another vial of my vital fluid to perform the tests on my 24 hour urine sample. Vampire Beverly is an excellent vampire! She would have only had to stick me once to get all the blood they needed for all those useless tests. (The tests really aren't useless, I just get cranky when they stick me so many times!) I don't have any results yet from any of those tests. They're checking all kinds of stuff associated with one or more of the ailments that plague me. Diabetes, the blood disorder, migraines... I'm falling apart somedays. I don't suspect I'm just gonna keel over dead though. Not any time soon!

Brother Sam came to my house for supper early last week. I made him spaghetti and garlic bread. I just had the end of that spaghetti for supper tonight. The noodles were a lot better the first go round cause freezing cooked noodles does nothing nice for them, but the sauce, the sauce was much better tonight than the first go round cause the sauce only collects more of the flavors together the longer it's around! It was yummy! Mo garlic bread this time round though cause I ate it all within days of making the spaghetti the first time.

I went to Susan's for supper last night. She made chili and her, Jerry and I made inchies and twinchies after supper. I haven't scanned the twinchies I made last night. Nor have I scanned all the inchies I've made since the last post. Not sure how many inchies are in that little bowl to be scanned....round 40 or so. A few of them still need color on them. When I went to see the doc on Tuesday I knew I was going to have to wait for awhile cause I didn't have an appointment...they knew I was coming though. I drew inchies while I waited my turn. I never did count just how many...all those fishes earlier in this post were drawn at the drs office and colored a day or two later. I think I drew around 75 inchies at the doctors office while I waited. That sounds like a lot of time...to have drawn that much...but I only waited about an hour or so. I can crank out inchies like there's no tomorrow! I only drew lines, no coloring involved at the drs office. And fishes are not hard to draw at all! Nor are chickens or birds! Or apples and oranges.

I'll let you all know what tests were done and whether I have any issues to worry about where my health is concerned. I don't feel any different than I usually do. I hurt. I sleep too damned much but all in all the attitude is good and the attitude dictates what the rest of me is gonna do. So, yeah, life is good!

I started this post around 5:30 pm. It is now about 8:15pm. I've talked to my mother since I started this post. She was sitting in my livingroom with me for about half an hour. She came to see if I had some coathangers she could have. I fixed her up. We talked and watched Lola Kid play with Fred's tail and Billy bully Lola just cause he don't like her. He didn't hurt her, didn't even lay a paw on her, just gave her a hard time! Ma went home and Billy went out with her just like he came in with her. I'll have to send Fred after him later so the silly cat won't stay the night outside. It's cold outside!

Little Miss Annabel

She was born 13 August 2009

I'll let you all do the math as to what her age is. :) Break it down into months, weeks and days for me if you're so inclined, please!

She's a'growin' like a weed in a rosebed!

Darn those kids for moving so far away :( ....I'll be seeing Miss Annabel and her people first week in December. I cannot wait!! :) :) :)

I'm forgetting to tell you all a lot of what I've been up to but this post is way long enough as it is! You all go get your hugs and kisses too if you can get away with it! Until next we meet: Be good to one another!

Peace

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