April's Only Post

I say April's Only Post cause it's probably the truth! I've been very lax in keeping up with the blog since February! Not much art has happened in April and that is one of the reasons for no posts. I've also taken two trips this month which cut into art time. First trip was to Abilene with Sammy and his girlfriend.

Sammy, his girlfriend Carrie and Kathy

Chris, Jenny and her boyfriend, Ronnie

For some reason Mike didn't get into either of those pictures.

Then the next weekend I went to Nickerson to see #1 son and his family.

Lil A is just too cute!!!

It was a fun two days! The kids went to Salina to a George Jones Concert for their anniversay (number 1) and RJ's birthday. RJs birthday has not yet arrived and come to think of it....neither has their anniversary. Tomorrow is their anniversary and RJs birthday is the 28th. He'll be 28 this year! (I'm getting old! I turned 22 four days after he was born.) They had a great time and I got to see my grand babies! I sat around watching TV, cooked the kids supper on Friday night, played on the laptop into the wee hours while Rick watched TV. Stormed on Saturday. I had every intention of coming home on Saturday. Fred was without a sitter. The wind was blowing so hard by the time the kids got home on Saturday that I just stayed the night and went home mid Sunday morning. Someone took care of Fred for me. Susan, I think. He fared alright at any rate. By then the wind had calmed down considerably. There was storm damage in Hutchinson on Saturday night. Awnings down at a couple of gas stations, a street light down, wind blew all kinds of stuff hither and there. Lowe's parking lot got a bit of wind. There were wooden play houses blown over in their parking lot on Sunday. I had a brain fart while we were driving out of the lot. I said to RJ, :"Wow! Look at that! I'll bet the wind did that!" He looked at me, just shook his head and said, "No, I think little goblins were out here last night!" I realized what I'd said as soon as I said it. Left it wide open for the boy and he didn't miss a beat! lol He's a clever one, that RJ!

Terah, Brenton, Annabel and RJ

Lil A wouldn't sit still for the photo shoot. I took six different pictures and this one is the best of the lot! RJs shirt is all wet cause he was doing the dishes.

Junking has been going on for the last week, quite heavily on my schedule I might add. Sammy junks every day of the week most weeks! I helped him three days this passed week. City wide clean up is done with for this year over in Phillipsburg. We got 5 and 1/2 pickup loads of junk on Monday. I brought home a van load on Tuesday and we went back again on Thursday for another pickup load. Sammy went on Wednesday and got a couple loads. The garage and the patio are FULL of work for Sammy. My van was full of junk when I came home from Nickerson too. I have no pictures of junk.
Our pile out at the point is huge. The baling machine is in chains at the junk yard. In chains cause it can't go anywhere till Bob gets that giant pile in the yard baled! The machine was broken week before last and the pile in the yard grew by leaps and bounds. Might be a month before he can get out here to bale. That's OK though. He doesn't have to come bale out here. He does that cause he wants to and he can. Patience is my middle name! That junk ain't going anywhere and there's still room to pile more. We also have a pile over in Pburg that we are hoping he can get to ASAP, but again, patience....he can only do so much at a time and the yard gets done first! If it ain't in the junk yard, it ain't getting baled right now! I can live with that!

I got a tooth pulled on Tuesday of this week and one pulled the end of March as well. Teeth extractions are hard on this old body of mine. The teeth come out and the fibro goes into full swing! I am using the cane now on a daily basis. Mostly when I'm away from the house. It's the long walks that do that right leg in!

More art has happened in the last 36 hours than has happened the whole month of April! There's an athon going on over at AFA. The link's up there in the corner if you care to see some wonderful art!

I'm in the process of altering Gary's cane. I forgot to take a picture of it before I put paint on it....not sure JUST how I am going to take a GOOD picture of it when time comes to take its picture. Gary used the cane when he broke his ankle back in '84 or '85. It was just a plain wooden brown cane. Nothing fancy, but quite servicable. It survived the house fire in '05. The varnish was blistered and blackened from the heat of the tubroom. The tubroom didn't actually burn, but it got hotter than hell in that closed room! Not much in that room was saved. I'm uncertain if Fred is the puppy who chewed the end of that cane, but the end was dog-chewed. Unfortuately the dog-chewed part is at the end of the crook in the top, not the working end. I couldn't get all those teeth marks sanded smooth when I sanded the cane down a few years ago with the intention of doing something creative to it. Yesterday the blossoms of that creativity opened wide. I'm hoping for a finished cane by Sunday. We shall see!

I discovered a new thing yesterday that I'm so glad I tried out!!  Little canvases! One of the girls in the yapping thread posted a link to the tutorial for making them. You'll find it here:

http://almastoller.blogspot.com/

Here are the two I have finished and have already offered for trade over at AFA. If they don't trade, I am going to take them to the Art Center to put in the gift shop. These things are right up their alley! I didn't have any soap boxes....mine started out life as a cigarette box. I covered them with text pages from a book I culled from the shelves some months ago, painted them with acrylics and added some doodads. There's a string glued to the backside with E6000 to hang it.

Fish Box

This one has novelty yarn, spackling compound, silver micro beads, and a bit of blue paint on the spackling compound. The fish is drawn on watercolor paper, colored with markers, cut out and attached to the box with two layers of foam tape so it sits up above the other stuff. The glue wasn't quite dry on this one when I took its picture but the white glue that is showing will dry clear and the silver layer will still be white beneath it. Not so on the yarn though.

She Ain't No Lady Box

The box was covered with those same text pages as the fish and painted with that same copper color as the fish. I didn't like the copper color with the Lady's hair color so I painted it blue over the copper. The Lady is drawn and colored on watercolor paper. Her hair is done on orchard paper. She is simply glued to the box. I have yet to put a coat of sealer on her. She needs a coat cause her hair is not glued down securely. I was afraid the glue would wrinkle the orchard paper. I'm not sure the sealant won't, but it's worth a shot.

Both of these are 4 x 2.25 inches x 3/4 inch thick. They are very lightweight beings they are essentially empty paperboard boxes.

There's a tree of life pendant I did a couple weeks ago.

Salvaged copper wire and Tiger Eye beads.

The tiger eye beads came in a trade. I forget what I traded for these beads. There were two other strings of beads in that trade so it must of been something big. A book perhaps? I really don't remember. I've had the tiger eye beads for better than two years now though.

When I was in Nickerson RJ and I went to Lowe's and Home Depot in search of formica and linoleum samples. All those house shaped magnetic clips will finally be arted up. Well, not ALL of them, egads! There are probably 1200 of those suckers still buried out in the burnt house! RJ gave me the idea to make them look like stone houses by cutting the samples into 'bricks' and gluing them on.
While in Home Depot, where we went first, I ended up buying two nice steel clamps for a total of $2.14. RJ was of a mind that we should probably buy something instead of just walking out with a fistfull of samples. I needed a couple of good, sturdy clamps. He got over that needing to buy something by the time we got to Lowe's though. We walked out of there with nothing but more samples.
 Home Depot is the place to find formica samples. Lowe's will give you some linoleum. You can get both at both stores though.
I did three of the clips during the night. All with the same linoleum sample.... I cut the sample into stips with the guillotine paper cutter and then into 'bricks' with the scissors I use for heavy work. One is glued with E6000, the other two with Gorilla Glue. I thought perhaps beings the Gorilla Glue expands as it dries, it would resemble the grout between the 'bricks'. I was wrong! It just looks stupid! But the E6000 did just what it should have. It always behaves though so this doesn't surprise me! I will fill in the gaps between the 'bricks' with spackling compound and it will indeed look like grout/mortar. The little houses are coming along nicely but they are not ready to be shown yet.

I've been trying to finish a robot card I started three days ago. I traded my B Robot card and it went missing on its way to California. Lord knows what post office it is languishing in between here and there! I have to make a new robot card to replace it though. I got a cute little elephant ATC in trade for that missing robot. This one I've been working on just isn't cooperating! Looks nothing like the other robot! Problem is, I don't have a picture of that old card. I deleted it from flickr when I traded it! Dang! Not on the hard drive of this PC. So ....... must get the robot done in the next few days though. It has got to go out when I mail the ATART trades. The markers just are not talking to me at the moment. :(

I've had tiny books ready to be sewn sitting on the desk for weeks! I sewed three of them together yesterday. There is still one purple one to sew together and four little black ones to sew.

Mini Purple Watercolor Journal

The purple books are made out of a box that something or another came in. They are lavendar colored on the inside of the covers.  I put white paper and purple nylon netting over the outside of the covers. They have 9 sheets of watercolor paper in three signatures. The purple button for a closure used to be yellow till I took a purple marker to it. I couldn't find a purple button in my stash at all! It is sewn with purple embroidery thread and has a genuine amythyst bead on its tail. The book is 1.5x2.5 inches.

This one is made from a game board for its cover. The insides of the covers are blue. The game board was a map of sorts and the ocean is showing. It has five signatures of manilla drawing paper. Sewn with pink crochet cotton. The button is yellow. It is 2x1.5 inches.

This is the same as the other little purple book above. It doesn't have a purple button. I left the button yellow and glued an amythyst cabachon to the button. The cross is balsa wood colored with marker. It has no bead on its tail. I traded this one in the ATART for a Pig Chunky page.

A Chunky Page and an ATC got made since Midnight on Friday.

Money Tree

Chunky Page

This one was made on Friday. The theme for Friday during the ATART was Earth Day/Recyle. Can't really say all of the paper is recyled but the drink coaster, the wallpaper trunk, play money from a game, green paper tape and the shredded money are recycled, as is the piece from the bag Fred's dog food came in that is on the backside of this one! I kinda like it with the maple leaves on the ground below the tree, but there are way too many in the tree! My markers were talking to me when I was making this one! None of those leaves were green when I chose the paper they were to be cut from.

King Winged Cat

ATC

I was on a green kick and in a hurry to get this one scanned. Those white blobs on his cheeks are not quite dry glue. It will dry clear though. King Winged Cat is made from recycled things too. The base is from a food box that I had painted green with acrylics many months ago. There is 2 different foil papers, paper wings I got with an ATC trade, paint sample (heart), construction paper, googly eyes, wire from a little wire pine tree, cat is faux leather from a purse, couple of Canadian stamps, a paper crown that used to be purple, some netting that was white, and a corner cut from a plastic notebook cover.

When I was on my way home from Nickerson I stopped in Lucas. I dropped in unannounced at the Art Center. Peg was the only one there and she had to give a tour so I went along on the tour. That was fun! We went to the Deeble House where the ReBarb collection is housed. Mri Pilar has a very wild imagination and she can do some pretty wild and amazing things with Barbie and baby dolls! You can find her art here:

http://www.rebarb.blogspot.com/

Check it out! You won't be disappointed! She inspires me! I understand her need to use all those things she uses in her art! The Deeble House has about 3000 things in it, according to Peg. It is chalk full of Dolls and other things, mostly dolls though. I would LOVE to play in her studio!!!!
The Deeble House is so called because Mrs. Deeble left a yard environment at the house and the Art Center acquired the property. Mrs. Deeble was a history teacher who built shrines to important people. People who were important to HER, not all of the people represented were famous. She left tributes to students, community leaders, common folk and those more famous. I didn't take the outside tour of Mrs. Deeble's work. I wish I had but I was riding with Peg, hobbling on my cane that day so I missed out. I will make a point to take that tour again and go see Mrs. Deeble's work! She used a lot of natural stone, concrete and odd things, like a bunch of brass rulers, in her work.
After the tour Peg closed up the Art Center and commenced to oohing and ahhing over the little books I had brought along. She chose three of the Bottle Cap Kids and 10 or 12 little books to put in the gift shop. It was a productive stop. I'm so glad she could see me on no notice at all! I just dropped in! This little book stayed after I left.

This little book was made in the last few days of March. The colors are all markers. The front cover is a piece of gourd that arrived at my house almost four years ago. I forget what I traded for that box of gourd pieces, if anything, but this is the first thing that has been made from anything in that box. I was pleased with the way the gourd took the markers. The colors are very vibrant! It's lightweight, which is a bonus as well. The back cover is cut square and is made from a game board. The front and back covers only line up at the spine edge. It has linen resume paper for its many pages. Peg assures me it will sell quickly! I hope they all do! I still have half a suitcase full of little books!

I have to remember to take the ATCs the next time I find myself headed Lucas way! Peg mentioned that there was another person doing them. I'm assuming this person is in the Lucas vicinity. Peg didn't give me much information about it.

On Sunday, after I got home from Nickerson #2 son and his wife came along and got me drunk on Sailor Jerry rum. They took me out for a drive and we laughed and giggled and had a great time! There were without children and took advantage of the time alone together. I was glad to be included in the group! RW and Lou are a lot of fun! We ended up at the State Lake. Only Lou and I were drinking so RW was a safe driver! That boy drives like a little old lady anyway...one is most often safe when  RW is behind the wheel.

See, we had a great time!

Lou is much prettier than RW! You can see him in the mirror with his red bandana covering up his beautiful brown hair. Yes, Lou does have pink hair! :) My wild children, these two!

So even though I've not posted, I'm still alive and kicking and living!

Be good to one another! It matters!

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