A Bathing Cat, A Mermaid, Some Other Things and Soybeans

Hello Readers!

When I downloaded the pictures to this post, I started off with soybeans but this bathing cat showed up first in line instead.

Miss Lola taking a morning bath really has nothing to do with anything except Miss Lola taking her morning bath. I just put this series of bathing cat pictures here because, really.....who doesn't enjoy a cat picture or two. And when was the last time you got to see stills of a bathing cat?

You're welcome!

I woke up with this cat in my bed this morning. That's nothing unusual actually. This cat always sleeps on my bed. Sometimes there may be another cat or two sleeping on the bed also. 

So when I woke up I grabbed the phone off the headboard of the bed and had a photo shoot with Lola before I ever even climbed out of bed! 

It appears all the pictures are catty whompas  from how I downloaded them....

We are just going to run with it...

I've been working on this mermaid art doll for the last few days.

I didn't take pictures along the entire process unfortunately. 

Her armature is poly rope and thick brown yarn. I paper mached her top part with paper towels and watered down white school glue. I then painted her top part with brown acrylic paint.

The scales on her tail are ribbon that has been cut into 1/2 inch squares (give or take. I did not measure. I cut the ribbon in half length-wise and then into small squares.) The ribbon is some kind of plastic. I hot glued all the ribbon pieces directly to the yarn wrapping of the armature.

Her arms are way too short! I'll be fixing those arms later today.

Her boobs are two seashells hot glued on.

I gave her a nose with hot glue that was then painted over. I should have given her a chin as well, but I didn't. Her face is yet to be completed. She'll get a mouth and some pupils for her eyes.

Her hair is green eye lash yarn. I cut some lengths of yarn about a foot long, tied a knot in the center to hold them all together and then glued the knot to the top and back of her head. She has three knots of hair. I really like her hair!

Her tail fin is cut from a cracker box, paper mached with paper towels and white glue, painted blue metallic (acrylic) with hot glue for the spines of her fin, also painted.

She isn't a gorgeous babe of a mermaid, but she's coming along. You all will see her in the next post when I finish with her.

I lengthened her arms a bit (a bit too much on one of them, but it is what it is!). She has a cap on her head to keep the glue off her face and out of her hair! I just added extensions to her stubby arms and paper mached them just as I did the rest of her torso. 

I painted her seashell boobs the same color as her and then added dark brown and pink spots for her nipples. And then I covered her bosom with her hair and glued a few strands in place to hide her goods. 

If I am to ever birth pretty mermaids, I will have to practice on making mermaids.

I bought this antique salt cellar at the yard sales I went to a few weeks back. I got three of these little purple glass salts for a dollar. This one has a giant chip off the rim on the other side (where you can't see it). I felted some wool roving to fit in the salt, glued it to the bottom with some white glue and called it a pincushion.  I haven't decided if I'm going to try to sell this one in my Etsy shop or if I will keep it for myself. I really don't need another pincushion though. I have a tomato for pins in the livingroom and a steel wool bird in the deskroom. Those are the only two rooms of this house where I do any sewing.

I'm still working on little houses.

They keep changing colors.

I doubt they will all end up with blue roofs. I haven't decided if I will paint these houses or if I will collage them or if I'll go out in the yard and find some natural things to pretty them up. Houses are a work in progress. I have 15 of them built at the moment, 4 of them finished. 

I broke down all the food boxes that were laying on the floor in the cutting room. I have enough chipboard boxes to make a whole flipping country of houses! I don't believe all that chipboard will be turned into houses though.

More to come with the houses in a future post.

The red ribbon basket (might end up being a tote, all depends on how the crocheting goes) is coming along a good pace. It really hurts my hands to do this crocheting so I only do a round or two a day.

I'm working on a new book also. This is a piece of white leather that had some faint staining along one edge so I splattered it with paint and made those stains disappear into the background. I still need to cut three more signatures for this one and then I will sew it together. You'll get to see it done in the next post. It will have a closure of some kind on it. Pages are made from plain copy paper.

I repainted the windsock and hung it back on the pole on the porch railing. The wind blew like crazy about five days ago and the windsock left. I found it out in the ditch by the highway. It was none the worse for the wear. It needed a bath but that wasn't a problem. It is painted in acrylics on muslin fabric. The oil pastels I originally painted it in didn't hold up the UV rays from the sun. Those colors faded big time! We shall see how the pigments in the acrylics holds up.

A fish was requested so I made it a special envelope to travel to Virginia in.

Acrylics on plain white envelope.

The fish was drawn on brown packing paper, cut out and painted before being adhered to the envelope.

A terrible picture of the combine cutting the soybeans north of the house.  This was five days ago. 

14 October 2014

16 october 2014

It still looks like this on the 18th. (I wrote most of this post on the 18th.) If I've selected the right picture to put here, you can click on this one and see the combine on the far side of the field out there by the tree line. It took me a few minutes to locate it when I was standing on the front porch taking this picture! 

And it still hasn't been cut completely on the 21st of October. I really don't know what the hold up is on cutting it. Last evening I walked out there to where he stopped cutting. There are beans on those plants. The plants appear to be dry and brittle. And the beans are falling out of the pods onto the ground. I do not know why he hasn't come back to finish the job. Perhaps these beans are useless? Perhaps the price of beans isn't right? Perhaps I have no flipping clue what I'm talking about? I honestly do not know why the beans are still in the field. 

That's about all I've been up to. I have a few projects in the works besides the little houses. I'll be back in a few days time with something more to show, I'm sure!

Thanks for sticking around to the end!

Remember....

be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace 831