Art and the Fence Will Get Fixed

Yes, that mess of a fence, which looks even worse today than it does in the pictures in the last post, will be fixed! The insurance adjuster agreed with me. That fence is a goner!

Whoo Hoo! I am a happy camper!

It looks worse now cause we had another big wind come through since the fence went down to begin with!

I have a boatload of art to show you all this morning! I've been an arting fool since Thursday! There is an ATART going on over at AFA this weekend and I have made a good selection of art for said athon!

Enjoy!

It is in no particular order!

4 Loteria ATCs

Rose

Spider

Skull

Singer

Collage on corregated cardboard from a toy truck package, red napkin, red satin ribbon, red wrapping paper with a plaid design, capgun ammo spent, white paint pen and a loteria stamp.

There is a Scavenger Hunt going on in conjunction with the ATART and one of the items on the list is a monochromatic theme on a project. The skull is my monochromatic for the scavenger hunt.

Elephant with Black Balloon

Postcard

26 June 2010

Collage on recycled cardstock with magazine pictures, paper towel with dried glue and black sharpie, the balloon is some kind of felt like stuff with clear glitter and a string hanging from the balloon. The elephant is freehand cut from a magazine page. I made this elephant months and months ago intending to put it in my altered book but that never happened so here it is today, used! Finally!

This one is for the Black and White item on the scavenger hunt. 

Payoff 4 x 4

26 June 2010

Collage on a base of two shirt box pcs glued back to back. Magazine images and designs, black netting. Text was typed in Word and printed out. I wrote the haiku about four years ago. I might make more of these hiaku 4 x 4s, I have hundreds of haikus to my name! This 4 x 4 will become a book cover if no one claims it in the ATART. I'll add some danglies to it if someone does claim it. This one is another item to cross off the scavenger hunt list.

Spider

Wire and Bead Critter

26 June 2010

Copperwire, red glass seed beads, gold glass bugle beads, wooden bead. Another to cross off the scavenger hunt. Make three projects using the same iten in each. Copperwire is my item. The spider is about two inches wide.

Gold Wire Tree

Tree of Life Pendant

25 June 2010

The pendant is about two inches diameter.

Sophia (back)

Peanut Person

Sophia is a towering 2 inches tall with a purple hat and dress made of yellow tissue paper and glue. Her arms and legs are silver florist wire, her hair is eyelash yarn, purple embroidery thread serves for the ribbon on her hat with the fabric rose and copperwire framework.

Sophia (front)

Peanut Person

Sophia's neck was nonexistant so she hasn't a face at all really. Either that or her hat is way too big! Anyway... she's all decked out to watch the big basketball game later tonight! Her pearls are plastic and her purse is metal screen from a broken television screen with gold microbeads attached with E6000.

Steve Salty, Center for the Salty City Salt Miners Basketball League

Peanut Person

26 June 2010

Steve started life as a shelled peanut with three nuts. That makes Steve nuttier than most! His uniform is yellow tissue paper adhered to his peanut shell with glue and painted with acrylics. His legs and arms are silver florist wire. I injured him gravely when I tried to do his hair the first time. Major surgery was required on his head before hair could be thought about. He has a layer of yellow tissue paper over his cracked head, painted his color. His blue mohawk (which refuses to stand up straight!) is blue crewel embroidery thread held together with a line of E6000 and glued to his head with the same. His facial features are acrylic paint and his ball is a wooden bead painted with slick fabric paint. And yes, he is #1! Just ask Sophia and Salty Sally! (You'll meet her later.)

The Peanut Persons ticked off another item on the scavenger hunt list: whimsical person any medium.

Here I am in my crown/paper hat/tiara/headgear/whatever you want to call that thing on my head! I'm calling it my crown to go with my new title: Queen of the Layers! Makes me sound like a chicken! LOL No, no! There is no fowl involved! None at all. The head gear is another thing ticked off the Scavenger Hunt! I got ten points for making this silly hat AND posting a picture of myself wearing it! I couldn't get the damn thing to sit straight on my head without taking my bun down and I didn't want to take my bun down so it's a jaunty silly hat! Oh I got my new title of Queen of the Layers cause for Thursday's challenge my layered piece had the most layers. I get a prize pack of some sort to go with that title too.

I have to go to bed. I will finish the commentary on the rest of the pictures when I get up and moving again after some sleep. Nighty night!

Get your hugs!

Peace

831

It's a whole new day!

There is more art to add but it hasn't been added to this post. That will happen in the next post which will probably go up sometime this evening. I whiled the day away in the deskroom, the day and the night. I got up around 4pm or so yesterday. Tis now almost 6am today.

The commentary for yesterday's art:

Beaded Bookmark

26 June 2010

Glass beads and copper wire. My sister Jeanny gave me these beads. They're very nice beads! Lovely to work with! This bookmark overall is around 9 inches. That's a guess, I didn't actually measure them.

As promised:

Salty Sally

Peanut Person

25 June 2010

Sally is with the basketball team's cheering squad. I'm not sure what her and Sophia have in those handbags, nor why they're dressed to the nines for a basketball tournament either. Sally has the heart of a peanut (her whole body actually). I brought a peanut with a blue face and orange hair home with me from next door. My sister's boyfriend had put them there with sharpies. I decided that peanut head needed a body and some clothes and then it just snowballed from there with the peanut persons. Steve was so much fun to make! Sally's hat (which I'm sure everyone thinks is her hair) is a piece of pipe cleaner coiled up and stuck on with E6000. Her dress is a string of sequin trim that has been hanging from a hook above my painting table for at least three years! It worked perfectly! I knew there was a reason to hang on to it. Her arms and legs are silver florist wire. She has gold and copper jump rings for bracelets and tiny fake pearl beads for earrings. Her purse is made from a Coke can and a bit of copper wire. She stands about 3 inches tall.

Sophia and Steve are both sealed quite well with tissue paper, glue and acrylic paint covering the whole of thier peanut bodies. Sally has no protective covering to speak of. She won't last near as long as the other two will. My sister hung Sally from a copperwire hook on the back of Sally's head on the chain above her table where she has lots of other hangy things of the nature that is Salty Sally.

Beaded Bookmark

26 June 2010

glass beads and silver florist wire with a thick silver wire stem.

Tree of Life Pendant

26 June 2010

Two different guages of copperwire, both salvaged from a dead appliance, purple glass beads and three plastic silver beads. This tree is about 2 1/2 inches across.

Tree of Life Pendant

25 June 2010

Milliflorie beads and two different guages of copperwire salvaged from a dead appliance. This one is about 2 1/2 inches wide and 1 3/4 tall. I like this one the least of all them and when I was making it I enjoyed the process because of the colorful beads.

Tree of Life

25 June 2010

Two different guages of copperwire salvaged from a dead appliance and pearl seed beads. This one is about 2 inches across. I can't call this one a pendant cause it doesn't have a bail. It will end up on the cover of a handmade book.

Tree of Life Pendant

25 June 2010

Two different guages of copperwire. This one is about 2 1/2 inches across.

Tree of Life Pendant

25 June 2010

Two guages of copperwire and two different sizes of fake pearls. This one is about 2 inches across. This one is going to be a surprise belated birthday present! Courtney isn't thinking I jipped her on her pressie for her bday, she hasn't given it a second thought that I didn't give her anything nor did I show up at her birthday party on Sunday afternoon right next door. So it will indeed be a SURPRISE when she finds it in the mailbox in the next few days!

Follow Your Dreams

Postcard

The base for postcards is usually recycled greeting cards, I think that's what this one is. The papers that are sewn together were sewn together not last christmas, but the christmas before. I hadn't a clue what the heck to do with them till I seen the Scanvenger Hunt list. Take an Oops! project and make it good. Well, I don't know about having made it good, but it isn't an oops anymore! I dusted the base with irredescent glitter, sealer, then the sewn together papers and a heart I cut from paper that came from the end pages of a book that has been robbed.

Winter Tree

ATC

25 June 2010

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Stuffie

26 June 2010

I never gave this guy a name. He's made from cashmere sweater material, white cotton string for his legs and arms, pink crochet cotton to hold his halves together, two green glass donut beads for his feet, two different colored buttons for his eyes and halloween spider webbing for his innards. He's about a foot tall if you count his legs, but only about 5 inches if you leave his legs out of it.

Tree Lover

ATC

24 June 2010

Collage- The blue things on the corners are from one of my greatest pet peeves: those little cards that fall out of every stinking magazine on the planet! the Smithsonian sent me this one. The rest of the images and the text are from these magazines: a 1968 Gardening magazine, Recycling Today, eWeek and a magazine from my neurologist's office. The monkey is from an ad for a machine that processes scrap iron. I love the Recycling Today magazine! It's a good read and excellent collage fodder within.

Nelson's Poppies

ATC

Not sure when this one was done....23 June?

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Blue Eyed Devil

ATC

23 June 2010

Blind drawing in markers on recycled cardstock.

Executive Chicken

ATC

23 June 2010

And that concludes PART 1 of the ATART ArtFest. Tune in tomorrow for PART 2.

Get your hugs people! Everybody needs hugs!

Give them away!

Peace Good People

831

This Is Not Art---At Least Not To Me

I have only a purple giraffe to offer as art and it is debateable as to whether this is art or not. You decide.

Annie's Purple Giraffe

ATC

16 June 2010

Markers on recycled cardstock.

This is Annie's Giraffe cause Annie seen a purple giraffe and I drew this one from that inspiration. Annie's giraffe is still on the scanner bed...I scanned him days ago! There is no other art to show.

I have started another canvas but haven't taken pictures of the progress. Still haven't decided just what this canvas is all about! It's tones of browns right now....I'm thinking trout, rainbow trout to give it some color but that isn't written in stone anywhere. You all will see this newest canvas when I decide just what the hell I'm doing with it!

I've made three postcards but they are not scanned as of yet.

The last post was titled Rain, Rain Go Away, Come Again Another Day.

Well obviously mother nature cares not of my requests cause she dumped on us big time on Sunday evening.

Another trip next door to get away from the weather. They didn't blow the sirens on Sunday evening but it did blow, hail, rain and thunder. Let's not forget that wicked lightning either.

The pictures of my fence attest to two days running of high wind. I think the fence is a goner. We'll see what the insurance adjuster has to say when he shows up tomorrow to take a look at her.

I'm afraid my pictures aren't the greatest. The light wasn't all that good, it was still sprinkling pretty heavy when I took these pictures on Sunday evening. This is looking at the fence from the highway side. That is my weed bed growing beside the fence. Wildflowers, tumbleweeds, sunflowers, sandburrs, ect, ect. My weed bed! Well it's squished now cause that damned fence fell over on it! This is the middle of the fence. There's a redbud tree on the highway side of the fence and an elm tree on the patio side of the fence. You can see both trees in this picture. They are the ONLY reason this fence isn't scattered in the field across the highway!

This is looking at the fence from the patio side. There are the elm tree and the redbud in front of the pickup bed. That pickup bed wasn't sitting where it is in this picture before the storms came along. It was sitting on the trailer frame a few feet from where it's sitting now. You can see the trailer hitch at the very edge of the right hand side of this picture.

The fence runs from the edge of the white building at the top of this picture about 110 feet east...the length of the patio. Not much of the fence is still standing. There's another picture farther down of the fence.

My brother started putting the fence back together this afternoon. He'd gotten a couple of panels put back up when I told him to stop cause the insurance adjuster would be here tomorrow to take a look at it. If Sammy put it all back together today, the insurance adjuster would say, "That fence looks perfectly fine." My brother is a good carpenter! And he would have had it all put back together again this afternoon as well.

The two metal chairs on the front porch ended up tangled together after the strong winds last night.

This is the east end of my property. It comes to a point at this end and that is what I call this spot. The Point. That tree is dead as a door knob and Sammy and I had discussed cutting it down. Now that the largest branch it had is now laying on the ground we've decided to leave that tree be. The part that fell will be cut up for firewood and used in the garage this winter. So it wasn't all bad that this storm did.

This picture and the next are of plum trees. The one above is half dead now. The wind pushed it over and broke it right at ground level. The leaves are all wilted on the part that is leaning. I don't think we will be getting any plums from this one this year!

This plum tree is north of the other plum tree shown. That's a basketball laying by it...gives you a bit of sense on its size. It's not much taller than I am....less than six feet. Why the wind didn't know this one over I don't know. The wind had to go through this one to get to the other one which did get knocked over.

Only one branch in the yard was down. A terrible picture of it but you get the idea. The branch didn't come out of the tree completely but it is broken and will have to be removed.

Another picture of the fence. This is the end that my brother fixed this afternoon. That panel isn't laying on the ground anymore.

Shingles from the roof of the burnt house. Insurance won't cover the damage to the burnt house I don't believe. I'll ask the adjuster tomorrow but I'm pretty sure he's gonna say no to that one.

Skirting torn off by the wind. Insurance might cover this....

More damage to the skirting on my house.

And even more....

The pear trees fared quite well in the storm. They have the house to protect them though.

And here's Miss Lola, who was outside the whole of last night's storm. She's walking from the pear trees up to the front porch in this picture. She was quite happy to see me when I came home from next door when the storm ended.

As you can tell from the pictures of the skirting, I live in a mobile home and mobile homes are a terrible place to stay in a wind storm! So I don't stay! I go next door to my sister's house where there's a basement!

Thankfully we didn't go to the basement on Sunday night. Weather spotters reported rotation in the clouds but the sirens were never blown in town.  That is our indicator to get to the basement....Storms most always come from the west and if they've blown the siren in town, it's headed for us next.

But we all survived the ordeal once again!

I do love me a good old fashioned thunderstorm but I prefer them in small doses. Three MAJOR storms in two days time are spreading it a little thick!

No storms today though, not even a chance!

Go get your hugs!

I need to do some art!

Peace

831

Rain, Rain Go Away! Come again another day!

It has hailed three times today. At 7 this morning it poured down rain in my neck of the woods and 23 miles to the north they had a hail storm with winds strong enough to knock limbs off the trees. The hail did no favors to the milo field at the edge of Phillipsburg.
My mother called me at 11 this morning to ask if I'd like to return this cat: That cat should be down here! I HATE this stupid picture adding file or whatever the hell it is! Why can't the pictures go where I tell them to?
Sorry. This cat^that cat is Charlie. He came to live with my mother last Saturday. Miss Kitty is his mama. She belongs to my youngest son RW. Charlie didn't work out at Grandma's house cause Charlie refused to use the litter pan. First thing that kitten did when we got him back to RW's house was to use the litter pan. Grandma wasn't impressed. He stayed at RW's house. Grandma had no other issues with Charlie. He's a loveable, playful, happy, purring kitten and cute as he can be! But. Yeah, there's always a but ......he pooped in the wrong place many more times than only once and Grandma just couldn't keep up with him on that issue. RW was quite fine with this. Sometimes kittens don't work out. He's already got another of Charlie's littermates, Ozzie so what's another?  The grandkids were tickled pink to have Charlie back.
After leaving Charlie at RW's house we went to my sister Elaine's house for supper. It was around 5ish when we arrived at Elaine's. The clouds started moving in and the weather radio was abuzz.
Elaine hadn't even started supper when we got there. I went next door to our sister Linda's house to get some shoes she had for me while supper was cooking. Linda gave me three new pairs of shoes! I'm gonna trash the blue crocs with the red paint on them. They are getting mighty thin in the soles!
Elaine made greenbeans, new potatoes and corn on the cob with ham. She also sliced some cucumbers and made a mayonaise sauce to put on the cukes. When we all sat down to supper, Linda's husband, Terry poured mayonaisse sauce all over his beans, potatoes and ham. He's pouring and saying, "Oh, I love gravy!" We gave him shit about it all through the meal! It was hilarious. It was also a very honest mistake! He ate everything on his plate. The mayonaise sauce was good, it wouldn't have tasted bad on the veggies. And it did look like white gravy.
It started to rain while we were eating. The weather radio abuzz the whole while telling us where the storms were headed. Phillipsburg was being pelted with rain for a second time this day. Mom and I headed back home after desert of brownies and vanilla ice cream. I skipped the ice cream. I'm not overly fond of ice cream.
We left Elaine and Monty's house around 7pm. I didn't drag the camera out till we just passed the county line, about 10 miles north of Stockton. This field is full of rain from this morning when it hailed in Phillipsburg. The clouds aren't looking too nice either.

We had ran out of the rain that was falling Phillipsburg when we left there and heading into more rain a few miles down the road.

There it is falling out of the sky! And the sun shining right behind us.

I wanted to show you the wheatfields. Harvest is so very close at hand. One of these storms can ruin a wheatfield in a matter of minutes, depending on just what is falling from the sky! The rain in the distance here is mixed with hail. Mostly pea size, but some quarter, nickle and golf ball sizes were mentioned on the scanner later in the evening. this storm is coming from the southwest headed northeast. It changes directions and moves more easterly or more northerly and then heads northeast again. It wrecked havoc on the highway. There were three poker runs this afternoon. Poker runs involve motorcycles and charities...lots of motocycles. A band of them got caught in this storm pictured as it moved toward the north. Two wrecked, laid their bikes over on their sides, not seriously injured thankfully, but mighty sore from road rash...one gets terrible road rash you scoot down it on your skin! There were a lot of wet people out there! They got caught, not only in rain, but POURING RAIN and HAIL to top it all off....oh and lets not forget the wind. This was around 9ish the motorcycles got into trouble.
It was around that time that my mother came to my house.....this isnt right. RW, Lue and the boys all showed up before the motorcycle business. They were on their way to Stockton from Phillipsburg on 183 and drove through the storm that caught the cyclists off guard. It was after they had headed to Hays after it hailed here. Pea size stuff...LOADS of it! RW ran across the back yard in it to get his van so we could all go over to Susan's house. We didnt' want to stay at my house! I live in a trailerhouse! Not good in a wind storm! We got pelted with hailstones and drenched to the skin going from the front door to the van sitting in the lower drive! Poor Fred had to hoof it to Susan's house. He got in her house before the rest of us did though. That storm subsided and RW and Lue went off to Hays.

 Half hour later Ma comes to my house with her scanner in tow saying the National Weather Bureau has spotted a tornado on the ground 3 miles west of Stockton. The spotters can't see this tornado cause it's wrapped in rain. They blow the sirens and we haul ass to the basement at Susan's. My camera doesn't take good dark pictures but that's the cloud with the tornado in it approaching Stockton. The green light is the yard light between my house and Susan's.
It is an ordeal to get into Susan's basement. I'll not tell you how that's done though cause it's actually a hidden room. If you don't know how to get in the basement, it would take you a long time to figure it out even if you were pretty smart! But it is an ordeal to get down there and poor Evelyn she doesn't move too well, especially on stairs and the basement stairs are kinda steep! Fred won't go down them! He'd rather be blown away by the tornados. While we were getting into the basement, I was looking out the backdoor to see what the clouds were doing. The wind was blowing about 60 miles per hour. The trees bending low! The rain coming down horizontally and various sized hail balls falling as well. I'm looking out the window and I could see headlights pulling into Mom's east driveway. I'm thinking it was Sammy and his brood. It was them but it wasn't only them!
They all come hauling into the house out of the weather and headed for the basement. The weather was WICKED outside. There's a tornado in that rain somewhere! Least that's what radar is telling us! Come to find out these three extra people had crashed their car into Ma's ditch and it was kinda stuck in the ditch and on the highway too? I really didn't catch the conversation of how they came to be there. We all thought they were with Sam and Shannon! We thought they were friends of Cheston's. No, they'd been out chasing the storm! LOL...Been there, done that. They were all fine as far as I could tell. Two boys and a girl....16-17 yrs old. They were pleased as punch to be in out of the weather. No clue who they are except that they live in Plainville and one of them is named Brandon. I'm glad we could give them refuge. They seemed like nice kids and they laughed at my jokes! I just told them they could have fallen in with a worse lot than us. I really am glad we could give them refuge. It really was wicked outside!
This storm that had the tornado in it took its sweet old time passing through! The scanner had no reports of the tornado ever hitting anything so it must of missed town. Susan said she saw funnels on the ground across the highway from the house when she went upstairs out of the basement to put some pants on (she was in her jammies). I think she saw cloud tails, but I wasn't there and it was, like I said, WICKED outside! Very well could have been a tornado on the other side of the highway!
The electricity had gone off before they blew the siren in town. We are a mile and a half east of town and we can hear that siren if the wind is right. Electricity was off from about 9:30 till 11 or little after.
I came home as soon as the rain stopped just after the electricity came back on. There was still some nice lightning happening to the east as the storm moved away from us so I decided to take the camera out behind the burnt house and see if I could capture some lightning on the camera. It's hard to take lightning pictures and get good ones. I got six good ones and 45 black ones. I really don't know how many bad lightning pictures there were. I didn't count those. Here's the good ones though:

And not all of them are all that great!

That concludes the rain tales. We survived even though it did appear as though there could be questions about that! No true damage done that I'm aware of. I've had a rather major fix of major storms for one day, I can tell you that!

Get your hugs! It is days like this one that assure me hugs are essential!

Don't forget the kisses!

Peace

831

hello

Nothing but art today.

Bunch of ATCs and a stuffie.

Enjoy!

African Character

ATC

13 June 2010

Markers and paint pen on recycled cardstock.

This is one of four for the Out of Africa Swap over at AFA.

I just signed up for that swap yesterday....

African Art Fish

ATC

13 June 2010

365 Project Day #173

Markers on recycled cardstock.

African Lady

ATC

13 June 2010

Markers on recycled cardstock.

This is the second of four for the African Swap.

African Zen

ATC

13 June 2010

Markers and paint pen on recycled cardstock.

This is third of four for the African Swap.

Dancer African

ATC

13 June 2010

Markers and paint pen on recycled cardstock.

This is four of four for the African Swap.

Garden Snail

ATC

10 June 2010

Markers on recycled cardstock.

White Cat on Stone Wall

ATC

9 June 2010

365 Project Day #164

Markers on recycled cardstock.

They Watched and Wondered

ATC

10 June 2010

365 Project Day #172

Markers on recycled cardstock.

The Lone Poplar

ATC

9 June 2010

365 Project Day #167

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Gray Bag Cat

ATC

10 June 2010

365 Project Day #169

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Elephant Sitting Atop

ATC

9 June 2010

365 Project Day #168

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Red and Green Rooster

ATC

7 June 2010

365 Project Day #160

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Long Faced Cow

ATC

7 June 2010

365 Project Day #163

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Monday Cactus

ATC

7 June 2010

365 Project Day #162

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Pink Flamingo

ATC

6 June 2010

365 Project Day #171

PIF Hand Drawn AFA

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Strawberry

ATC

7 June 2010

365 Project Day #166

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Alfred

Stuffie

13 June 2010

I didn't measure Alfred but he's about the length of a sheet of regular copy paper with 11.5 inches. He's made from cashmere sweater material, heavy cotton string and pink crochet thread. His eye is made of plastic. I gave it a paint job before applying to his head.

Alfred is the very first stuffie I have ever made.

Sister Bernadine and Moses

ATC

13 June 2010

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Cactus Thursday

ATC

10 June 2010

365 Project Day #170

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Coconut Tree

ATC

7 June 2010

365 Project Day #165

Markers on recycled cardstock.

Get your hugs!

I am in need of some hugs myself!

Have a Marvelous Monday!

Peace

831