Kittens passing thru

These first 2 pics are three feral kittens who spent a hectic couple weeks in my guest room while I tried to tame them enuf for adoption. Not super successful at it, they were tough little street kitties and weren't much interested in pets and cuddles.
My feral cat rescue pal Donna swapped them out for 2 who were a bit friendlier and just need to make weight [2lbs] so they could get spayed and start going to mobile adoption.
Steve is holding one, and the other pic is the two of them wrestling in the pink cat house. Not easy to get an in-focus shot of playing kitties.
[If you have a playful cat you need one of these from The Walmarts. It's very lightweight, see thru, bounces all over, and every kitten who's come thru here has loved it.]
Those two left on Sunday and I spent an hour or two vacuuming up kitty litter from every corner and rearranging the room. Need to decorate again so it's ready for company. Donna is moving back to Berkeley so I won't be fostering kitties any more. Too far a drive. But that's ok. It was great fun and I'll still be involved in feral cat welfare. And I have Loki, a cat who deserves his own post.

autumn arrived yesterday

It finally felt like serious autumn yesterday. I woke up at 430 to a power outage which came back on around 6am. It was raining when I went downstairs, pulling my old flannel shirt close around me in the chilly house.
I opened the slider and stood in the door way listening to the rain patterning thru the leaves and smelling the wonderful freshness of it.
The rain kept up most of the day, much to the disgust of the dog who hates to get wet when she piddles. Much dithering under the patio, then a dash to what she perceives is a drier part of the soggy back yard, a quick squat, and zoom back into the house, to her pillow on the couch.
The rain didn't deter the patio birds much. I put seed out when I saw them in the trees and damp doves and bedraggled sparrows came swooping in for breakfast. Oddly, the feisty jays were dry. Wonder what their trick is.
I love rainy days and spent most of yesterday at home, bundled up a bit so I could have the slider open. It never got above 60 degrees and I often found myself just standing at the door, feeling like I was back in Michigan on a typical autumn day. It was wonderful.

early September postcards

I'm finally back in the making art mood. Don't where it went all those months. Actually, I do know. I was reading my way thru all 5 available Game of Thrones books. What a great saga. Looking forward to the last two books, along with 47 million other people. Haven't watched the HBO series for the simple reason that we don't get HBO. So far the world hasn't ceased to turn, but at some point we'll need to sign up for a 3 month special or something cause I would like to see it.

Anyway, been knocking out postcards. Techniques and subjects have no discernible relation to one another, just whatever catches my eye. Seems I make art like I live my life, no real plan. Prolly not the best way, but a bit late to change it all now. This is the batch with a vintage feel.

These are all available if you'd like to trade. Just email me.

The bit of text cracked me up. Tried to find a photo it fit
but ended up liking it as the only element.

Misc gelli prints background with a bit of vintage photo.

Security envelopes, a few other papers and a photo of two kids.

Bird images from an old book, colored a bit,
old book text, Stabilo All pencil marks.

ATCs

Got on a run of ATC making recently. Not sure why, but it's an art form I've always liked and once I made one, they just kept coming. If anybody wants to trade for one, speak up. All but the postage stamp one are available.

Dug thru the orange and turquoise paper scrap files and then added a stamp.

Had this weird little face already cut out and then found
 the silly text that seemed to fit his expression.

Gelli print circles left over from the day Rhonda was here.

Sometimes I look at these later and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Love this one. Tore the center out of an old photo

Bird postcards

Finally got a bit inspired by a swap on Mail Me Some Art - bird postcards. Had some unattractive gelli printed cards so drew birds on them and colored with oil pastels. Much better. I like the way the paint specs from my filthy gelli plate show thru.

some art and a crappy camera

Trying a post from my Samsung Galaxy Tab somethingorother tablet but the camera quality is awful. I didn't buy it for the camera but it's still annoying as hell. I've had good luck with the multitude of Samsung products I've owned but I don't recommend one if you want good quality photos. That said, this tablet is a few years old. Maybe they're better now.
Anyway, I made some art recently - a couple postcards and 2 ATCs. Only showing one of the postcards now until the recipient gets. Will post it later.
The postcard has a painty paper towel background and some ephemera from the 1948 May issue of Popular Mechanics, one of a handful of old magazines found in my father - in law's stuff when he died. My well-trained husband brought them home for me.
The ATC backgrounds are used teabags with ephemera from the same mag. The circles were punched from gelli printed deli papers. Nice to be doing some art. I've been in non-arty mode for a while now. Got hooked on watching the West Wing on Netflix. What a marvelous show. Smart snappy writing that you have to pay attention to, unlike 90% of today's moronic tv. I sure hope that turns around in my lifetime, but until then thank god for Netflix.

Bruges

I'm a bad blogger. Sorry to u folks who signed up to follow me, then got nothing but dead air. I instagram all the time and cross load to twitter and fb, so u can go follow me there for a lot more content. Not sure why the blog doesn't grab me any more.
But anyway, here's a grim version of a bridge in Bruges, sketched from a pic in a book. I really need to practice cause my perspective is dreadful.

Cutest kitten yet

The lone surviving kitten from the latest (and last!) back lot batch was discovered the other day. Maybe the prettiest kitten I've ever seen, his markings are just great. Four white paws, zebra leg stripes, white nose and chest, brown ears, creamy tan everywhere else.
He's about 4 weeks so needs to be bottle fed a bit longer. I kept him over nite, then passed him along to Donna, kitten raiser deluxe. I'll get him back as soon as he's on soft food and keep him until he's 2 lbs and can be neutered and start going to mobile adoption days. Bet he'll be adopted the first time he goes. Must run deep background check on whoever wants him!

put a bird on it

Inspired by a postage stamp of a many - colored bird. Marker, watercolor, hand carved stamp - all in a little nature journal I made last week. The little feather is from the belly of my mean parrot Winston.
I'm just gluing in things I like and working on whatever page appeals to me at the time. A way of working that I've decided suits me much better than one thing at a time, or a given thing on a certain day, like icad.
I'd been mildly agonizing that I wasn't doing much art but, like most things, my desire for it comes and goes and eventually returns again. Wandering around thru this journal is perfect.

Dlp2015 week of 6/13

Can't even remember the prompt, something about routing your travels, and too lazy to look it up. Pic of my dad's mom on a bench and me in a lake. She was a wonderful grandma, the only one I remember much of. We visited at Easter and I was fascinated by all the lizards in their covered parking area.

Postcard sketching

Still slogging away on DLP2015 but a few weeks behind now. Ah well. Sometimes the prompts just don't grab me. But I have these old postcards sent to my mom's mother and decided to draw one of them. I clearly don't posses the sketching gene but it will serve the purpose of reminding me of the real postcard from 1912.

baby animals! (lots of pics)

Various baby animals I've been around lately. Lots of foals out at the ranch. Wish my legs were that long.

zzz zzz zzz   Every now and then he'd sigh and groan. 

There are a ton of babies - somewhere around 80.
Field after field of mares and foals.

Love how the mares just stand over their baby while it's sleeping.

Hen and more chicks than I could count cause they never held still.

Had a batch of 5 kittens for a week while their real foster mom was out of town.
Five is one too many, couldn't keep track or defend myself lol.
Have another batch of 4 coming tomorrow or maybe Thursday.
Not sure how long they're staying.

Not sure I took any clear pics cause they were always in motion.
All 5 in this pic.

Here's all 5 again, you just can't quite see the 5th one buried in the pile.
Two were identical right down to the spots on their bellies and the lines
on their faces. If I was going to have them for a while, I'd put blue food
coloring on one's head or something. The orange one was a biter.

Maggie meets the kittens. She was fascinated, they didn't much care.

dlp2015 week 15 acrylics

Ok, finally back to a medium I'm comfortable with. Started with a painty piece of under-paper, did my usual collage, paint, doodle thing and wound up with a page I like. What a surprise. Found some nonsense words I liked and stitched them on, then glued the whole thing to my journal page.

In case it isn't obvious, or maybe I forgot to explain, I'm doing dlp2015 on individual sheets of heavy watercolor paper 9"w x 6"t. Tore 9x12 sheets in half. Left edge has two holes to fit into a little binder thing I have. Will put them all in when done and have a dlp2015 book. wa-la

The watery triangles are a stamp I made, using watered down black
acrylic to stamp with. Love the softness as opposed to the hard
edges of a stamp done with an ink stamp pad.

dlp2015 13 & 14

Still catching up posting my dlp2015 pages so here's a couple more.

The prompt was to make a custom element. I have boxes of family
photos that I'm determined to use up before I croak, so I tore my mom
out of a set of studio shots she had done when she was 20 or so,
around 1944, cut some strips of gelli print in my fave colors,
found some pearl cotton and made an element. The background is
black gesso, which is so wonderfully, emphatically *BLACK*.

The technique was watercolors. I did quite a bit of stamping with
ink that turned out not to be waterproof. Oops. But then I kinda
got into it and encouraged the drips with more watercolor paint.
This one is dark and weird and isn't on my top ten list.

a (clean) joke!

Found this when cleaning up my puter and still think it's pretty funny. I take no credit for thinking it up, but also have no idea where I got it. Someplace in the interwebs...

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest. 

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head and sadly said, "I'm sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away." 

The distressed woman wailed, "Are you sure?" 

"Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead," replied the vet.

"How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something." 

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. 

The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room. A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room. 

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck." 

The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead?" 

The vet shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it's now $150."   

21 secrets 2015 Roxanne Coble

I bought 21 Secrets a few years ago when it was only $59 or so. Now it's $98, which still isn't a ton of money for 21 classes, but I didn't even go look at the class line up this time since I had enough classes to work on. Then I started seeing pictures in the 21 Secrets FB group of work coming out of Fragments & Mysteries, Roxanne Coble's workshop. I was fascinated, and finally swallowed the hook and bought the workshop.

Glad I did because I never would have figured out the layers by myself. I've finished 1 spread and have 3 more in progress. Very interesting way of working. The theory is that you study your painted/collaged page to find fragments that speak to you. That didn't happen for me on this one, but I'm sort of not surprised as I am not one to find hidden meaning in *anything*.

Anyway, here's my finished first spread. As I'm writing this in blogger, I'm positioning the two pictures side by side, like a spread. But by the time you see it on whatever platform you use, they may be one above the other. In any case, left hand page is 1st, right hand page 2nd.

I like the colors a lot, and the doodling was a workout. Will keep this way of working in my bag of tricks because it suits my "plan? what plan?" way of doing things.

cardboard crush class (lots of pics!)

As I've mentioned before, I like Roben Marie's style. Her colors, doodles, projects, etc, all appeal to me, so I didn't have to ponder too longer before signing up for her Cardboard Crush class. To watch the promo vid and/or sign up for the class, go to Art to the 5th. The workshops are listed down the right side.

Each instructor makes their own version of this booklet/folder thing. Of course I did Roben Marie's version first. The substrate is just a chunk of corrugated cardboard box. The first 6 pics are process photos, taken as I was making the cover. The rest of the pics have details beneath. I'm using it as a birthday card holder, with little flaps of paper, one for each month, with birthdays written on the back of the appropriate month to remind me, and a pocket to hold cards.

The finished folder. I used an old shank button attached
on the inside thru a smaller button so it won't tear thru
the cardboard with use.

The back.

Partially open, showing the pocket to hold cards.

The inside, with a paper flap for each month with birthdays
written on the back, and a pocket to hold cards.

A better look at the month flaps.

Bottom corner of my pocket. I wanted it to have more depth
than the one in the instructions so winged it by folded up a piece
of gelli printed card stock. Works great.

Wa-la!