icad 6/28 - 7/1 & a social art experiment

Here are my icads for the last few days. There's everything from a weird self portrait to Annette Funicello. Variety R Us.

Some navel gazing.

An ode to my favorite pastime. 

Playing with stencils and Distress Stains. (I bought every color. Shhh.)

Annette, one of my long ago wannabes along with Nancy Drew and Penny from Sky King.

I started a little PBS book club here in town. There are 5 of us who meet every other Thursday. We pick a book, read it, discuss it a bit, pick another book, etc. Unfortunately I've discovered that I don't enjoy reading by committee and on a schedule. It just drains all the pleasure out of it and I'm left feeling obligated to finish the damn thing whether I like it or not. Plus I get fidgety sitting there while we wander off the book topic onto whatever else.
So... this past Thursday I took along index cards, several black markers of various widths, and a whole box of my super cheapo markers. Only three of us showed up. I got out my art stuff, slid an index in front of each of them and said, "Draw."
"Draw what?"
"Anything. Whatever you like."
They both watched me for a moment, then each picked up a black marker and began to doodle. The one woman - a bit loud, good sense of humor, reads nothing but mysteries - covered her entire (first) card with thick heavy wavy lines of mostly darker colors, blunting several tips in the process, which is why I bought the cheapies.
The other woman - quiet, somewhat unhappy, reads police procedurals - drew wispy flowers and suns.
When they stalled out, I slid another card over, and eventually another. While tentative at first, soon they were rooting thru the marker box for just the right color and getting into it a bit. We were there almost 2 hours and in that time, each of them did 3 cards while I did two, which I'll use for 7/2 and 7/3. They both took their cards home, slid carefully between the pages of their books. I forgot to take pics, doh!
It was an interesting evening and next time I plan to take card stock ATC backgrounds, magazines and glue sticks. I'll be sure to report back on my great social art experiment.

the rarely-blooming gardenia... blooms

I planted this thing a bit over 4 years ago when we moved in here. It had a bloom on it when I bought it, and bloomed again (1 flower's worth) in 2008, but has never flowered since. I'm sure it's missing some key ingredient in the soil but I'm a tough love gardener and have only watered it and maybe given it a shot or two of Miracl-Gro. I think I googled gardenias once, but then my hard boiled egg timer went off and that was the end of that.

But this morning, walking back inside from waving DH off to work, I saw it.

A bloom.

A big beautiful gardenia.

icad 6/23 - 6/27

My cards for the last few days. A misc lot - some drawing, some collage, some lettering. A bit more inspired this week.

NOT a self portrait, just what came out of my pen when I tried to draw a face

for the Monday challenge

little books - post 4 - Julie

My third little book is from Julie, a member of our little mail art group, so it was great getting one from her. Plus, this book is very cool. It's made from one sheet of paper, folded and cut to make a small 4 page book. This is a technique that Lenna pointed out to us when we signed up. I made a few like this but ended up not using them for the swap. For this one, Julie used images and text from an old Danish gardening book and I love the old muted colors and the vintage images. Plus, I love to garden.
I think this one is going in my kitchen some place so I can see it every day. I just bought a new little shelf thing at a yard sale this morning that might be perfect. Julie also decorated the envelope and printed out a note about the book. Enjoy.

little books - post 3 - Sarah

Sarah's book is stitched and beaded and amazing. She went around the entire outer edge of the cover and stitched on approximately 500 beads, by my reckoning. Yikes! I can hardly see to thread beading needles anymore so getting this was a real treat. The covers are soft and bendy but nicely padded, not sure what's inside them. The inside is 3 signatures of what feels like card stock, in white, perfect for a small sketch book. Here are the photos.

little book swap - post 2 - Laura

I received this little book from Laura Hummel. It's FABulous. The papers are wildly varied in size, type, color, style, texture. It's a total sensory treat to look thru, which I've done about ten times since I've gotten it.  Laura is extremely creative and this book will inspire me for some time to come with its diversity. Here are images of the entire wonderful thing.

little book swap - post 1

Lenna of Creative Swaps had a Little Book Swap recently and mine arrived on Thursday - very quick since they were posted from Florida on the 22nd. She made a great slide show of them here.

I sent 3 books, plus one for Lenna. The ones for the swap had covers made from crazy quilt blocks that I pieced but never finished. They were made from batik fabrics and I loved them. I was very happy to be able to re-purpose them for this swap. The inside pages were a variety of pictures from art books, misc papers,

 This is the one I made Lenna. It's pretty small, maybe 2.5" x 3.5", and has pages from old books and hand made papers, very monochromatic. I liked it and plan to make one for myself one of these days.


Next pic is my covers. Two of them had a bit of seam stitching.

3rd photo - The insides of the pink one. Each had pictures and papers chosen to complement the cover color.

4th - The back and front of the green one. I used Tim Holtz tissue tape to bind the books. 

5th - inside view of all three.

I sooo can't figure out how to load photos in effing blogger so that I can type next to each one without the spacing getting all goofy. Is there another free blog place that handles images better??

Next up, the books I received in the swap.