misc swap art

I just can't keep up with all the things I'd like to blog about. Gotta take pics or scan the item, tinker with it in photoshop, write the blog, add in the pics. Just seems to take longer than it should.

These are items I've made recently for a few swaps.

postcards for a mail art swap - scan of old postcard for background, image of
vintage ladies, stamped title, stencil B, definitions, old stamp. I quite like the
overall bluish-green tinge of these.

ATC for the theme vintage ladies.
gel medium transfer of  my maternal grandmother Theresa.
painted background, stamped with sequin waste, old tea bag glued down,
a bit of lace, edge of computer paper.
Really liking the turquoise and brown color combo.

ATC for the theme Halloween
background is acrylic paint with vaseline resist, stamped, smudged, gel medium
transfer of two girls, correction pen Boo!, black pen markings along edge

ATC for the theme books
painted book page, stamped with sequin waste, stamped title, definition.
I love this image of the kids reading. I've used it a few times before.

true story

This happened to me this morning. It's the kind of random, goofy stuff that I just love.

I was working the grocery aisles at the local Walmart, perusing the olive oil offerings. There was a woman a few feet ahead of me, trying to work a bag of flour loose from a low shelf. She finally yanked one out, and in the process, dislodged another one which fell to the flour. She heaved a big sigh, sat her bag of flour in her cart and then bent over to put the fallen one back on the shelf. As she straightened up, our eyes met and I gave her a sympathetic eye roll.

She laughed and said, "I don't even know you but I got up this morning and wouldn't you know, the only underwear left in the drawer was the crazy ones, you know, the ones that give you a wedgie every time you bend over? So I decided, well, I just won't bend over today, and don't you know, all I've done is bend over about every five minutes!"

She laughed again, patted me on the arm and went off down the aisle without a backward glance.

True story.

free images - 3 lovely ladies

Three ladies from the antique mall score I made a few weeks ago. They've been scanned at 300dpi. Double click them to save the largest size. I'd love to know if you make anything using them.

I just love this one. Too bad it's so stained.

guerrilla painting

 I've had these two small chests of drawers for years. My friend Moneka was getting rid of the pink one when she moved, so of course I took it, and the other, I've had it so long that I now have no idea where it came from. For as long as I've had them, I've intended to paint them white to go with the rest of my shabby yard sale furniture, but have never gotten to it for any number of reasons - no paint, too lazy, bad weather, would rather eat cookies, etc, etc.

But this morning I was cleaning up the wreck I've made of the house the past week while Mr. OWH has been on a fishing trip, and I suddenly thought I'll paint those dressers. So I found some paint, dug out a brush, threw an old sheet down on the back patio, dragged the chests outside and went to work. A couple hours later, I had two very nice painted pieces of furniture that I'm much happier with than I was before.

Maggie the Painting Inspector checking out the first coat to make sure it's up to code.
(sorry for the rear view. she hates the camera and always walks off, so I have lots of shots like this.)

I'm too lazy to even take the stuff out of the drawers. I just painted the fronts and edges while being careful to not dangle drippy paintbrushes over the contents and it was fine.

Pink chest done, brown chest in progress. At this point I'm contemplating something besides white for the final coat.

And I ended up painting just the case a green that was left over from the 11 different paint samples I went thru trying to find a color that Mr. OWH and I could agree on for the inside of our house. Perfect.

 

And here it is back in the studio a few hours later. Love it. The painting on the wall above is a watercolor and charcoal of the lake where Mr. OWH's family camped when he was a kid. It was done sometime in the early 1960s on a piece of construction paper by a friend of his grandparents. Very cool.

And here's the pink one, no longer pink and back in place in the studio. Much better in white, no?

death of the dragonflies

I like dragonflies. They're pretty to see and I associate them with the ponds of my childhood hikes with my mom, watching the dragonflies darting from lily pad to lily pad, so I have fond memories of them.

Last week I was the first one in at the store, and sitting on my desk was a large dragonfly. Dead. Freaked me out for a moment, and it was a couple minutes before I could get myself to pick him up (I'm weird about dead things) and move him so I could work.

A couple days later, I saw another one on the floor between the bikes. I steeled myself (dead!) and picked him up and carried him to my office to sit beside the first one.

And this afternoon, our maintenance guy walked up to me and held out his hand. A third (dead!!) dragonfly for my burgeoning collection. It's cooled off a little here - is that why they're suddenly dying all over the place? We've lived up here almost 5 years and never had dead! dragonflies in the showroom before. Very odd.

But it's a treat to be able to study them so closely. Look at the structure of their wings. How different their tails are from one another. The colors. The shapes. The delicacy. Nature is fascinating.

found in a field

I drive past this area every day. It's the unused strip of land between the outer edge of the mall and the fenced properties beyond. Every now and then it gets mowed, and they till it up a couple times a year. Various things sprout there, depending on what the wind blew in. A few weeks ago, I spotted these gorgeous sunflowers and stopped to snap a few shots. Once I got out into the field, I saw the small brilliantly white ones and the dried weeds. My mom loved dried weeds and had them stuck here and there all over her house. I've inherited the same fondness for them, I guess.

These things were sooo blindingly white. I played with this in Photoshop for a while, trying to get more detail in the flower itself but this is the best my mad PS skilz could do.

I love this shot. The industrial power lines and tower in back with the wild and crazy flowers growing like they were in the best garden in the world. A good reminder to grow where you're planted...

I enhanced this quite a bit in PS and love how they look sort of menacing with all their spikes and pointy parts.

around town

Just some misc shots from around my little town. Sometimes I forget how pretty parts of it are.

The hand painted sign on the original newspaper building. I remember years ago when my mom moved to a very small town in Ohio, I thought it was hysterical that the paper only came out once a week. Well, our poor little paper is down to once a week now too. Damn economy.

This is a big fancy house on the outskirts of town. It's lavishly landscaped and I bet it was impressive when it was new. The large grounds are all fenced in like a Mafia compound and it's just going to wrack and ruin. Damn economy. Sorry, did I say that already?

 

There's a little winery tasting room on the south side of town, on one of the roads that goes off into the boonies. We were coming back from breakfast and I spotted the light coming thru the vines and made a quick U-ie so I could snap a couple pics. I love the way grapevines look and intend to put some of them in the backyard as soon as I figure out when they should be planted and where I want them.

The same vines shot in portrait. I may need to put that one on the wall. Love it.

A shabby little house north of town. It's a wreck but look at all those windows and that wonderfully aged fence. I want it in my backyard, next to the grapevines, with sweet peas climbing all over it. I always fantasize about these places, about what the floor plan must be like and how I'd fix it up, what its history might be. Sometimes I create whole stories for them.