Animal Wednesday - MUMMIES

We went to the Fitchburg Art Museum last weekend on a whim. Those of you who know Fitchburg know that it's not a real "up and coming" little city, but they have this little funny gem of a museum. Very small, wonderful traveling art section, and a great permanent selection of portraits, landscapes, and this awesome sketch by Sargent - which I coveted and coveted the talent to do this painting. (gad - this is a sketch! - to me it would be a finished masterpiece)


Anyway - that's not what I brought you here for. They have an interesting Egyptian exhibit with real honest to goodness mummies - including this cat and alligator mummy.



As well as this reproduction chair with lions heads on the ends of the arms.



They have their own little fake Rosetta stone, which was easier to get close to than the real one in the British museum
and this lovely bas relief sculpture of either two sisters, or Mother and daughter or who knows what. I loved it, probably because of the blue paint.

The 85 year old guard was head over heels in love with me for the day (or bored out of his gourd) and followed me around leering and asking if he could take my picture. It was kinda cute but also very odd.....

So happy Animal Wednesday !!!

Things I've been making/doing

Thank you for all your kind words on my panic post. I've calmed down, turned off the darn word verification and after sleeping most of Saturday - am feeling a bit more human.

So, onto fun things.

I've wanted to try felting and got a great book on felted purses. I went to Michaels, and for very few dollars - got 100% wool in two green colors. I ended up with two pieces of knitting - took no time to do

The problem with this book is that it gives very little instruction on how to assemble this purse. It says 'sew them together"...huh? Anyway, I finally figured it out, sewed them together and felted in the washing machine. In the end they weren't perfect, but good enough for a first try. The two pieces have to be exactly the same size (which they weren't) , and the two colors felted differently. If I was doing this again, I think I'd sew them together after the felting. Doesn't matter, I'm happy with the one I did.

One of the things I've always loved to do is to refinish furniture. When I was with some friends a few weeks ago, I bought a little ratty old table - it's small - almost child sized, that could be used as a side table or any little handy table.
It was easy to refinish - only took me an afternoon. I also didn't obsess about the tiny little areas in the legs, so they stayed a bit dark. But it came out nice, I think it's maple. I'm just buffing it with wax, and then am not sure what I'll do with it.

But it's so cute, I'll find a place for it somewhere. I love the little side things that fold up - it's like a miniature dining room table. I could just see 4 mini kid sized chairs, and fancy little place settings on this table.

I hope you had a lovely weekend, got caught up on sleep and good times.

Minor Panic Attack

Despite my highfaluting ideas about not relying on my computer, or checking my blog stats...I've suddenly gone into a minor panic about this word verification thing and the problem that people have been having with it.

What if my friends couldn't comment anymore? What if my friends weren't here to tell me they like my latest creation, or thoughts and writing, or weren't there to sympathize or celebrate along with me. What if my (blogging) friends simply DISAPPEARED FROM MY LIFE.

Egad - panic has set in.

Its a symptom of stress, I know that. My shoulders are hunched up around my ears these days, my neck aches, and I often feel teary. I've been checking email and blogs incessantly for days. I want to post every 10 minutes to simply reach out to people. The weather has been cold enough to not get in regular exercise outdoors, but warm enough so that there isn't snow for snowshoeing - so no exercise means more stress.

I certainly believe that I need a break.

Solutions:

Tomorrow I head out for an early morning walk, the first one in months. I will banish this stress as much as I can. I am going to CUT BACK ON WORK (for goodness sakes...do I have to have it hit me in the head??) and get some balance back.

I bought tickets for my BFF, my neffies and me to go to Florida for a few days in March. That'll help.

I going to sign up for an oil painting class and another comic class in the spring session. I do plan to publish this year.

I will not panic!

(this is a purple blow up gorilla we saw in florida last time we were there. I couldn't get a good shot from the car, but I feel like him right now with my arms up in the air)



My friends are still out there...I know that. Smooches!

Word verification

I turned off my word verification yesterday and got spammed three times!

Not fun.

So....it's gotten turned back on again.

Animal Wednesday - Elephants

This video was linked on Robyns blog - awesome really.

I don't know any elephants personally but just love them, love to watch them, love their legs, and trunks but most of all, love their wonderful social structure.

In the case of Animal/Vegetable give away....the winner is.......

ANNE of El Milagro studio

and I'm so glad.

Anne, send me your address via email OK?

Love to all, Mim

Happy Printer issues

My printer is running out of Cyan but I wanted to print a Valentines day card and hoped that it had enough to print one little card.

Here is the original - you've seen it before.



Here is the print - I LOVE it!!! Comments?



Lesson learned? PLAY with color, always try new combo's.

Have a Happy Valentines day - and remember the giveaway in the post below.

Giveaway

I am trying to declutter my world....and found this lovely little knitting set that makes a scarf, using the tool above. There is a CD inside that shows how to use the tool, it's very easy to use and the yarn is as soft as a baby's bottom.

But...I can't/won't use it - and would like it to go to someone who will. If you're interested, leave a comment here and I'll do a random pull on Wednesday (Animal Wednesday- since it's wool and soy yarn (Animal/Vegetable Wednesday I guess) and you will be the recipient of this lovely little tool kit.

Hearts

Playing around with paint - this one is water soluble oil paint on paper. I've never used oils before and don't like the smell of turp in my house, but when I saw these water soluble ones I thought Hmmmmm..... Has anyone had any experience with them? The pic is a little dark at the bottom just due to me slapping the painting on the counter and taking a quick pic with the iphone.


This one is acrylic and crayon on bristol board. You can tell I was in the studio playing away having a good old time slapping paint around.

I like the brightness of the yellow in the second one - what do you think? I also think that if I want to use paper again with the oils, I'd gesso the paper first - it soaked up the paint like crazy without some kind of base.

Right now I'm sitting at home in a room with lots of windows - and I was planning to be inside most of the day watching big fluffy snowflakes come down and pile up outside. Picture a happy me with headphones on listening to a book, and knitting away on the sofa. "They" predicted a storm - and we expected to get around 6 inches or more. But no...today they are saying "haha" it's really not going to happen. There are snowflakes coming down but they're tiny and barely sticking. So there you have it. A very non-snow winter this year. Not much fun. Easy to drive in, no plowing needed but not what we expected.

I hope you all have a lovely romantic exciting Valentines day and get your hearts filled with love.

Animal Wednesday - Pastel Pig

I'm working on a series of animals for my friends shop. I tried paint again with this pig and it was yuck! This time I didn't use tissue paper, but just pastels directly on the paint. Hmmm.... I could try colored pencils also, that might be interesting.




In the end I made his eye and the shadow a bit darker.

I also did a little chicken and did a print of the cow to sell instead of the original. We'll see how it goes....






I'll put the the expanding barnyard in the shop and see if they sell....then maybe I can move onto FISH!!

Happy Animal Wednesday!

Playing around again

OK - it's an obsession - I admit it. I like bowls. I like vessels. I like to see them, make them, feel them and hold them.

The last one was my favorite so far, but I'm liking this one too.



This one I am still sort of working on - I've added these square colorful beads to the outside and am trying to decide if it needs a top edging or not. It'll sit for awhile while I think about it.

Any opinions about an edging? Colorful metallic thread? More beads? Let me know what you think.

Also, since I had to sew each bead on by hand I wandered back and forth between having the thread match the bead or the bowl. I chose white thread so that it wouldn't show thru the bowl, and am going to carefully color the thread on the bead to match the color of the bead. Should be fun!

As usual, I have no idea what this bowl will do, hold, or be good for. But it's pretty and we can all use more prettiness around right?

Comment - post post
After I posted this I realized that I hadn't articulated the real reason I like these bowls. First of all...I know how to make them and that makes it easy for me to learn how to play with new materials and new techniques. I don't think I've ever made two the same, I love trying new techniques, new materials, new embellishments. Every bowl is an experiment - I don't think I could take two the same if I tried! I've gone from heavy paper, to brown paper, to wire and to tissue and buttons. I've painted them, and stained them, and wiped and tested, and embroidered and beaded. Basically, I can track my artistic confidence thru my bowls - what an interesting progression they make.

I have ideas that I want to try... based on films of color, and transparent materials. I'm just gonna keep playing!!

Train Art

I had a nice long train ride this week, down to New York for work. I worked on the way down, but read and drew on the way home.

I set myself a little challenge for drawing. I was listening to music and had to draw the image that came to mind and could only listen to the song two times before I had to move onto the next song.

Since I have eclectic taste in music, I listened to a variety on the ipod shuffle. The first one is Sarah Brightman singing "allelujah"



This one is an oldie! Steeleye Span and "All around my Hat". Gosh I loved this group - her voice is awesome!


I don't have the name of this one, but it was a Country and Western song about dad and boy going fishing yada yada yada......


This is another CW tune by Shania Twain - Any Man of Mine...not a favorite in my house!! I'm the CW fan, not my tone deaf DH

Now for a switch - to Yiddish music with Itzhak Perlman playing Kletzmer music - Andy's Ride. Everytime I listen to this I think...yeah sure, I could play that....NOT.

And the last one - Anxiety by the Black Eyed Peas. I can see the anxiety in this drawing, can't you?

It was an interesting challenge, fun to do. I did more, but I couldn't finish them in the time allotted - so I'm going to change the rules and work on those other ones some more, and show them at another time.

Very relaxing.