• Around home - Art - Blog - Creativity - Outdoors - Photography

    T Tuesday: August acceleration edition

    August 18, 2020 - By 

    I feel as if time rapidly accelerates when we flip the calendar to August.  I haven’t gotten a thing posted for two weeks…even though I have been doing a little creating.

    Here’s a little snippet of something I will post later today hopefully.

    I know its awful to tease like that but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

    I replanted my garden with a few things and three of the four items are growing nicely.

    Green beans, snap peas and zucchini. I also have a volunteer tomato plant in the corner of the garden. I decided to leave it and see if it gets big enough to produce any fruit before the frost hits. I planted some carrot seeds in the deck box garden but they never sprouted. I think it got too hot for them. Oh well.

    Speaking of carrots….this was a volunteer that I pulled from a pot of nasturtiums.

    The faux watering can has a false bottom about 4 inches down so that’s why the carrot is so stumpy.

    Marvin and I were enjoying a bit of sunshine yesterday. It was simply gorgeous. Low humidity, beautiful temperature…just a perfect day. While keeping one eye on Marvin, I noticed seed pods on the nasturtiums. You know me…had to save the seeds.

    I’m super excited about this…likely more excited than one should be about seeds. I just have to let them dry. Ideally letting them dry on the plant is best but evidently you can also pick them off at this stage. These just fell off into my hand when I touched the plant. Time will tell if they are viable seeds. I also read that you can lacto-ferment these to make sort of a caper. In other artciles I read that the plant is very edible. The leaves have a pepper, mustard flavor and the flowers can be eaten raw or made into tea. Who knew?!?! I’m not one for eating flowers but I may try some leaves on a sandwich.

    Since my last post I also found out what the fall will bring for our family. J goes back to campus for a mix of online and in person classes. Mini-me will be taking her college course online from home and choir through the high school…also online at this point. I will be starting the year in hybrid learning…meaning I will be at school 4 days a week. Monday-Tuesday group “A” kids and Thursday- Friday group “B” kids. Wednesday is all distance learning. I have very mixed feelings about this. I want to be in the classroom but I’m also afraid to be there. I can’t see how I can possibly do my job in person maintaining a 6 foot distance.

    Today has me knocking super boring and lame items off my to-do list.  Phone calls, dentist appt, etc. Not one of my favorite days. I wish we could roll back the clock to last year this time…Mini-me and I were in Yellowstone!!

    Oh well…time marches on…

    T stands for Tuesday
    What are you doing today.
  • Art - Blog - Creativity

    I didn’t dream it

    August 5, 2020 - By 

    I’ve started working in a new journal.  So far this one is focused on texture. Not a conscious choice but I see the pattern developing.

    The sky was the limit on what I used on this page, which may seem odd since there isn’t that much color going on.

    I started out by taping down the center of the binding with masking tape. I added some ripped pieces along an imaginary horizon line to start my texture process. Next I added ripped pieces of drywall tape. The texture wasn’t feeling right to me so I grabbed some light texture paste. I’m not sure what has happened to the jar but it was weird…I used it anyway but it got my pages really wet.

    After drying them with a heat gun, I grabbed a jar of white house paint I’d been using for paint pouring a couple years ago. It has really thickened over time in the old peanut butter jar. Perfect!

    I walked away for a while as I often do. Do you complete a page in one sitting? Doesn’t happen much for me…always seem to be waiting for something to dry. When I came back some of the white paint was STILL wet…I decided to sprinkle some baking soda over the wet areas. I rubbed some of it in…other areas I continued to let dry.

    I knew that I wanted to make all the texture pop so I used sage green distress paint and sprayed water to make it flow. While it was still wet I dripped some brown and gold glimmer mists as well. I used a paper towel to mop up excess moisture in places. Used the heat gun to partially dry…and start the process all over again.

    It wasn’t quite blue enough for me so I used a watercolor crayon to make the blues pop since I had already picked out the teal textured card stock and tiny piece of vintage wallpaper.

    Since I’ll never be accused of less is more…I grabbed some pigment powders and knocked some powder off a fluffy brush onto the wet page. Now I was really loving where this was headed.  I took it outside and sprayed satin  clear coat to set the powders.

    I used the same products to color a small piece of plaster casting to add yet another layer. The tag is punched from Tim Holtz packaging. It was too pretty to toss.

    I didn’t lie when I said I used a little bit of everything on this page!

    Linking up with Art Journal Journey for Alison’s theme of Pockets and Tags.

    Art Journal Journey
  • Around home - Art - Blog - Creativity - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: typical Tuesday edition

    August 4, 2020 - By 

    It’s just a typical Tuesday at my house. I had a brisk morning walk…52°F. It was refreshing but I’m not going to lie…I wished I had worn long sleeves.

    Next it’s time for a bit of coffee and list writing. Lists help me stay focused. Trust me…I was WAY off task this weekend and Monday. Mr. G took yesterday off so typically I take that “time off” as well. I don’t create lists and sort of go with the flow. Not always the best choice for me.

    Good news though…last week I was very productive.

    I replanted green beans, snap peas and zucchini.

    They have all sprouted! Hopefully I’ll get some good production before our first frost.

    My tomatoes are ripening. My squash lost the battle with pests…squash borers got to them…but now I know what to look for.

    Marvin was busy watching the birds while I was snapping a few photos.

    My tiger lilies are in full bloom and the deer have left them alone!

    Perhaps its the new guard bear my neighbor painted and gave to Mini-me. That or the bar of Irish Spring soap I have hanging from the cage around the lilies. I heard that deer don’t like the smell of clean people. 🙂

    I’ve started working in a new journal. I’m not loving this book as I’m afraid that its not well made enough to withstand the abuse that I put my art journals and altered books through.

    It was the only one I had laying around at the moment. Since I’m not thrifting at all, it will have to do.

    I thought it was funny that it had traveled half way across the country into my hands just for me to destroy alter it.

    I’ve completed 4 spreads so far. This is a snippet of a page. I’m having a lot of fun playing with texture.

    The T Tuesday post from last week had another one of the spreads. I’ll share more in another post. I’ve already rattled on too long for today.

     

    T stands for Tuesday
    What are you doing today?