A week of art and adventure…

Posted on | June 25, 2007 |

I’ve been busy this week. I’m sorry I have neglected my blog.

On Monday, my husband had hernia surgery. He’s fine. He’s recovered quickly, and is a fairly easy patient. I’m lucky, as I know many men turn into babies when they are ill. Dave is a trooper, and, though I’ve been helping him frequently, I have had some time to do some things I wanted to do.

So Monday through Wednesday were spent taking care of Dave. Monday was spent taking him to the outpatient surgery center, waiting for him, drawing in the waiting room while I watched the door to the operating area open and jerked my head up at each bit of movement. It was far from relaxing, but once the doctor came out, I knew we were home free. Dave was fairly awake by the time I was taking him home. He doesn’t have the terrible reactions to anesthesia I do, so he rested somewhat uncomfortably the rest of the afternoon. I sat and read some email and blogs, but I could not relax enough to do art. I just sat here and stared into space, completely exhausted. LOL Tuesday, the basket to the left arrived. (Yes, that’s hubby in the background… and no, he has not yet seen this picture!)

While he was convalescing, I did some art for the calendar journal round robin I have been involved in. This month’s book was challenging in a different way. It was just an office store date book with lined pages with the dates. When I opened it last month to see what was in store, I sat in amazement. I had no idea this was coming. I had nothing to start from - no photos or paintings, no theme. Just blank white pages. And, on top of that, the paper was very thin. It was the weight of regular notebook paper. Some of the pages were already coming out. I knew I had to create art with very little weight. So I pulled out collage pages, scissors, Sakura pens and my Tombow Monoadhesive. Here are the results:

	You may recognize this page! It’s a scan of a journal page I did earlier this month. I printed it out on my handy laser printer and then I added some highlights with my Pigma Microns. Since it was how I started this month needing “me time”, I thought it was appropriate to put this into the journal I was working on.
	And yes, this guy is fairly familiar, too! He’s the picture I made with my friends’ children when I taught them painting and collage. I had printed this onto fabric but the black ink cartridge on my inkjet was empty. This meant that the colors were a bit off. I couldn’t see that sheet of printed fabric going to waste, so I included it here. I added some zig-zag stitching to outline the features and then I added some doodles with my black Pigma Micron.
	This page and the ones following were done while I was sitting on the couch next to my husband Tuesday evening. I didn’t want to leave him alone for too long and we were watching the news on TV. This was the day that the Palestinians were at war with each other. All I could think about was the need for peace. That’s what this page is about. The images used in it are from Anahata Katin’s Spare Parts.
	This is another page using Anahata’s Spare Parts. I just played with the pieces and create the collage, adding some doodles and creating a composition from different pages of different books.
	In Spare Parts, there are many images of people that elicited emotion from me, but were not strong enough for me to use alone. I felt I needed to group these images that spoke to me. So I did. I circled and used squares with my Permapaque Fine Point pens.
	This image of the woman (also from Spare Parts) with the cool hat just needed to be a central part of the page. She reminds me of a pixie! I added in some doodles and lines with my blue Permapaque Fine Point.
	This page just came out rather intuitively. The images, again are from Anahata’s Spare Parts. I love the image of the woman’s face that is partially covered up. But I really liked the child, too. It seems to me that the child is dreaming of far-away places and so this was one of those pages that just came together.
	And, well, I ran out of steam on this last page. I even considered leaving it blank, but I couldn’t do that. Also using Anahata’s Spare Parts, I created this collage. The tree almost acts as the body for this woman whose head and face onl partially show.

On Wednesday I started to play with some patterns for cell phone purses and little travel badges for boarding passes and such. I bought a pattern, but it just wasn’t working for me. As I followed the directions, I noticed some things about the construction that were just not going to work for me and that could be accomplished much more easily. So I completed the original one (Nope. You don’t get a photo of that catastrophe!) and then I moved on to try to create my own pattern. And, while the first try was a bit larger than I wanted, it does work well for a small camera, such as the Canon Power Shot. It still needs to have some hardware and a strap attached. I’ll photograph the result tomorrow.

Friday I went out early and ran several errands. Among those, picking up my medications, stopping and picking up some rolls of upholstery fabric from a fellow freecycler, dropping into JoAnn’s for some elastic cording, and stopping into Michaels to use my 40% off coupon for a Crop-a-dile.

I cannot say enough about the Crop-a-dile! It is a fabulous invention. We R Memory Keepers really did their homework. I have had several different kinds of eyelet setters, punches, etc. but nothing, I mean NOTHING has ever cut through bookboard and metal this effortlessly and quietly. Nothing has made me anxious to use eyelets again. And I have hundreds of them - until I purchased the Crop-a-dile, they were so nicely separated by color in the back of my closet. Now they are sitting front and center with the brads! I rarely endorse products on this blog, but I have to say: If you don’t have one, GO BUY ONE!

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