Bee girls all finished!!

OK, so they're drawn on Strathmore Bristol (smooth) paper. Outlined in Sharpie pen (no, of COURSE I didn't draw them in pen, I drew them in pencil and then inked and erased the pencil lines) and colored with Copic markers. I say COE-pick, even in my head. Some people say COP-ick. Whatever.
Same pic - without flash and with. Two of them have blue eyes an done has green. I don't have a lot of copic colors yet, they're EXPENSIVE, but I actually kind of enjoyed coloring them. After I did the first one and got all the frustration out, anyway. They're for trade, the red one will be going to Tal in Australia and the green background one to Kelly in St. Paul. (OK, I probably won't mail that one...would be funny if I did, though!) The one going to Kelly has her blue eyes and she has a little brown part on her right eye (left as you're looking at it) because Kelly has that! And on top of the hive is a little queen bee. Kelly likes the tilted ones because she said you can almost FEEL her tipping over but I want Kelly to have the balanced one because I feel like Kelly balances everything in her life very well. She is calm and patient, even when she doesn't think she is. I might add some words to them, but I'm not sure...opinions?

Puzzle cube!

So, I did this photo shoot with some friends (already posted about it) and I was trying to think of fun things I could do with the pictures for them. Yes, I already tweaked them in Photoshop and all that crap. So I started with this:Peeled off the color stickers...Printed some pictures...And ended up with this!Love it!

New Journal!!

OK, so I'm in love with Teesha Moore's journals (who isn't?). I made one from her tutorials, and tried really REALLY hard to follow her instructions about how she journals to make something similar. Two problems. #1: I don't have cool magazines like she does. All I have are parenting magazines that my mother-in-law sends (no, I don't read them). #2: I am horrible at collage, especially when the pictures mean absolutely nothing to me. So THIS (below) is my version of Teesha-like journaling. I know, it's NOTHING like Teesha's, but it works for me. I just stuff it in my bag with some pens and go.
I've been working on doodling because I STINK at it.
And I just finished a NEW journal and I wanted you to see it!!

I love it, love it, love it!

Bees...

Artists are a breed apart. We're strange. I didn't realize it. I was well into my 20s before I realize that not everyone lived inside their head like I do, and I think that's one of the reason I love Dexter so much - 90% of his life is completely private, only taking place inside his head. Anyway, before I get off on a Dexter tangent, it's been really interesting to learn that I'm not crazy. I'm really not. LOTS of people think and feel and act EXACTLY like I do. I've found friends who don't think it's odd that I don't filter what I say or watch TV. They don't think it's odd that I have no idea what's going on in the world and my favorite color is lime green. They don't think I'm crazy when they find me awake and online at 2am - so are they. So, a couple of us have been talking about what it's like to have so many ideas in your head you can't sleep and how it's like bees buzzing around in there. We decided to do an ATC swap featuring bee girls! Or girls and bees...or something like that! Anyway, here is my first one...

The Case of the Broken Sewing Machine

I'm sad. Super sad. I broke my sewing machine. The bobbin thread isn't catching. Everything I'm reading online says it's a SUPER expensive repair. I'm hoping to find a place to take it tomorrow, but I probably can't afford to pay for the repair, and I don't have a car, so it will be at least a week before I'll be able to go get it and the craft fair is in less than two weeks and I don't have tie bags ready!! I know, you don't care...sigh...

Here is a new journal I'm working on. Horrible pictures, yes. Still can't find my camera, which is VERY puzzling because it's LARGE. It's not one of those tiny, stick-in-your-pocket cameras. It's big. Where could it be? Anyway, just a few pages...

MERMAID!!

OK, so I don't know what makes me drag my feet about these things, but I haven't put any mermaids on wood yet. I have two in my journal and five in my sketchbook but I just haven't done anything with them. But my new friend Tal gave me a deadline. First mermaid done my this Friday. She isn't finished, but I'm pretty excited about the THOUGHT of her being finished that I'm posting the in-progress pics.

Here she is all shaded in, waiting to be collaged onto her background.
Here is a previously prepared background that has been laying around for several months, just waiting for someone to be collaged onto it.

I added a little more paint...it's kind of glare-y, huh? No flash with these, it's just shiny from the overhead light.
Stuck her down and checked carefully for any air bubbles... Stamped a little with some bubble wrap and a BIG flower stamp. Now she's drying on the table and I'm ignoring her until tomorrow, otherwise I'm likely to ruin the happy that's going on right now. Oh, and she's purple. Her tail and top are purple. I'm not sure why she looks so pink!

Tie bags...

OK, so these two lovely ladies that I met one day at the play area decided that they would market my tie bags for me when they go to a craft fair on November 6. I think it's an AMAZING idea, but the INSTANT something turns from "I like to" into "I have to", I don't want to. So I haven't been really motivated to WORK on the tie bags. Then, I was planning to spend a couple of days doing nothing but tie bags when Tim was off last weekend - but we were in the hospital with Mini instead. So I've only gotten a little bit done, but I'll probably have these two bags finished by tomorrow. I'm thinking I'd like to make five in time for the show. If they actually sell, then I'm going to start hunting for ties again. I used most of the really fun ones on bags for friends and family, so I have HUNDREDS of sort of ugly ones...but I'm going to sew them into bag anyway. People carry LOTS of bags that I think are horribly ugly. Anyway, here's my progress...


That's my couch in the background. I looks (and feels) like an old pair of blue jeans! :)

First block complete!

This is going to be the center block of my uncle's quilt. I LOVE the way it turned out!!

The picture is my uncle and his three siblings. They went to a family reunion in Colorado and had these old-timey pictures taken. I nearly peed myself when my mom showed them to me. I was HYSTERICALLY laughing. Laughing so much my mom started laughing. My uncle always presented this serious face to the world, few people even knew he had a sense of humor. So to see him, see all of them like this, was just amazingly funny to me. I really like this fabric, I'll be using the same off-white for all the blocks, but I have a complementary one to use for the darks. I'm pretty excited with how it's turning out so far and I only have one block done! Go me!

In other news I have a mermaid confession...tomorrow is book club and I just bought the book yesterday and I'm less than a quarter of the way through it!! It's possible I'll finish it, but I'll feel really bad if I don't! I was too busy finishing up the Vladimir Tod books...don't tell!!

Triptych

Triptych = a work of art that is divided into three sections or three panels which are hinged together and folded.

This is an ATC triptych. How fun is that? I know, totally amusing. So, I'm a Leo. I don't know why, but I like to say that. I'm not someone who's ever followed astrology and I don't know if I "believe in" it. Certainly not newspaper horoscopes, and I don't seem to have one of the MAIN Leo traits - the love of being in the spotlight. I have no desire to be the center of attention, ever. No, thanks. I'd much rather sit in the back of the room with my book and be a wallflower. A wallflower dressed in lime green, but still.

For this project I did my "chart" online and found out that my moon sign is Capricorn and my rising sign is Aquarius. I really enjoyed reading about them (and Leo, of course) and the personality traits that contradict or complement. It was fun.

The picture is me, the little silver thingy says "brave" and came from Michael's, as did the plastic Scrabble tiles. The little Zodiac pictures I got from Cafe Astrology. And the flames around me are to represent that Leo is a fire sign - NOT that I'm in hell. Yet.

Almost forgot!!

I've been trying to post everyday in October, and so far I've been pretty good! Tonight I almost went to bed and completely forgot. Would anyone have noticed? Doubtful. I only would have failed myself. BUT - I remembered! :) Thank goodness it's based on mountain time or pacific time or something because it's 12:25 am here which is TECHNICALLY tomorrow.

These pretty little angels are on wood and the quote is from Euripides: "One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."

Dreams

When I was more depressed and angry than I am these days, I often thought "How come my dreams didn't come true?" But the more I thought about it, the more I realized - I don't HAVE dreams. Not clear, focused dreams like "I wanna be a doctor when I grow up." And I figured out that's the key. You can have anything come TRUE if it doesn't EXIST. Now, I'd like to be able to say that I had instant clarity and now I know exactly where I want life to take me, but I don't. I'm a 30-year-old stay-at-home-mom and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
But...now that I know that I need to focus on what I want, I think clarity will come. Maybe not, but we'll see. Sorry for the horrible pictures, I'm still doing the upload to facebook from my phone, download to the computer, upload here.

The price of love

Is it worth it, I wonder?

New face...

This is a face made from a DIFFERENT (non-Suzi) tutorial. We're supposed to write on the left page, and then add gesso to both before drawing on the right, but I HATE gesso and especially hate drawing on top of it, so I drew first, then did the gesso.
Then she does ALL of her shading and coloring with watercolor crayons. So I tried it. Yuck. Several layers later. It's not a way of shading I'm good at, that's for sure. I really liked her background, she had better colors AND more space to work. I might try another in my big Moleskine. In the meantime, I'm letting her dry overnight and tomorrow I'll shade her the normal way. The Suzi way.

Dean Reid

This page is for a friend. Dean is the friend of a friend. He lived in Ireland and was in the army. He was deployed in September and injured shortly after. He passed away from what first appeared to be a relatively minor problem. I asked my friend to send me the pictures she has of him so I could scrapbook them, and I love how this one came out. It's funny how this just strike certain people. A hundred people could look at this and just shrug it off with a careless "It's OK" and that would be fine - I don't care about anyone's opinion but my own. I'm just surprised by how it struck me, even though I'm the one who made it. The paper was by HF Projekte (available at Ahhh Scrap!).

Hospital...

Feeling a MILLION times better! Those strange little creatures next to him are his "blankie friends" named Squishy, Fat, and Fake. Squishy is his favorite and he never leaves home without her. We got to the hospital in pjs and slippers, but I made sure Squishy was with us! Daddy brought the others from home.Talked to a couple of surgeons who've both said it's NOT his appendix. No way, no how. I'm SUPER happy about that because I think explaining to a three-year-old that he's going to be cut open and have something ripped out of his guts that he doesn't really need would be a LITTLE difficult. So far word is that we're staying for a couple more days...

This made him sad, he doesn't like the sound of the machine, but the RT said it helped with whatever's going on in there! And we're getting a prescription for the machine so we can do it at home with him. Look how cute his little mask is!
We're sprung! Three prescriptions to fill and one nebulizer shaped like a penguin are coming with us and we're out of here!
One Happy Meal and a visit from his favorite Uncle Sean, and Mini is down for the night. People keep asking me if I'm OK but isn't that a silly question? As long as Mini Me is OK, I'm completely fine. Tired, yes. Worried about not having health insurance, yes. But how do I FEEL? My little boy is home and he's going to be fine. There's no better news I could even imagine.

Worried Mermaid Mommy

Headed to the hospital early this am with Mini Me. He was complaining of extreme pain on his right side. Hubby thinks appendix, but I think it's too high for that...the pain seems to be right below his right nipple. The doctors keep asking how long he's been sick and I keep telling them he WASN'T sick. This is last night:Yesterday he went to school, me and Hubby went to Parents' Day, he had school pictures, we ate lunch, he took a nap, we went to the park, he ate dinner, watched a movie, bedtime snack, and went to sleep. Hubby had to work for a couple of hours, I chatted online with my mermaids until about one am, and five hours later we're here:

You can't even fathom how horrible this is. This child has more energy than fifteen people put together. More than an entire high school track team. More than a cheerleading squad hyped up on Dr. Pepper. At least he's not in pain right this second.

We're officially admitted and got a special blue balloon. They're pretty sure it's pneumonia, but some of the tests aren't showing what they should and blah, blah, blah. The Dr. said we're "interesting". An interesting case, she said - just like Dr. House. The sharp pains are being attributed to pneumonia in his right lung, the cough he's had since August (maybe July?) is a whole separate issue, apparently, and they're all surprised that he hasn't been SICK at all in the past couple of days.
The miracle of modern medicine. This is Mini only thirteen hours after we brought him to the ER:
Needless today, the antibiotics are WORKING! :)

He asked to play with my phone (he loves iPhones) and his favorite thing to do is take pictures. Usually they're just of his finger or a little bit of whatever he's trying to take a picture of, but this isn't a bad one. I look horrible, but look at the photography skills of a three-year-old with pneumonia!
Suzi says that "being an artist" is about keeping the pencil moving, so I figured I would. (Plus, hospitals are BORING.)

Endless updating, I know.

Apple picking?

OK, I've only been in Minnesota for a couple of years and before that I spent 19 years in Florida. Now, in Florida there are no seasons. It gets "chilly" for a couple of weeks in the "winter" and that's it. We got pumpkins from the grocery store, and none of the groves let you do something like pick your own fruit. So apple picking was a completely foreign concept to me. I mean, I understand the concept - go to the orchard, pick an apple - but I didn't see the point. Now I get it completely. There ISN'T a point. You just go and eat hamburgers and run around in the corn maze and stick your kids in the trees. No point at all. Loved it.

Hooray for today!

Today Mini Me and I went to St. Paul for an art date with Kelly! Mini kept saying he wanted to stay there forever, so I told Kelly we would move into her art room and I would gladly help her use the supplies she's been collecting. I gotta take pictures next time, she has SO MUCH fun stuff it's amazing. But, first there was other business to take care of.

Trampoline jumping

Swing set amusement

Catch with Odin

Then Kelly worked on a girl she's been coloring. She's not quite happy with her, and she tried to kill her several times with colored pencils right in her eyeballs today.

This was Mini's area! How sweet is that? Kelly had markers and stickers and paint all ready for him. He worked in his journal for a little while, destroyed the living room for awhile, worked in his journal some more. It was pretty cute.

I made some ATC backgrounds. Blah, I know, compared to the rest. I really WANT to make ATCs...I just gotta figure out how to make them not suck. Working on it!