Canvas & Gesso - A rant!

This is one of my pet peeves. An artist will buy two canvases. Stretched, white, the kind you just pick up in the store. And then they'll gesso one and not the other and go on and on about the gessoed one versus the un-gessoed one.

Here is where the peeve part comes in. Canvas is ALREADY gessoed. That's what the white stuff on it is. It might not be the gesso that you're using, so your products may react differently. Canvas boards? Already gessoed.

Why does this bother me so much? Because it's misinformation. Did you ever have someone tell you that humans only use 10% of their brains? I remember my tenth grade chemistry teacher saying it, but he certainly wasn't the only person in my life who said it and not even the only TEACHER who said it. And I always thought "If that's true, why is brain damage such a big deal? Why would damagin 50% of my brain even matter?" Duh - because we use our entire brain.

I dislike misinformation, but I REALLY dislike how helpless people are about it. I look up EVERYTHING. I will NEVER take your word for anything. Ever. I might pretend I am, but I promise you I'm not. If I don't take my phone or tablet or computer out right then and look something up, you can bet your life that I'm looking it up later. I don't blindly trust or believe people and why does anyone? I never pretend to my son that I know something if I don't, and we look up lots of things together. I don't say something is "magic" or that "god made it that way". When he asked me why he can sometimes see the whole moon and sometimes can't, I explained the phases of the moon. Then he repeats things like that to his teacher or my mom and people talk about how smart he is.

People also talk about "useless" information. I know if my printer prints on the top or the bottom of my paper. That's classified as useless by people who would rather scribble on one side, print something, and then test it. I would so much rather have this in my head than something about an actor/actress/athlete/famous idiot who got arrested or does drugs or stands on their head for hours at a time. You know how to make the jelly not leak through the bread by lunch time? Peanut butter on both pieces of bread, jelly in the middle. Forget about the 10% of your brain thing and focus on the peanut butter.

Lemonheads!!

They're my favorite. My friend Dana suggested that I use more than one candy box to make a bigger journal. Genius, right? So here is the cover! Front:

Inside:

Do you love it?? It makes me so happy!!

Hourglasses...again.

Something I don't like about my tiny apartment (I love it here,a don't get me wrong!), is that there is no place for my sewing machine, Bernadette. This is where Herman (my computer) usually sits. I don't sew nearly as often as I would if she had a permanent home. But, I hauled her out this weekend and played with my hourglass quilt!

Fabric mingled with paint and a tiny scrapbook on my desk!

All the blocks are finally finished and Liam helped me lay them out so I could see if there were enough, or if I needed to make more. I think this is perfect! We rearranged the layout a million times, he was super amused when I showed him how to fold up a block so it would fly through the air when you throw it.