A Major Award

I'm proud to have been chosen by Kristen from krisatlarge, for this major award (I stole that from her post, and if you aren't chuckling you haven't seen "A Christmas Story" enough times). Although it's too much of a time commitment for me to fully participate right now, I wanted to thank Kristen and recommend her lovely blog, which I thoroughly enjoyed looking through. 5 blogs were nominated and I feel honored to have been included in the group.

Inspiration...finally...

I'm finally feeling artistically inspired, since signing up for Kate Thompson's fabric art book class on The Trodden Path.  I love her art, and although I don't usually work with fabric much, she combines it with plaster, which is one of my loves.  I haven't even started doing anything with fabric yet, I need to do some gathering, but just watching her paint has inspired me, so I created this piece this weekend, which uses some of her techniques, and some of my own. 

 

Paint, watercolors, image transfers, collage, stamping with gesso, encaustic on wood. Lots of layers this picture makes it hard to see. My fingers are twitching, trying to resist adding some kind of rusty metal bit somewhere. We'll see!

Feeling Rusty

I'm popping my head back up into the blogosphere, to see if I still remember how! Between Christmas vacation, illness, and just general post-holiday apathy, until this weekend I'd just been trying not to look at the messy chaos that was my art desk, not touched since mid-December.  But I had no excuses this weekend to not dip my toe back into the art world, and I feel much better now that I did. I'm going through a certain amount of angst about where I want to go with my art right now, what I want to focus on, but this weekend I just played in a couple of art journals. It's been a long time since I worked in one, and I'd missed it. 

I had some fun doing a couple of collages. The scan on this first one came out terrible, because the journal is so fat.  Plus, apparently I moved it while scanning, because I just noticed her face is all wonky.

   I finally did another page in my handmade art journal, which I tend to save for something special, so in other words I never use it.

I felt the need to paint a face on this piece of shopping bag I'd saved - I know you understand.

Bragging Rights

So, I've been hinting rather strongly to my husband (it still sounds so funny to me, "my husband"!) that he should make another salvage robot, since his first one, here, was such a success. I also suggested that it be a snowman, befitting the season.  Well, once he got in the swing of things there was no stopping him, and look at this handsome guy!

This is my favorite part - Mario found a few old vinyl records a while back at a salvage place, and remembered that one of them was a Christmas one, so he cut out the center and was able to put it behind the glass of the center gauge. I just love it!   And for his scarf, he even used fabric from an old Pendleton robe that was my Grandfathers, it's damaged but we couldn't part with it.  Am I a lucky girl or what?

Posing with other Christmas decorations...

We'll be leaving town this weekend through New Year's, so I want to wish everyone a very happy and safe holidays!

Fa-la-la-la-la

I'm feeling better, and have been busy wrapping and finishing my shopping and even made some tag/ornaments - it felt good to be at my art desk again!  This month is always such a whirlwind - I wish time would just slow down a little...

I just grabbed some tags and dug into my miscellaneous Christmas stash and had fun  - it's been too long since I had done that and I really enjoyed it.  German glass glitter is everywhere though - it turns out I'm not a very neat and tidy glitterer.  That was mostly for a different project that I haven't managed to photograph yet, but I don't think my desk will ever be the same.

As I was sitting and enjoying my tree last night I decided to try and get a nighttime picture of it. The lights are called flicker lights, and they each independently flicker like a flame, with a very gold light - I've had them for years and can only find replacement bulbs on e-bay sometimes. I dread the day I won't be able to buy more... This picture doesn't really capture the flicker action, but it's the best I could do!

Christmas trees make me happy!

Recovery

Between the Thanksgiving holiday and then coming back to surgery the next day, I haven't been doing any art or even felt up to keeping up with all your wonderful blogs - I hate the feeling of being behind on what's going on with all of you, but have really only felt up to laying around and watching any Christmas movies I can find. I planned ahead and decorated my house early, and even put up a Christmas tree the night before my surgery. If I was going to be laying around the house for a week, I wanted to be looking at a Christmas tree!  I took some pictures of the house yesterday, I thought I'd share my view if I don't have any art to share, but after downloading them I've realized how bad I am at taking indoor pictures. I didn't even get a decent one of my Christmas tree.  I think I'll just go ahead and blame my camera...

 

God-awful picture of my Christmas village...

 

I adore this old French hand holding up some garland

 

 

My little nutcracker tree in my bedroom

 

And lest anyone feel too sorry for me, my Mom is here which has been a treat, and she baked me some of her fruit cake (don't judge) the best, most Christmasy smell and taste there is!

A New Woman

Well, my name is new anyway, which is so weird.  I went and got myself hitched last week - we eloped, although my parents were there so I'm not sure it technically counts as eloping. We were going to Pismo Beach for a week, and we decided what the heck, let's get married. I so wasn't interested in any fuss or planning a big wedding, which is probably why we never did it.  But we thought, a quick wedding at a courthouse but in a special place, that sounded good.  So we got married at the courthouse in Santa Barbara, which is so beautiful.  Then we stayed the night at a hotel right on the beach - quite a change, going from a tiny bed in a trailer to a beautiful suite, it was heavenly.  Here are a few pictures:

" I do"

The boys looking very debonair

The courtyard of the courthouse, this was the view behind us during the ceremony

The main entrance of the courthouse

The view from our hotel room

I'll be getting back to art soon, hopefully.  Between Thanksgiving next week and sinus surgery the week after that, my month is crazy, then it's full on Christmas. At this point, I'm just hoping to complete a few Christmas projects.  But I'll be arting vicariously through you guys!