My Own Shades of Grey…

This week’s joy list was a little harder to focus on than usual.

You see, other than for about 3 or three hours of sunshine, it has been grey, grey, grey

for about 8 days straight here.

That has taken its toll on me, it would seem.

Perhaps it is because it is coming at the same time as the darkening, the shorter day light hours, the autumn season…

All I know is that I seem to be feeling pretty grey right along with the weather.

Oh, I know!

You are about to launch into advice, remedies that you know work, say something you think will cheer me up…

Please don’t bother.

(Though your commiseration and love is, of course, always welcome and appreciated !)

You see, I am kind of okay being grey right now.

This moody, brooding, grey me

is in fact kind of full of creative juices of a different kind that I am kind of into exploring.

Plus, I know it won’t last forever.

My Joy and Love for Life are too vibrant to stay grey for tool long !

From this week’s Joy List :

- little pamphlet stitch bound, painted paper books in little dyed woolen pockets, the perfect place to hide moody messages, and the rocks and rusty bits that go along with them.

- naps in grey afternoons, curled up with a dog and cat

- organizing art supplies to go to Art is You (Me and my moody self leave tomorrow am !)

- Quick Lube oil change guys who vacuum your car when they change the oil

- giving some special Rock Fairy love to a woman who I saw sitting in the car parked next to me at the grocery store. Turns out she had just left the hospital after major foot surgery and was waiting for her boyfriend to bring her her pain meds from the pharmacy inside. She loved the “be” and the “ok” rocks, and I loved connecting with her heart and giving her a bit of comfort.

-friends who get it, don’t try to fix it, or me, and just love me through it.

 

I hope your Thursday is full of joy, Beautiful Ones, where it is grey or not !!

For more Joy (and probably less grey joy) visit Meri at Meri’s Musings

Haiku My Heart – Obstacles be gone

A Rock Offering to Ganesha

Orange Elephant God,

Help me lay the foundation.

Obstacles be gone.

**************

This beautiful little statue of the Hindu God, Lord Ganesha: the lord of beginnings and wisdom, sits on the windowsill at Elizabeth’s lake house. One evening, we were rock wrapping by the windows as the rain poured down outside. This rock with its orange wax linen thread and the tiny orange bead felt like it belonged in front of Ganesha. I left it there, on its bed of eucalyptus dyed silk.

Ganesha is thought to be the remover of obstacles. Perhaps my simple offering of orange, rock and love is the reason that my creative path seems to have opened up so wide right now ?

I don’t know for sure but I will take that gift very willingly !

***********************

Yesterday morning, I set up a spray play time outside on the back deck.

Stencils, spray inks, papers of many different kinds,

and a clothesline to hang the results.

An hour and a half passed so quickly

and

left me with another cool stash of papers to play with in my collages.

The walnut spray ink was the earthy darkness that I was most pleased with.

 

I have ordered my bees wax and found an electric skillet at the Goodwill store

but until my order arrives,

good old gel medium will work to adhere my goodies.

This 6X6'” canvas piece includes a color copy of the green angel that originated in my journal a year ago.

New larger wings and a glorious earthy background

using bits of my recently sprayed papers

formed

this new angel creation that I am loving a lot !

So much so that the palette inspired three little rock wrappings to go with it.

I am thinking of listing them all together as a package deal in the Etsy shop

so that someone else can enjoy them up close too.

That is if I can part with them !

May the obstacles in your path today be few

and easy to circumvent, Beautiful Ones !

Happy Friday !

 

For more Haiku Love, visit the Beautiful Rebecca at recuerda mi corazon.

Sweet Spring Weekend

Busy weekends sometimes mean no time for hair primping.

That’s when a good hat can be a Queen’s best friend !

Like this great one I ordered for myself recently from a fundraiser that Kal Baretski ([i] love life blog) did for the Live Out Loud Adoption Project. Cute hat, great artist, a word that so works for me on it,  and giving some $$ to a great family and a great cause.

A win win win, right ?

And it means that I can be lazy once in awhile, and cover up bed head, instead of having to blow dry every day!

My fun and busy weekend started on Friday.

I was lucky enough to head over to Ink About It in Westford, MA for a class with my friends Patti and Colleen.

It was a workshop on how to use Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plates ! Fun and messy ! My kind of art !

We had lots of fun with our great teacher, Ursula Smith, slapping paint around, and creating some great background papers with this fun tool !

These are some of the awesome pieces of paper that came home with me. Yummy stuff for the journal !

My favorite technique was the one using stencils and the Gelli plate. It also gave me an excuse to buy a few more new stencils from Crafter’s Workshop that I had been coveting !

I really enjoyed the class. I think my favorite piece was actually my scrap paper used to roll excess paint off of my brayer and the stamps. How cool is this ?

Saturday was spent mostly outside in the back yard. Poop patrol, picking up branches and ball throwing for the sweet pooch filled a lot of the day !

Plus the customary, and so very lovely Saturday afternoon nap with my Honey.

Sunday was unexpectedly beautiful here in NH.

They were calling for rain but it was a sunny, warm day instead.

What could we do but pack up the beach chairs, a bucket for some rocks, stop by and pick up Colleen and head to the beach for the afternoon?

North Beach in Hampton was pretty quiet.

It was Mother’s Day after all and I guess that’s where the people were.

Perfect for the three us !

While walking along the surf, Colleen and I saw quiet a few of these little butterflies struggling in the sand and water.

Strange !

Colleen rescued a couple of them, picking them up and bringing them to the dry, warm rocks to sit in sun and dry out.

I think I am going to have to start calling her “The Butterfly Whisperer.”

All in all, a super nice weekend.

The week ahead is a busy one.

Lots of rock orders to fill, house cleaning and getting ready for my Mom’s visit on Friday., and I am feeling itchy with a few creative ideas in my head that need to be put into action.

And of course, I also want to remember to take the time to enjoy the sweetness of Spring time whenever possible.

Happy Monday, Beautiful Ones !

I hope your week is filled with sweets !

GPP Street Team 44 – In A Scrape

It has been awhile again since I participated in a Crusade lead by the incredible Michelle Ward. I read the prompts every month and plan to do them but sometime life gets in the way.

Today, I was supposed to be packing for my Cape Cod trip but I decided that I couldn’t have all my  favorite supplies packed up on this grey and quiet Sunday. I needed to play !

The Green Pepper Press Street Team Crusade #44 – In A Scrape was a great place to start.

Michelle shared techniques using an old credit card or a paint scraper to cover your pages with paint. No paint brushes required ! I did get my fingers in there in a few places…

here’s one where I used my fingers to blend in the corners and make those circle shapes. I love how the blue paint scraped of – almost like it had been ripped…  

Michelle also suggested using stencils and masks and dragging the paint with the credit card  over top of them. You can see a circle flower stencil in this one…

I certainly didn’t have as much success as Michelle did with her masks but I did have fun trying…no critics in the Queen of Arts Studio!

This page has a heart I cut out of an old acetate and used as a mask. Loving this one!   

This piece of paper was kind of my blotter for my credit card and for my stencils. I like its a little more subtle colors. It will make a good background to build from too.

I saw something in this page as soon as I smeared that purple on with a circular smush of the credit card…

Do you see it ?

Yep ! A Bird !!!

This is is Irving, the Homing Pigeon and his home, who came into being with some additional painting, some black ink and a collaged house on a pole.

I love him…

One more benefit of playing with paint like this is you end up with fingers that look like this :

I think I can see these shots played with and added to a journal page in the future as well.

Painted fingers are a definitely JOY to me !

So a big thank you to Michelle for the great inspiration she provides every month. Head over to the GPP Street Team blog to see some more great scraping !

Come on, Irving, let’s fly away home…

Happy Sunday, Beautiful Ones !

Sunday Morning Vibes…

  Here’s a few things I have been puttering with this week…

These sweet flower faces are now adorning a $1.00 wooden hook, ready to hang on the back of a door or in the dressing room.

Cute, right ?

I also snuck in some painting time one afternoon during my busy week and created this :

This beauty is a whole bunch of scraps and bits of paper glued down onto a piece of deli paper with gel medium, then painted and stamped and paint brush squiggled and paint pen scribbled over.

I learned this technique from Anne Bagby way back when I went to a 5 day workshop with her and Lynne Perella at Hacienda Mosaico in Mexico, about 4 years ago now…

What I love about it is that the deli paper (I have a box of 200 sheets I found at Sam’s Club about 2 years ago – it is what the deli uses to wrap sandwiches – NO WAX!) is thin but sturdy and the finished painted papers have such flexibility and lightness – they can be added in to any collage and become a part of it, not just sit on top.

Oh, and look at the “sweet spots” (a term I learned from Lynne at the same retreat !) : 

Loving the possibilities for these !

I had a pretty busy week which was wonderful. A great mix of time with friends enjoying the summer, (though I am missing my pal, Colleen who hasn’t been able to escape work yet !) and some really good indoor cleaning time. You know the kind when you get into the corners and get rid of cobwebs, etc…

You see, I have some important visitors coming through in the next little while.

Beginning today with a quick but oh so sweet visit from my friend Kim, the Bodhi Chicklet, fresh from her three day retreat at Kripalu in the Berkshires in MA. It is Kim’s first visit here to the Yellow House on Orange Street and I am so excited  to share bits of my life with her here on my home turf !

Then at the end of the week, my sister Kristina is coming with her husband John, her fair haired boy Thomas, and my favorite Kate on Earth ! We will be hanging here for the weekend and then heading to Wells, Maine for a few days for a family beach side luxury camping trip (big trailer, no tents !) . ! How lucky are we ????

This morning started off mellow, photographing my little bits of art work above and getting this post done. I am feeling so thankful for all that I have today. I am truly blessed.

I have had my friend Patti Digh in my head a lot. She is sitting vigil at the bedside of a dear friend of hers, Nina, who is slowly leaving her body and moving into spirit. Patti promised her friend she would not be alone at the end of her life on this Earth. What a remarkable and beautiful act of friendship. It brings tears to my eyes and such love into my heart. Send them your prayers too, Beautiful Ones, so they both have strength to travel this part of the journey together.

Big Love…

(dedicated to Patti, Nina and to all the ones I Love…)