Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Life Book Lesson

I worked on one of the Life Book lessons I hadn't done yet. Tam made a couple of videos showing how to make backgrounds and then doing scrapbook like layouts over them. Since I did the funeral program for my mother, I thought doing this lesson with parts of the program might be a nice way to save it. It felt good to be putting paint on paper and not worrying how it was going to turn out.


Hopefully I will get back to visiting everyone's blogs on a regular basis soon. I still don't feel a whole lot of cheerfulness yet, but I'll get back there.

Art Journal Caravan 2012 - Wordography - Panache


Elements from AJC 12 Parcel #25 and Studio Tangie's Crayon Magic.

Trapped

This must be the state of my mind right now.


Sunday, June 24, 2012

Go To Paris

I saw this quote, and in view of this past week's events, it felt very appropriate to use it.


Funeral Is Over

My mother's funeral was yesterday, and everything went beautifully. I took a picture of the floral arrangement we bought, because my mother loved flowers of any kind, and I wanted a keepsake. The picture was taken from a cheap phone camera. The colors are pretty, though. Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts, support and prayers during this time.


Thursday, June 21, 2012

Mad Tea Party 2012 Coming Soon!

What better way to get rid of the blues than to attend a Mad Tea Party! The wonderful Vanessa from A Fanciful Twist has chosen July 28 th. to be the special day. I'm going to post a fun party here. What about you? You can post your own Mad Tea Party on your blog and join in on all the fun! Just click on the link above to find out all of the glorious details. This will be my third year hosting a party. What fun things can we do this time? I better run. I need to start planning!



Tuesday, June 19, 2012

My Mother Died

My mother died this morning at 2:30 am. At least now she is no longer suffering.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

My Mother Under Hospice Care Now

Just a quick update - my mother was put under hospice care today. She was given her first dose of morphine. Hopefully her suffering will be over soon.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Color Breaks Through . . .

Color breaks through the sadness.


Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Raven


This is the original picture I created to use in the hybrid painting below. :O)

Life Book Week 23

I'm still plugging along trying to do the Life Book lessons in the year long course Tam from Willowing and Friends is offering. June is about honoring our future and using animal imagery to do so. Tam demonstrated how to paint a fun, colorful butterfly and how to use a stencil to create a border around it. I just didn't feel like working on a butterfly even though I love them. I don't feel like "fun" right now with having to visit the nursing home every day now that my parents are there. Actually, I skipped today to finish working on this project. I needed the break.

Anyway, I ended up creating "hybrid art" instead of drawing everything. Hybrid art is combining digital and painting and mixed media all together. I couldn't find any modeling paste to use with the stencil, so my border didn't come out as well as I would have liked. At least I have another page to add to my Life Book at the end of the year when we bind all of the pages together. (I'm not sure why the border is showing up reddish in the photo, because it is actually a gold color. I only used the built-in camera on my computer, though, so I guess I can't expect the colors to be perfect.) It is definitely fun, though, to be creating some physical art instead of all digital art.


Friday, June 8, 2012

Art Journal Caravan 2012 Week 23 - Epiphany


Elements from AJC12 Parcel #23, Tangie's Grunge Brushes #2 and Inktastic #1.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Hide In Your Dreams

This is one of those thoughts that popped into my head, but I have no idea where it came from.


Sparkles from kit by KiKeKa. Lace and silhouette from kits by Tangie Baxter.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Three Muses Challenge - Warm Colors

This came out a little depressing, but I'll post it anyway.


Saturday, June 2, 2012

"Creating Time" Art Workshop

Well this is exciting! I'm on the "Creating Time" Facebook page. "Creating Time" is the new book written by Marney Makridakis. Two of my digital collages are published in the book. (Yep, I've already written that here before.) Marney stopped in Ann Arbor last Saturday (May 26, 2012) during her promotional tour to give a four hour art workshop based on the book. I've known Marney for 10 years through Artellaland. Artellaland is an online community for artists and writers. Last Saturday was the first time we actually met in person, though. It was a fun break from what is going on with my parents!
Marney talked about the difference between the Greek words used for time - kronos verses kairos. Then she had us create a piece of art that represented what kairos time meant to us.  The goal was to create something that would act as a kairos muse to us later on. Below is the picture Marney took of me holding up my mixed media painting.
The workshop was extra exciting, because I got to see two people I know, but haven't seen in quite some time. One is Katherine Willson who just finished her term as the President of AAWA - Ann Arbor Women Artists (and a few good men). I met Katherine while working for the Rec and Ed Department of Ann Arbor Public Schools. She teaches several mixed media art classes for the department.
http://www.annarborwomenartists.org/
 A former co-worker also was at the workshop. Her name is Terry Odell. She took an early retirement several years before I did. Terry now gets to use her time taking photos. It was the first time Terry ever created a mixed media piece, so she was very excited about the workshop.
http://terryodellphotography.com/index.html
Thank you, Marney, for coming to Ann Arbor and for sharing your pictures! Creating art with friends is definitely a fun and healing experience.

Art Journal Caravan June Quest

June 2012 Quest - A Matter of Heart


Elements from Tangie's "Conversed 6" and "Cartography Set 2 - Symbols."