WOYWW #160

Hi, y'all--some of you might remember the debacle that was my kitchen table and studio in WOYWW #159.  Well...I got the kitchen table all cleared off and a nice table cloth on it, and made lots of headway in the studio (more on that in a bit), but still had to draw on the table this week. I started doodling last night, thinking zentangles, but that's not exactly what came out. Oh, before I show you the new pics, click here to see the vid of my son's journal--I showed you the cover in WOYWW #158.

In the studio, I started consolidating fabric and gave away four empty bins (some fabric might follow). That has freed up a bunch of space; I have more to go, but when I'm finished I should have space for a lot of art supplies, files, etc. I'm also tossing and culling as I go, so don't worry that I'm hanging on to everything. One of the things I started was a fabric journal.  I used a cute (ack!!) little notepad with very nice, strong paper (that's not perforated!) I won as part of a goodie-bag door-prize YEARS ago. There were a few things scribbled in it, including doodles by my son, who was a toddler at the time. I just went over all that.  It's small enough I can keep in in my purse when I shop for notions and matching fabric, or if I have a design idea. I labeled flip-top bins, small IKEA boxes, and Roughneck totes with things like FABRIC 1, 2, 3, REMNANTS 1, PROJECTS, etc. and then everything is getting recorded in the journal, with the box it's in, a swatch, width, and the yardage, plus fiber content, if I know it (a burn test will tell you if it's cotton, silk, wool, linen, ramie, rayon, or some sort of synthetic). Now all I have to do is flip through the journal and pick a fabric, go to that box and Bob's yer uncle.

And this is the work desk...or main event, as it were, with my art journal piece in progress (99%). Mixed media, Pitt pens, water color, water color pencils, and gesso and glue (had a bit of a repair issue due to old miskit).

Hope you enjoyed the show! Mwa!

Will's Journal

Remember WOYWW #158? Well, I finished the journal and the vid. Best viewed fullscreen on YouTube.

Thank you Jennibellie for the inspiration!!

"My son thought the two little dos-à-dos journals I made were really cool and said he'd like to have a journal made for him. A lot of the journals people make are really girly so I tried really hard to keep this one very masculine. I got my idea for using the box and tutorials for sewing in the pages from Jennibellie at http://jennibelliestudio.blogspot.com/ (She's super awesome, by the way.)

Music by http://www.danosongs.com/"

WOYWW #159

Hi, Madame B here. I forgot to mention last week that it was my first WOYWW post! (I was #178...posted on Thursday. Hee.)

We had a marvelous thunderboomer in our neck of the woods today--not all of Austin got rain--lowered the temp and watered the garden a bit. DEEE-lish!

Okay, I never had to go to confession, but I imagine today's post would be a harrowing experience in the confessional: Forgive me, for I have sinned. What is your sin, child? I have allowed a large, wonderful place to work and craft get so totally cluttered with schtuff, I've had to work in the kitchen. Ooooh...I'm not sure there are enough Hail Marys or Our Fathers to cover that, but your penance is banishment from all craft stores until it's tidied up!!

So, before you click the thumbnails of DHOOOM below, a bit of an explanation is due, I think. My house is one constant reno project and things get moved about all the time.  Pic #1 is my kitchen table, because of Pics # 2-3. My studio. *sighs* I had to move things in there and then they didn't get organized at all. Today I was home, giving Valentino meds for his nastily infected eye, so I attacked the studio and started organizing fabric and project bins. Actually made some headway, too. :)

When I came in the kitchen to sit a bit, I was gessoing odd bits of things to use as tags and journals...and playing Bubbletown on the computer. Any wonder I don't get more done?

These are thumbnails, click on them for larger pics!

Curse you...why'd you have to do that?

My wonderful, techno-blessed hubby figured out how to get the BBC iPlayer here. Not the craptastic BBC America, which shows only a few things and has US commercials, but the actual BBC iPlayer. We watch all sorts of shows (contrast to one or two American shows I watch--and only one of those on a regular basis, Castle). And the more I watch, the more I want to live in the UK. I want it so badly, it's a physical heartache. And...unless I win the freaking lotto...I know I'll never even visit.

Makes me loathe the unbearable heat of Texas even more. I know this probably isn't the way to look at it, and soon enough I'll make the paradigm shift just like I have with every other dream or fantasy I've had, so it'll fade to the background. Meanwhile, if anyone from the UK reads my site, send me photos, links, anything...tell me how to get from King's Cross to somewhere else, tell me about things in the store and living in a village...I know it sounds utterly insane, but if i can't go, I can sure as heck live vicariously, eh?


English village street, stolen from some random blog.

Ta.

More June

Not too much done this weekend, on any front. Got some more things moved to the storage unit. Don't know if I said this yet or not, but over the years, I kept getting a storage unit as a "temporary" thing, a stop-gap measure while I supposedly dealt with getting my house painted, arranged, whatever. 2-3 down the road, I'd still not have gotten anything done, but was paying out on the unit, so I'd move everything back and it would sit around, in the way, for years. *sigh*  This time I just flat-out said, "I need a storage unit, pretty much permanently."  I've put things like the antique chairs and table that will be my daughter's when they get a house, the Xmas stuff that only comes out once a year, camping gear that only comes out a few times a year (and hasn't been used at all in some time, since we've not been going to events. So, to make a long story short, I now budget the $58 /month for a 5x10 storage room. I j just kind of look at it as part of the mortgage payment, since our house is seriously storage-challenged.

Didn't get to the dog park on Friday, didn't get much done on the boy's journal--a little added to the inside covers. One of the cats has his nasty eye-infection back, so I need to call the vet today about that. Got a very few things organized in the studio...very few...and mopped a section of the floor where my old cat tracked nasty stuff all over before I finally had him put down. *cries* Slowly, slowly.

Projects on the block here:

• Call the vet about Valentino Done


• Build the kitty loo


• Updating the kitty condo (see lessons learned)


• The boy's journal


• The boy's wash--since I think my brother will finally make it over here to get him this week


• The cleaning and organization of the studio--huge


• The cleaning and organization of the greatroom--even huger...gargantuan


• Finishing up the bathroom--stripping that awful popcorn crap off the ceiling and painting said ceiling, putting the last couple of baseboard pieces in, and framing up the mirror with molding


• Getting rid of more crap in my bedroom and organizing the rest


• Building my bed.


• Selling the trumpet, Navajo loom, dog gates, and primitives


• Making and posting  the vid about my dos-à-dos journals


• Finish painting the kitchen--big job

Not necessarily in that order. Oh, and write at least a chapter a week...uh huh.

I'm writing from work because I'm waiting for the scans to finish on my old computer and for Office Max to deliver the transfer cable so I can move everything to my new computer. Woo..it's lunchtime, baby!

UK-speak *giggles*

From the Dictionary of English Slang.  Seems like one would need to be very careful about -ff, -ffer, -ffed, -ffed as, -ffed to, -ffing, -ffin', and to whom one is speaking.

chuff	Noun. 1. Rubbish, nonsense. E.g."That film was boring, too long, and generally just total chuff." 2. The anus. [Orig Aust.] 3. The vagina. 4. A passing of wind from the anus, a 'fart'. Also used as a euphemism for 'fuck' in expressions such as the denial - "Did I chuff!" Verb. To break wind. E.g."She chuffed just as we were saying grace before dinner"
chuffed	Adj. Pleased, delighted. Compare with 'dischuffed' and 'chuffed to buggery'. E.g."I'm well chuffed at the result." [1950s]
chuffed as nuts	Adj. Extremely pleased.
chuffed to buggery / fuck	Adj. Very pleased. E.g."She's chuffed to buggery that they are marrying before the baby is born."
chuffer	Noun. 1. A contemptible person. 2. An annoying, difficult or disappointing occurrence. E.g."It's a right chuffer, breaking my leg just before the football season starts." Chuffer is a euphemism for 'fucker'.
chuffer (train)	Noun. A train. Children's talk. Also chuff chuff.
chuffing	Adj. An intensifier, and euphemism for 'fucking'. E.g."That chuffing idiot scratched my favourite CD and now it sticks on the third track."
chuffin 'ell!	Exclam. Expressing anger, surprise etc. A euphemism for 'fuckin hell'.

Thursday Doodles-ICAD

The first of my "index card a day." It's a 5x8 index card from work--I printed a form on the backs of these, used them for one semester and decided I didn't like the form, so the cards are going spare. Rather than throw them in the recycle bin, I decided to use them for Daisy Yellow's ICAD challenge. I doubt I'll do one every single day, but it gets me using my hand again. It's a doodle and demonstrates why I hate journaling on my work *laughs*. It's a combination of Sharpie, colored pencil, and a really old, craptastic roller ball pen. Hey, you use what you have at hand, right?

Ta.

Pen envy

I have decided I want a reasonable set of Copic Markers. They are obscenely expensive, but are so very worth it for many reasons. This lady has about a kabillion of them. I only want 12 or 20 or....

*le sigh*

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday #158

I know, I know, I'm a day late with this...but here it is. I'm working on a journal for my son to take with him to New Orleans for the summer. He's going to stay with my brother and learn how to work on computers and install CC cameras, techy-stuff, for which he will get paid! After I made the dos-à-dos journals (still need to post those!) I asked him if he wanted a journal to take with him and he said yeah! so many of these smashbook type journals are soooooo girly, so I'm trying to keep this very boy.

I took a box that a store version of Hamburger Helper came in (don't look at me, I don't eat that crap), gessoed it, painted it matte black, then Mod Podged on torn pieces of scrapping paper. Then I mixed ultramarine acrylic with some Mod Podge and scraped that on.

Tonight I'm at the coffee house, writing, but tomorrow...after I get back from the dog park, I'll do the inside covers and start sewing in the signatures.

Wednesday Whatfors: Riddle me this....

Why do bagged lettuce producers think we love those big chunks of romaine spine so much?

If the popularity of the Pontiac G-series was as large in relation to the numbers of them I've been seeing lately, why did Pontiac get axed?

Has Michael's really gotten that lame, or is it just the one in the Arboretum area?

Why do so many art journalers make these gorgeous background pages and then completely cover them with gesso and or torn up paper....baroo?  I don't get that, sorry.

Why do so many art journalers have these big-eyed, tilty-head cartoon girls in their work?

Why is it the more I look at other's journals, the less confident I become about doing my own?

Why didn't I post this on Wednesday?

It appears...

...I'm five days behind on my schedule. Well, hey, you got two posts one day!

If I had a regular reader base...oh, heck, a reader base at all...I'd be more fussed about it, but as it is the one whole person who reads my site understands. *evil grin*

I have a whole raft of things going on. I made a couple of dos-à-dos  journals out of a box that canning rings and lids came in. They're small, but came out quite nice. Even my 15 YO son thought they were cool. Going to do a very small video on them, just to kind of get started on the video blogging. Now I'm making a smash journal for him to take with him to New Orleans; he's spending the summer there with my brother. I have to make sure it's not in the least girly, or he won' t use it. There are a kabillion and one video tutorials and flips and flops of art journals, smash journals, "junque" journals, junky journals, journal journals, and-how-to-desecrate-a-book journals, ruin Moleskine journals (and create very nice art journals from them, too)....you name it journals out there on Youtube, but you know...what we need is just one more lady sharing her art, right?

On the "desecrate a book" thing: at one point in time the idea of "altered books" was just....blasphemy to me. But to be realistic, there are crap-ton of old, falling apart books that will either end up in the landfill or --if someone is doing the right thing-- in the recycle, so why the heck not make something nifty out of them? There are all kinds of artists making sculptures out of old books, but this guy really blows me away. I'd go insane trying to do all that. Particularly, I think old, out of date textbooks are a prime candidate for upcycling into art.

One of the projects I want to do is creating a memory journal out of a really, really old book I had as a little girl (©1950!).  In fact, there are several I'd like to do that with. This particular one was a favorite of mine, about an old guy who has a clock shop. Anyway, none of the original pages would be taken out or destroyed. I'll vid it when I do it.

Took the dogs to the pet clinic today. Turns out they only do vaccines at 1:20 PM...so I had to haul them back home, and then I left the old man at home and just got Abby taken care of. Tested for heartworms (negative, woot!!), annual boosters, they micro-chipped her for free (it'll cost $18 to register the chip), claws clipped, a tube of Advantage for each dog and HW preventative for Abby all for $87.50. Not too shabby. Serg is is 13, so they might not even give him shots. I will have him tested for HW. He might need sedating for the claws, though, since they're so long and it would HURT. So...might not do that either.

Abby was a scaredy-cat, but behaved very well. She's a very sweet dog, but just not used to other humans. So...after a few days, I'm going to start walking her again and taking her to dog parks and stuff; she really needs to get out and be social.

Meanwhile...I discovered bugs in my ceiling. The good news is that I don't think they are termites. The bad news is, they're probably ants. Bleah.

 

Art, Depth, and Self-Doubt.

I have a very, very, very good friend, who also happens to be an author. She writes new-agey books on spirituality (that's how we met, in a round-about sort of way), and the Shadow World vampire series. Her blog, Crazy Beautiful, is down there on the right under RSS feeds, if you care to check her out--she's one of the most awesome people I know (and that's saying something, because I know some fairly awesome peeps).

Anyway....on Tuesdays she posts "Tuesday Currents" in which she writes about what she's eating, drinking, doing, watching, listening to, working on, thinking about, etc. Last Tuesday, she wrote about watching videos by Jennibellie, who is a drop-dead gorgeous young lady in Nottingham, England. She's an artist and makes these fabulous journals. I spent night before last, staying up waaaaaay too late, watching all of her tutorials. Why is this important, you ask? Well, it's a long story, and I'm not going into all of it here.

Bonus Post-IKEA hack

This is to make up for not really doing a bona fide post yesterday. Way back, I bought a couple of Metro shelves at Sam's. At the time they were only $70. One went in my kitchen to pad out my pathetically small pantry (read: teeny weeny closet with some shelves). I made a table top thingy from nice birch plywood and the middle shelf relieved my counters of the microwave and toaster oven. The other Metro shelf went in my sewing area to hold supplies, etc.

So, one day when I was in IKEA...they had these really great lightweight cotton bedspreads, the Bomull series, for next to nothing. Sadly, they've been discontinued, but I snagged a few before they did. When you wash them, the fabric becomes wonderfully rumply and natural looking with defined ribs.

I took one of the bedspreads and cut it into panels and used IKEA's Riktig curtain clips to make a curtain around the bottom, hiding all the really ugly stuff.

So...this is what I made:

Cat Condo-IKEA hack (photo-heavy)

Lord have mercy...I actually uploaded these pictures almost two years ago, and according to the stats on the original pictures, I took them in May of 2009. *le sigh* But now I know (aside from my terminal procrastination) why I didn't want to do this post. With the really time-consuming and awkward photo insertion tool in WordPress, this post is taking far longer than it should have!

Anyway.....check it all out....

June Challenge-Day 2

So...here I am. This is kind of a mini-post; I plan on making a larger one later today.

In my vast readership of ...one...do I have any takers on the June Challenge? (Got an FB message from her that no, she can't, she only does project posting publicly and isn't about to do a project a day. Hmm...well, you could do a day-by-day of it, but anyway).  Anyone else out there in my legions (hahahahah) of readers?

Put a link in the comments to your blog if you're on.

ttfn

 

Challenge

Sometimes I wonder why I pay the annual "rent" for this web site. I constantly think of things I should be posting, writing about, uploading ideas, pictures, etc. and yet here it sits. (Oooh..not too shabby, it's been "only" exactly 2 months since my last post. Groan.)

I've been watching Jennibellie's videos on YouTube. She's got me all fired up about art and things to do with all the paper and paint and ink and beads and ribbons, and CRAP I've accumulated over the years. I even now have ideas about these ancient kids' books I have.

My challenge is a post a day for the next 30 days. About anything, but I hope some will be about a project or something nifty I've done.

Ta.

Blatantly stolen from someone on FB. Haven't laughed that hard in a bit.