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.

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.

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.

 

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.