Paint Party Friday, Spare Parts & Thunder Storms

Yesterday started out with sunshine. Well, on the one hand, a nice thing; on the other hand, it showed up how much dust was flying around here. I know there are black holes somewhere in outer space, but it looked like one of them was here! So, don't be shocked, I will have to use a very dirty word - H*******k was necessary. I hoovered and mopped and scrubbed till it was more or less clean, and then had to take a break and a shower before I was fit enough to go and do the shopping. And while I was in a work mood - doesn't happen too often! - I did the washing, which is a lot of running up and down the stairs, as the washing machine is in the cellar and I live on the second floor without a lift.
Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my sketch book for the Art House Coop, and I'm not showing it yet, as I would like to keep it till it is completed.
And that's the reason why I have decided to show you part of my collection of spare body parts for Paint Party Friday, which is, as always, hosted by Eva and Kristin. They are white plastic heads, torsos and butts for displaying clothes in shop windows etc, and they have been sprayed and painted to make them a bit different. I did show some of them before, but here they are.

I sometimes just have the urge to paint on something other than paper or canvases....

And then, at about 7 in the evening, the sky went a nasty greeny colour, the wind lashed the trees, and it rained in torrents, with loads of thunder and lightning flashes. It was pretty to watch, but I was happy not to be out in it. The thunder kept grumbling and rumbling all evening, and the lightning illuminated the night sky, but it seems to have blown over now.

Well, that was more than enough today. Here's wishing you all a great day, take care, and thanks for visiting.

Stung

Yesterday I spent the day with my friend Inge We followed our usual time table - breakfast, chatting, gossiping, playing cards and eating. But yesterday Inge had to save me. I was attacked whilst playing cards - no joke! A particularly nasty and sneaky wasp stung me in my neck - ouch! After cooling it, Inge went on a wasp hunt, and managed to kill quite a lot and drive out some more - a real heroine! I hate the beasts, and this is going to be a bad time for me, because we have a record number of the nasty beasties hunting us down this year. Our weather was evidently ideal for them, and for some strange reason, although I don't like them they all seem to love me! And it is still red and swollen this morning.... How lucky that I don't live somewhere where there are real nasties to contend with! Apart from that, we had a nice day!

And at the Blog Challenge Garden, Rebecca wants to see a tag with a vintage photo.


The postcards I made for Lenna's swap are now sunning themselves in Floriday, the lucky things. If you want to view them on her blog, they are here

Okay, that was it for today. Have a great day you all, take care and thanks for dropping in!

We had a nice summer yesterday....

Well, much to my suprise, the weather stayed nice all day. I even managed to walk into our little town, and had a coffee and a croissant at the baker's - it was their special offer of the day, so I didn't need to get too bad a conscience. And I discovered a little charity shop that belongs to the hospital. It's only opened 2 or 3 times a week, and up till now it has always been closed, but this time it was open. I made a bee line for the place where I saw lace, and found a whole load of hand made lace, which I just had to buy. So what with the coffee and croissant, my shopping money for this week has gone, but I have a few tins and packets here, so will not starve. And I have enough coffee for the week, too, so it should be OK. All in all I have about 12 meters of lace, so I have enough for my next tags, collages and LOs,

And these 2 pieces of sequin waste and a beaded pendant were thrown in for good measure!

And when I got home I decided to make another Family LO. I used the same technique as the day before, stamping with resist ink, inking, spraying, wiping it off to leave just a touch of colour, and then putting on 2 more layers. I stuck to Victorian Velvet, Forest Moss, Ancient Paper and Garden Fairy Spray, as I want the LOs to match. I want to do one more,as I have one more picture to use, and then it will be good. I used a transparency of my Mum with me when I was about 1 year old, and decorated again with lace, sugared vellum, flowers, and leaves etc.

So, that was all for today. Hope you have a great day, take care, and thanks a lot for dropping in!

A family LO

Sssssssssssssh! Don't tell! The sun is shining! I'm holding my breath so as not to disturb it! Wonder where it came from?

Sometimes I don't really know why I bother making things about my family, as they couldn't care less about me, but I suppose I do it because I need to remember them. For this LO I used a photo of my Mum and my eldest sister, taken about 1939 /40. For the background I have used a sheet of 12 x 12" ceramic card - a speciality stamping paper. First I stamped the rose and the owl each twice with resist ink, and let it dry before rubbing over the paper with a mixture of ancient paper, Victorian Velvet and Forest Moss inks. I sprayed it too with some garden fairy green from My tattered angels, before wiping the colour away, leaving just a faint colour and the images showed up white, Then I stamped again, using Victorian velvet for the roses, and Forest moss for the other images. The roses have been embossed with bridal embossing powder, and the owls and clocks with perfect pearls in gold. After they were heat set, I wiped the rest away with an old nylon stocking, it gets rid of the excess powder in no time! You can't see too much of the resist printing, as the light is not ideal, but you can see the white shadows. I used different embellishments - netting, flowers, lace, some prima leaves and some acetate butterflies and a corner. Was relatively quick and easy to make! was ma second DT piece for *the cheerful stamp pad*, where the theme still is petals.

Okay, that was it for today, had another lazy day yesterday! Have a great day, take care and thanks for visiting!

Sunday again.

Hi everybody, another new week is upon us, time flies faster than I can think! Today is not a sun day but a rain day - I was thinking of going to the big flea market in town, but bot when it's so wet! Pity!
I had a quiet day yesterday - well, actually I have a quiet day nearly every day! and spent my time reading and crafting. I was planning on doing some dreaded h*******k, but I stretched out onto the couch to see if there any cobwebs on the ceiling, and then it was three hours later - the time for doing the H*******k was gone. Bad luck, huh? How good that I didn't fall asleep before my crafting time!

Yesterday I just made some tags. I bought some new pajamas at the discounter's, and they were folded up with two pieces of wonderful white cardboard and 2 sheets of tissue paper. I think it is sooooooo clever of them to give crafting supplies as an extra to their pajamas - they weren't bad either! Anyway, I used one of the pieces of card to cut 4 large tags using the TH die. These I distressed using gradient colours of inks, and then had fun stamping and decorating them. I have made them rather surreal, like the dreams of strange things which do not seem to fit together. The first tag I am entering into the *Simon Says Stamp and Show* challenge, the others are just for fun. Sorry about the light reflexes on the first one!

Ans as i is Sunday, it is time for *Sunday Sketches* over at *Sophia's Blue Chair Diary*. I am sharing a blast from the past again, another picture painted in my holiday in Switzerland so many years ago, reminding me of the duck ponds surrounded by lush green and plants. Sophia is visiting her father, who is very seriously ill, so I am sending her lots of hugs and sparkles and wish her strength for this difficult time. Heather is hosting the swap today.

Thanks for visiting, have a great day and take care!

Getting framed....

Good morning you all! Yesterday was a wild, wet and windy day here, hardly nice weather for going out, so I stayed home and passed the time reading, crafting and listening to music.
Recently I was given a photo frame, made up of 4 frames all stuck together, by a neighbour. She had got it as a present, and didn't want it. It has been mellowing in my hall closet for a few weeks, so I thought it was time to work on it, It was quite new, beautiful, shining, high-gloss white, so I decided to alter that straight away. I painted it with a mixture of old gold acrylic paint, and rock candy crackle in tarnished brass and peeled paint. When it was dry, I toned it down with some stazon timber-brown ink, which I rubbed into the cracks and along the edges. Now it looks as if it has spent the last 50 years in the attic.... I painted the hardboard inserts first with gesso, and then with acrylic paints in ocher, brown, khaki and gold. When they had dried, I stamped them with script and flourish stamps in stazon brown, which I then embossed. Even if not much of it can be seen in the end, I like to *hide* things underneath collages or in pictures.

Some time ago I discovered 4 tiny strips of hand-written manuscript, with illuminated letters. It had been used to sew the binding onto a book dating from 1663. I showed the parchment strips to an expert at the museum, and she said they are from the 14th century, and that old parchments were often re-used to bind or repair *new* books.

As the pieces are so small, they do not have any real monetary value, but I wanted to make something to keep them safe and show them. So I made four mini collages, one to fit in each frame. I have used more scraps of old paper, lace, sack-linen, and some vintage images in each frame. In each one is also a *guardian* -the wise looking man in the first one, a stag's horn beetle in the second, a Mexican deity and an eagle in the third one, and a wise old owl in the last one.

And the last one shows the completed frame, which I have hung on the wall behind my computer table, so I can look at it.

And before I forget, I made my black and white challenge for *Just For fun*. This time I did a fairy tale motive with a unicorn. The sentiment means *Once upon a time*.

Well, this post has once again turned out longer than I intended, sorry! Have a nice day you all, take care and thanks for looking in!

Thursday .... and no mouse!

Hi everybody, today I made it to the coffee maker without seeing any dead mice lurking under my kitchen table, no leaves, either! Got my first cup of coffee without problems, and sneaked back to bed with it for a quarter of an hour which somehow stretched into a good hour. That's one if the good things about being a pensioner!

Yesterday I spent the day with my friend Inge. I buy fresh rolls on the way to her place, she gets the coffee and eggs ready, and has the table nicely laid when I get there, and then we sit over breakfast for about 2 hours, solving the problems of the world - except our own! After that we play cards, then it's time for lunch, then coffee and all of a sudden it's time to go home again. Why does time go so quickly when you're having a good time?

After getting home, I had to make a decision. H******k or some creative time? If you know me a little bit, you will know that I went into my arty kitchen and started making a mess. Actually I wanted to paint, and did start, but ended up making a rather dismal collage instead. I used browns and greens and some gold for the background, and then collaged layers of torn maps and other pictures from a tourist prospect, before adding some sack linen, string, dyed flowers, lace etc. The picture in the middle is an old postcard of *L'inconnue de la Seine* - the unknown female from the Seine. In Wickipedia it tells us, *According to an often-repeated story, the body of the young woman was pulled out of the Seine River at the Quai du Louvre in Paris around the late 1880s. The body showed no signs of violence, and suicide was suspected.
A pathologist at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he had a moulder make a plaster cast death mask of her face. According to other accounts, the mask was taken from the daughter of a mask manufacturer in Germany. The identity of the girl was never discovered. The moulder who took the cast of the face was believed to be based at the Lorenzi family model-making firm. Claire Forestier, a member of the Lorenzi family, believes that the model was not dead when the cast was taken. She works in the family modelling workshop, and says that a dead body from a river would not have such clear features. She estimated the age of the model at no more than 16, given the firmness of the skin.
In the following years, numerous copies were produced. The copies quickly became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society. Albert Camus and others compared her enigmatic smile to that of the Mona Lisa, inviting numerous speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.
The popularity of the figure is also of interest to the history of artistic media, relating to its widespread reproduction. The original cast had been photographed, and new casts were created back from the film negatives. These new casts displayed details that are usually lost in bodies taken from the water, but the apparent preservation of these details in the visage of the cast seemed to only reinforce its authenticity.*

There are a lot more stories about her in the internet if anyone is interested. I always found her face and the story so intriguing.
I know this collage is rather different to what I often make, but sometimes I seem to need to do such things! The first photo shows the painted background,

Hope you all have a good day, take care, and thanks for dropping in!