Something About Nothing

 While on vacation last week I discovered Jerry's Artarama brick and mortar store in Phoenix.  I have shopped their online store so I had to stop and have a look around. My daughter came with me and we had a great time!   We both fell in love with these giant paintbrushes. *drool* I really like Jacquard's Lumiere paints, so I bought a few more colors to try.  I also bought another Catalyst mini blade. The employees were very helpful and friendly.  One of the employees, Angela, used to live in the Salt Lake area. We really appreciated her help in finding what we were looking for.  When we left the store my cheeks were hurting.  I realized as we drove away the pain was because I had been smiling the entire time I was in the store.

My copy of Quotes Illustrated arrived today! I've been im patiently waiting as many people reported that their copies had arrived from one coast to the other and so I was thrilled when mine arrived today. Even more so when I looked in and saw that Lesley Riley had autographed the book as well. What a treasure and collectors item! Here is the page with my artwork. *happy dance* Thanks Lesley for letting me be a part of this beautiful book! There are so many beautiful pieces of art work by wonderful artists and great quotes that Lesley has collected through the years.  You can buy your copy on Amazon .  The price keeps bobbing around as it becomes more and more popular and is currently about $16.  Last I checked it was #5 on the best seller list under the "Quotes" category!  Woohoo Lesley!

They are finished at last! As soon as I heard about Kick Off Your Heels , a fundraiser for  The Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at  Cedars-Sinai Hospital  in Los Angeles, California, I knew I wanted to participate.  Not only because this center treats and educates women, and does major research for heart disease with women exclusively, but because I personally have a bum ticker. You could say this is a fundraiser that is near and dear to my heart! While in my 40's my doctors discovered that I was having mini-strokes because of a hole in my heart.  Thanks to modern advancements I didn't have to have my chest cracked open.  The doctor was able to insert a titanium umbrella into a one inch incision in an artery in my leg and I was up and walking within a couple hours.   Easiest surgery I've ever had! (and I've had plenty!) Thank you for modern research!  I had an idea for the shoes but wasn't sure how to pull it off. ...

While visiting the  National Gallery of Art I learned about an interesting little machine called the Camera Obscura:   "Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside down, but with color and perspective preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation." Many variations of the camera obscura have been used for centuries. These artists were getting their basic outline by TRACING.  And it wasn't cheating. I love this revelation as I have traced photos (cameras are just a modern Camera Obsecura with a way of keeping the image) to get basic shapes and perspectives on drawings and I thought I was cheating .  Turns out I was just following in the footsteps of  Canaletto and Leonardo Da Vinci!

A few summers ago I had grandiose plans of doing crafts with the kids everyday - or at least every other day. This tie dye kit has been pining away in the cupboard ever since. I brought it out into the sunshine the other day and the children rejoiced. The kit came complete with dye in these sweet bottles (which I will definitely refill with my own dyes), a bunch of gummy rubber bands, some thin gloves and some very sparse instructions. The kids twisted and banded and banded and twisted. . . And then they dyed! died? dyed? OH NO NOT THE DYE! Oh how I love this little face! I could just squeeze his cheeks off every time I see him! The cheeks on his brother here were once just as sweet. It is only recently that he has outgrown them and it is a good thing because he was getting tired of me pinching them! Look at what a wonderful job he is doing putting the colors on his shirt. His shirt was one of the best ones actually. Too bad I don't have an after picture of it - yet. Ah m...

During our visit to the Arts Festival my daughters and I were facinated with the beautiful Journals made by this artist. Her art journals were well made and called to us, but our pocketbooks would not respond to the call, and so my youngest daughter and I decided to try making the journals ourselves. I found a great tutorial on the internet and we went to it. We used watercolor paper for the pages and a pleather we found on the remnant rack at the fabric store. The pleather doesn't have the same wonderful feel that leather does, but it did the job. We were both very satisfied with our first attempts at art journal making and can't wait to fill the pages with words and drawings.

At the beginning of June, I somehow discovered an event near my home that sounded like a lot of fun. The Face Off at the Urban Gallery was to be an event in which nine local artists would be given 18 hours to create masterpieces on 9 garage doors outside a place called Neighborhood House . I really wanted to go and so I took my two youngest, my neighbor, her dog and a dog we were tending and we went off to check it out. We like it so much we went back two more times! I took a lot of photos and had plans of posting them all but decided to limit it to a few and post a slide show of the rest. When we arrived on the first day most of the garage doors were in the very early stages of being painted. We watched for awhile as the artists painted - mostly with spray paint. You can see the beginning photos in the slide show. When we returned the next day most of the doors were in their final stages. We watched as one artist put up an enourmous stencil and sprayed away with black paint. When the...

Summer vacation is like New Years around here. It is met with late nights, much rejoicing and lists of resolutions. I started this summer by recycling an envelope into my "Summer To Do" list. I have a list of all the pre-paid, pre-planned activities I've arranged for the summer: Piano Lessons and lots of practicing Volleyball camp Art camp Batik class Dye class Free Motion Quilting class Brindy's Wedding (wow, more of those are for me than the kids, that is a switch) A List of dated activities I would really like to take advantage of: Lavendar Days Arts Festival Urban Gallery Garage Door painting Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House Farmers Market And finally the longest list - things I would like to accomplish this summer: Visit Renea (and maybe the beach while we are there) Go strawberry picking Make strawberry jam Eat out of the garden Weed the garden (gag) Clear off the back patio so we can do lots of crafts outside Hang the kids art in the hall Quilt, quilt and qu...

Last week I received my weekly " Quilting Arts Embellishments" e-newsletter which demonstrated a photo transfer technique I had never heard of. As with most new things that I find interesting it has occupied my mind almost 24/7. I searched through a few stores for the product the technique required without luck. I then searched the products website and not only found a list of stores which carry Citrasolv but I also discovered a few other things. Citrasolv's website has great coupons on their website as well as instructions for using Citrasolv to make photo transfers. I finally found the product at Harmon's yesterday and I am so excited to give the technique a try. After having my photo printed at the copy shop, I put everything together to try this exciting new technique. I stretched the fabric around my 16" square ruler to make the fabric nice and tight. Then taped the photo on to the top of the fabric. I applied the Citrasolv lightly to the paper w...