Last page from the PhotoArt Journaling class

Holy cow it's been a brutal week! I am on vacation this week and spent the first half re-decorating the bathroom. Painted, refinished the door and put in a new floor. I was so tired last night I wanted to sit down and weep and have no one to blame but myself - LOL! These projects seemed so much easier 25 years ago... What's up with THAT??
I am two assignments behind in LK Ludwig's PhotoArt Journaling class (among many other things I am now behind on, but hey, I have a spiffy new bathroom) so figured I might as well go ahead and post what I decided would be the final page in my journal. I have 5 pages left to fill in my little book from the hippy store and I am out of black ink in my printer. I do intend to finish but doubt I will get it done in the next two days!

A little help from my friends

This is the PhotoArt Journaling assignment to create a page based on a song that is stuck in your head. Where would we be without friends! Go here and be grateful for the ones that "stand by YOU".

Broken Winged Bird

This is the second part of the page I posted yesterday. It is a two-page spread for the PhotoArt Journaling class. Only 9 days left and I still have 2 pages to make for the "lets play" assignment and haven't even started on the portraits assignment. As a matter of fact, I don't even have any portraits in my "vast archive of photos" - LOL!

You can cage the singer but not the song

Another page for the PhotoArt Journaling class. Still no white china marker - not even from the Home Depot - so I continue to work around...
This is one of the husband's beautiful dahlias, pressed up against the cage designed to keep it from toppling over.
The quote is from Harry Belefonte.

A new journal page

This is the next page for the photoart journaling class. I really didn't have anything in my vast archive of images (LOL!) that would qualify as "cute" so I went with something I think is pretty. The more I work with color photos the more I think I prefer the black and white. Somehow they have an "edgy" look that I like better. Discovery.....

Estate Sale

Earlier this week two different friends told me about an estate sale for their PartyLite dealer's grandmother. My day wasn't going very well until my daughter-in-law called me while I was at K-Mart buying mouse poison (that's another a story I won't inflict on you!) and asked me if I wanted to go to the sale. WELL, YES!
I found this wonderful old wooden sewing box right inside the front door. Yes, I think it was just waiting for me to rescue it. I would have paid the $3.50 just to get the two rusty old corsage pins tacked inside the lid. The dark things dangling lower on the lid are safety pins, all strung on some sort of metal clip. I haven't seen something like before and wonder if that's the original purpose. The inside holds a variety of vintage and newer ribbon, lace and trims. There are a couple pieces of lovely hand-crochet lace.

There was a huge stack of vintage sheet music, easily a foot and a half high. I picked out these for the wonderful graphics on the covers.

My dear girl loves her old books and got as many as she could carry. Really. If she could have carried more I'm sure she would have!

Funny how junk can just turn my day right around!

Beauty related to nature page

This is the assignment for choosing an image of beauty related to nature. This one was a struggle! I wanted to start switching to color instead of the black and white but my printer simply would NOT make lavender flowers. It insisted they were pink. Well crap. So I finally settled on PSing them with the poster technique since they weren't the natural color anyway. I still haven't gotten a white china marker so I'm going to have to do SOMETHING to set the white pastel I sketched with. Don't touch it. That would be one thing...

Think good thoughts

People who know me know I am a natural optimist (or maybe a happy fool!). I have had the Playing for Change CD for a couple of weeks now and I think I am well on the way to wearing out track #7 on my way to work each morning. It pretty much sums up my outlook, simple as that. It's even better with the video. Go here and let Keb Mo singing "Better Man" make your face sore from smiling!

The JOURNEY assignment - traveling shoes

Here are the next two pages from the PhotoArt Journaling class. I chose the technique where you blank out the background. I didn't have a china marker so I used gesso. The "subjects" in the pictures are outlined with charcoal pencil. I really like that look. The "GO NOW" is on masking tape because I hadn't tried that suggestion yet. That page came out a little busy but that's okay. It's all about trying things.

I also made a page in between the sailboat page and the staircase page. It doesn't have a photo at all so I won't post it for the class. When I was doing the assignment of searching for quotes I found too many and I liked this one so much I had to include it:

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be... Close your eyes and let your spirit start to soar and you will live as you have never lived before. -- Erich Fromm

How beautiful is that?

Button Hunter Bliss

I had the amazing good luck to find not one, not two, but THREE button lots yesterday. The first two were from my favorite thrift store. They were packaged up in two separate bags but I can tell they came from the same sewing box since there were matching items in both. I found the jar at an estate sale.

Let me tell you a little about the woman who owned the first two lots. Where to begin... She was a quilter. There were 7 thimbles in all and one of them is leather. One is plastic and from the 15th annual International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas. That show is in it's 35th years now. It must have been quite a thrill for her to attend! She valued beautiful things. Some of the buttons were surely her mother's or maybe her grandmother's. There are bone underwear buttons - how long since anyone used THOSE! There are mirror-back twinkles, red glass (yes RED glass!); you don't see many of those. She knew to save them. There is a green art-deco style buckle and a few beautiful rhinestones. There are MANY mother-of-pearl buttons. Some of them very tiny like you found on baby clothes back before we realized buttons weren't the safest thing on baby clothes. I think she had girls. The only "manly" trinket in the lot was a lone marble but there were quite a few beads and stray jewelry findings. And the most touching thing of all - a baby tooth. Big sigh.

An afternoon of poking and sorting and button box bliss! Maybe I'll take a few close-up shots a little later and post those so you can see the really cool ones and I can get some practice with that "macro" setting on the camera. Good excuse - right? Besides, I'll get to poke through them some more......

Kitchen Still Life

I was fixing my breakfast this morning and noticed I had a lovely little still life sitting right there on my kitchen counter. Winter squash harvested just a few days ago and bonus tomatoes as they near the end of the season.

Mystery

I was surfing around today, reading quotes for the next PhotoArt Journaling assignment and I ran across this one:
The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.
--- Francis Bacon
This could be interpreted a number of ways... Deepen the mystery by making you wonder? Make you wonder what? What the artist was thinking? What the artist is making YOU think? How the artist made it? Why the artist made it? How it makes you feel? It's a mystery.

Photo Art Journaling Class - some pages done!

The first assignment was to choose two photos that "resonate". Resonate meaning that they are somehow related or speak to the same "feeling". Boy howdy, this is deep. So here is the second picture. It "resonates" - no? The assignment was to print out the pictures and then scratch them and then write on them. It was suggested to write with white so it would "pop" on the black and white photo. I really struggled with that part and tried three different brands of pens and none would write on my pictures. Do over, do over, do over... That is why I finally ended up stamping the words on the pictures.
I'm not sure the "scratching" is my thing. Maybe a little too grunge-look for me but I wanted to explore, after all that's the point of taking a class, right? So I went for it. More do overs...

This third picture is the second assignment called "Echo". Pick a picture that echos the theme of the first two. Black and white and mounted on black background with white writing was the general suggestion, although she said you can do whatever you want. I really wanted this class to stretch me off the path I would normally follow so I went with the suggestions.

The pages in my little book from the hippy store are very soft paper and off-white so I painted them by dragging the paint over the paper with the edge of a credit card. The paper is very absorbent so it soaked a LOT of paint. I inserted wax paper between the pages and pressed them with a heavy weight while they dried. So far the little book is holding up to my abuse!

Now to go post them on the Flickr sight where the rest of the class can see them. Big gulp.

PhotoArt Jounaling class

Yikes! I've been so busy working on my journal (or should I say REWORKING!) that I forgot to post anything since Sunday. Let me just say that it's been a struggle. Many struggles. I don't have that "archive of hundreds of photos" she talked about so struggling to find photos that fit the assignment and then struggling to get my printer to co-operate with me and then I couldn't find a white pen that would write on the photos so ended up reprinting them FOUR TIMES. Good grief. The class was only $25 but I think I've got about three times that in supplies so far - LOL! It's all good. I like the journaling prompts. She really makes you think about what to photograph and how to write about the pix. And that is really what it's all about. I am learning.

Art & Soul vendor night

I couldn't attend the classes but my daughter-in-law, Alayna, her niece and I went to the Vendor Night last night. We entered through the wrong door so a young woman lead us "upstream" as they opened the doors on the other side. OMG, they released the hounds! She was cautioning them ... slow down girls, slow down! So much good stuff and so little time. The crowds were three-deep at the tables selling the bits and bobs for making art and crowds at most of the artist tables as well.

Speaking of artists. I got to see DJ Pettitt, Stephanie Lee, Lisa Kaus and Katie Kendrick so that was cool since I follow their blogs. I never got close enough to talk to them, not that I was brave enough, anyway! I saw Michael deMeng. I SAW MICHAEL DEMENG. Stood right in front of his table and breathed some of his same air. I hope it helps. I stopped at Teesha Moore, Misty Mawn and Sally Jean's tables, too, but never actually saw them. Oh! And I saw Linda and Opie O'Brien too. Funny how people never look quite like you think they will when you see them in person. I could swear I saw Victoria MacKenzie-Childs in the crowd. She wasn't on the list teaching there or selling there but it sure looked like her. I feel like I've been to Hollywood!

They had a no-host bar (smart marketing strategy !) but I steered clear since I made that mistake at event like that once before and eventually stopped bothering to even put my debit card back in my purse; just walked from one booth to another and handed it to then - LOL!

Even at that I came home with a nice pile of "loot". Many, many colors of satin ribbon, velvet ribbon, lace and trims, a handful of old keys, including a strange Asian key, very vintage millinery flowers, some birds and a BIG stack of vintage sheet music with cool graphics on the covers, a packet of French-themed book pages and pages from an old handwritten diary. I missed out on the vintage French fasion magazine - procrastinated too long and someone else snapped it up. You snooze, you lose. Believe me, I could have spent HUNDREDS of dollars.

Now that I know what's going on, I will positively go again next year and plan to bring more money. I saw the most gorgeous necklaces and earrings with birds on them. Somehow I came away without getting a card from the artist and I have Googled all the names on the event map that are in the vicinity where I saw her and none seem to be the right artist... Grrrr!

Who knew!

titivate (TIT-e-VAYT) verb, also tittivate
1. spruce up.
2. adorn.
3. put the finishing touches to.
Related words: titivation (TIT-e-VAY-shen) and titivator (TIT-e-VAY-ter) both nouns.