Dream big-Round Robin

This months book belongs to Lisa Miller and her theme is based on a quote about dreams. I glued fabric to two pages and decided to stick with black and white with a few shades of grey thrown in. Several years ago I did a workshop on dreams for a few friends and it was a fun experience. Several thoughts were swirling around in my head. I have been having nightmares lately about going back to work. Making art is a great way to avoid sending out more resumes. When you are really good and qualified for one thing and then you look for something new it is a little bit daunting.

I volunteer at the New Children's Museum and a bunch of us got to go in yesterday and restock the supplies. One of the exhibits was involved in an accident (I know this sounds strange but you can only guess what can go wrong with kids in an open space. Gross.)

I was building these white cardboard boxes and was given the task of draw animals on four sides of the boxes. I have spent the last six months drawing animals and felt comfortable drawing in marker. I create less rules for myself when I am working on something where the audience will be children. If it looks weird just try to make the animal smile and it's all good. I can't wait to see what the kids create on the rest of the boxes.

When I came home I looked at my reference photos for sheep and the rest just came up. It's a little bit interactive since the small sheep has a movable head. If I can't sleep I meditate or make up stories till I drop off. Counting sheep would be a meditation but I need a little more to focus on to shut my brain off. The envelope on the 2nd page has a message to the universe. All the small photographs are of roads. The 3rd page is the Poe quote to close the piece.

Ohh the bees

The last panel is linen with cotton thread embroidery. A few years ago I was stung by a bee that flew off an elephant but it has dual meaning for the story. Friendship has prickly points. In the end it's hard to be a good friend but I am so grateful for the friends I do have.

This went off in the mail on the 2nd and the new book arrived on Saturday. I had a good time interpreting the theme tribes for Kathy's book. I am very lucky that our public library has a large collection of Lynda Barry books so I have been devouring those as of late. I love the way she is able to mix real concepts with graphic images. Quite a few of her stories have made me tear up because they are so heartbreaking. I would love to expand the story but it seems like a giant process that I can't take on at the moment. I'm lucky that I still have several years of journals to draw from if I need story ideas.

On the farm or at the fair

I spent yesterday afternoon at the fair. I ate a hearty breakfast(oatmeal and fruit) and was ready to chow down by the time I got off the train in Del Mar, California. Due to some accident I rode the Amatrack train up the coast and I had forgotten how amazing the views were. I always liked riding on the side of a mountain. When I was in college I would take the train from central New York to Maryland. It was a long ride and not that much cheaper than a plane but I enjoyed reading and making things on the ride. I am now tempted to take a longer trip.

Anywhoo at the fair I had a great time walking around and I was able to take a ton of pictures that I can use as reference for drawings . The 4-H booths and the garden center are my favorites.




I had a run in with a giant pretzel so my dreams of eating through the fair were dashed quite quickly.

11,192 steps late I was exhausted and ready to ride the train back home and stop off for a hot tea. I even made dinner and ended up walking 7 miles. June is our overcast month and it is spreading into July. The sun came out at $:30 right when U was leaving but it was bright enough to be enjoyable. Journal pictures later.

Round Robin- in progress

This will be a 3 page spread but I'm a bit stumped about the 3rd page so I am putting it down for a day or two and then I'll dive back in. I know I'll go back in and work on the bee sting page but it's a nice start. Now if the middle page would pop into my head I would be all set. This is Kathy's journal and the theme is tribes. I didn't want to do anything literal so I brought up the themes of friendship and the hive.

Happy Solstice

I wanted to make something fun with a summer theme and fresh fruit popped in my head since I eat a ton of it. You almost have to force feed me vegetables but fruit I will gladly eat all day long.

I started putting things together a couple of months ago letting the perfect things fall into my lap so no pressure. I mixed the fruit with a picnic theme (small journal, marshmallows, chocolate, tea, animal crackers, candy, napkin, tea strainer, book, fold up bag and lip balm). I figured that they were all perfect for one of my friends and her birthday is next week so I packed it up and shipped it off to the east coast.

Happy Summer. When is the sun going down? I want to go to bed (smile).

Mail day

I've taken a little art break to work on putting packages together. The top package is on its way to Maryland to visit my mother. It contains the round robin journal that I have going with my mom and a Mother's Day gift from my sister. The gift arrived a couple of days after she left so I was tasked with sending it along and it just fit.

The bottom package is going to my round robin partner in Canada. I did an ode to the book inside. I haven't done color blocking in a long time and I just found my pack of sticky back paper. Sticky back paper is my one pleasure in the scrapbooking asile.

I have two more packages in the works that will go out in the next few days. I had to shop for baby clothes this weekend. EEEEEEk. Painful if you don't have kids. So many little expensive choices and some of them are impracticle. Why would you make linen pants for a baby? I loved those pants but I wanted the baby's mom to talk to me again so I didn't buy them.

I leave you with a lovely summer salad. I love a picnic.

Bunny love

I love layering tracing paper over fabric. I'm still working out the details for creating the translucent aspects but I like the mix so you can see the layers but it may be fun to see it to fully blended. Clear gesso works on fabric but it produces cloudy effects on darker fabric so gloss medium works best for this.

sending this off to my mother in the morning for our book exchange