PATCHES FOR PURSES

These goofy little characters are for the purses I'm trying to make. Well, I don't really make the purses, Minh does but I embellish some of them. I use fabric paint and permanent markers. I'm super impressed. It all actually works better than I thought it would. The colors are fabulous and blend well.

BLUE DAYZ IV

More blue stuff. This is the "real" BLUE DAYZ IV. I guess I skipped BLUE DAYZ III. All fixed now. Left is my son Andy's ratty old shoe that he wears all the time. It's falling apart, it must be very comfy.

We've had a great summer so far. Baseball, swimming, parks, movies, berry picking, parties (thanks Tina for the great birthday party!), a garage full of boys, and lots of camping. I thought for sure I would do all kinds of drawing on the camping trips.

No such luck. The camping trips this year have been so much work, some of the sites were strange. During our stay at Detroit Lake, Oregon, Andy's tent caught on fire. Horrible and scary to hear your son yelling at four in the morning, "Fire! Dad, Fire!" They had a citronella candle burning. No one was hurt but we were wide awake for a long, long time. Also, strangers came in off the lake and wandered into our site all day. Our private bathrooms became public because we gave up trying to get all the people back on their boats, while explaining that our site was private. It was not a good trip. The last lake we went to must have had a yellow jacket nest near by. My brother drank a bee and every time one of the little suckers would buzz near me, I would wail about and trip over something. Usually my four year old nephew, poor guy.

The redeeming quality was my brother and his family were right there with us through all of it. Nice to have them in our lives.

The boys got a kick out of the bug who snuck onto my sketch book and got squished when I closed it, only to be discovered the next time I opened it up. As you can see to the right. He kind of left a good impression. ;)

Below is Andy eating a slug on our one good camping trip at Paradise, Oregon.

He's didn't really. :)

SEWING IN SISTERS OREGON

My Sister-In-Law and I were in Sisters Oregon for a weekend of sewing. Lots of fun! The house, my best friend Jan rented us, was perfect for the sewing weekend. We each had our own "stations". We even had an ironing station and cutting station set up.

My quilt is the black and bright one. I still need to applique some of the pieces onto the quilt and do a ton of embroidering, don't know how to do either! What have I got myself into? I'm glad I chose to go small. Neece decided to do a full queen bedspread!

My SIL (Neece) is making her quilt for her Mom's bed. Beautiful material, as you can see, along with pictures of the grand babies. Neece is really good at quilting. You would never know this is her first attempt at quilting. I'm jealous of her quilting abilities! :) Her mom will be so surprised!

BLUE DAYZ III

"Bones" the dragonfly. I love this guy, he reminds me of a spine or something. Still playing with the "bottle of ink in a pencil", pencil.

I'm looking forward to a few more acrylic paintings. One will be of a pot of flowers. Each flower will represent one of my girls. Peggy, Mom, Gram, Tina, Denise, Minh, Jan, Stacey and Jill. The next one is for Mark and Minh not sure what they want, something green? The last is for Tim and Denise, a land scape.

I'm ssslllloooowwwwllllyyy finishing the mural painting in my bathroom. That project is strictly when the mood strikes.

Oh and all the little things, hand carved stamps, cards, painting the book cases.....whew, to much to mention!

BLUE DAYZ II

More "Bottle of ink in a pencil" art work. This time I tried to use it softly. More of a sketch than a drawing. I played around with the reflection. I don't have it right but I like the effect and I think I'll try to set something up with a reflection and try to practice it from life. I don't normally draw anything from life. It's all imagination. I should do more "life" work so that I can practice perspective. My imagination goes bananas all the time, way more fun than real life!

BLUE DAYZ!

The renovations are almost complete. Monday should be the last day, I hope!

I've been playing around with a pencil called, "bottle of ink in a pencil", I love it! Unlike watercolor pencils the "ink" doesn't bleed as much. You have more control over the washes. Above are some drawings I did at Tommy's baseball practice. The flower on the left hand corner of the note book is a hand carved stamp. I carved 16 stamps for the Art Literacey volunteers. I just traced the stamp with the ink pencil. Below are close ups of some of the little drawings.

HAND PAINTED CANDLE

This candle I painted for my friend Cheryl. She LOVES dragonflies! His wings are sparkled with glitter glue which doesn't show up very well in this picture. I think, I'm going to paint this little guy all over the walls in my kitchen. Ssssshhhhhh, don't tell Paul. We are under construction in the house. New kitchen counters and new wall....well they took out a part of a wall. New bathrooms and new computer area. Whew, lots of chaos. New posts will be few and far between until all is back to normal!

Are you happy Tina? New post! :)