Odds and Ends and Expenses, Oh, MY!!

I don't really have a lot to say today, but it has been an age since I posted, so I figured I'd share a little glimpse into the foggy windows of my life...

• Saturday (last post) we dropped Big Red off at the Toyota dealer for some torture. The check engine light had come on, and since Ornery was supposed to go out of town Sunday, we had Elizabeth meet us at the dealer after our last training session. The service technician said he thought it might be something that was covered under warranty. Then she dropped him off at work to pick up the rental car he was taking to Clovis, NM. 
• Sunday morning, bright and early, Ornery left for Clovis. There is no cell phone service there with our carrier, so we talked via the computer or his land line room phone. He worked 17-18 hour days, then drove home on Thursday. 
• Tuesday we found out the pickup was going to cost $1700. to repair. The main issue was indeed covered by an extended warranty (although the 2007 truck only has 45,000 miles on it) but the other issues were not. Since it is our only vehicle and we intend to keep it a long time, we went ahead and had it repaired.
• Wednesday afternoon the vehicle was finished, and they drove it home for us and parked it in the garage, so it was here ready and waiting for Ornery when he got home Thursday night! :) 
• Friday, July 3 was a holiday, so Elizabeth took him over to work to return the car, and his mom came over to work a puzzle with me. We enjoyed the long weekend.  Elizabeth and Michael went to Toys R Us and bought a few toys for our house,  because we just plain didn't have anything for our grandkids to play with!  I'm not sure I would have gotten the Lego Technic set Elizabeth selected, but Ornery and I spent an enjoyable Saturday morning building the three pieces. :)  It was the first time I had ever built one, as Ryan had never wanted my help when he got them as a kid. Before we knew it, Monday had rolled around again.
• Monday morning a man came to clean our dryer vent. It is not a good design, and feeds through the wall behind the dryer, up into the attic and out the roof. He took the pipe apart inside the attic, and located the problem--a bird had built a 12" deep nest in the top of the pipe, which impeded airflow considerably. The birds ended up in the garage for a few hours, cheeping and carrying on like they had been sorely abused. We were able to get them out eventually.
• Tuesday morning, a man came and fixed our sprinkler system--it had frozen over the winter and we were just now finally getting around to having it fixed. THAT was an expensive mistake!  Ornery had plugged in the heat tape, but either it was just too cold for it or the GCFI receptacle was bad and we didn't know it. 
• Monday night we had a call from the company that is training us in Real Estate, and that took pretty much all evening from 4:00 to 9:00.  We signed up for more training... It's all good, and I think this will be the best part as it is one-on-one mentoring.
• The week flew by, although I can't really tell you what we did.  Friday night, however, we hosted our kids and grandkids for burgers and dogs.  It was a delightful time. Micah really enjoyed the Lego set, and Makayla was quite taken with the horses and play food. 
• Ornery went to work a bit on Saturday, mowed the lawn, and did some online training. I did a bit of art, read some books, and lounged around.  My hip has been really aggravated lately for some reason, and it just wasn't appealing to be out and about.
• And here we are back in a new week. We just had our first mentoring call and did part of our first assignments. Ornery is assembling my new desk chair. 
• I signed up for a pocket letter group and several Swap Bot swaps and am looking forward to spending a bit more time in my art room this week.  

That's about it. When I condense it down to a short paragraph, it seems like a pretty shallow existence...

Weaving paper and yarn

This week I have been trying to catch up.  But, as the old saying goes, the faster I go, the behinder I get!  So, I finally just quit trying and decided to play for a while. :)

Violets ATC.  Background is sheet music painted with twinks, violets punched from several layers of paper, topped with sheet music painted with twinks.  Added washi tape (of course!) some liquid pearl in the flower centers and some scrapes through white acrylic paint with a credit card.

This one is pieced from various papers I had either painted or received in swaps.  The little houses are washi tape.  I used some glitter gel pens to draw on the little flowers in the field, and some white acrylic on my finger around the edges.  I am liking that messy edge look for some reason.

These two orange backgrounds were in a swap I received last week, and I was feeling the love for them when I was creating, so I used them in both backgrounds.  The heart came as an extra in a swap with one of my favorite swappers, (Hi, Julie!) :) and I liked the look so well, I made a second one.  Both swapped right away.

The weaving on the ATCs above is from the edges of the sheet music I had painted.  I use every last little scrap of those painted papers!!

And, speaking of weaving, Elizabeth whipped out this shawl for my sister Mimi in no time at all!  It was difficult because she had to hand weave every line (as opposed to using her long hook) but it went so fast because she skipped two nails each pass, that it was only on the loom three days!  She only works on these when she comes for coffee in the morning and after she eats lunch, so about an hour a day.

The yarns are purple eyelash and ombre bamboo with purple and chartreuse streaks in it.  Here is a close up of the weave.

And, here is the finished product.  No fringe was needed as the hairy yarn does a nice job of finishing it off.

This Week's Art

My dream of regular posts here on my blog has not really come to fruition as I had hoped, but here I am with a little art update.  Hopefully by the end of today I will have another post ready with a little garden room update, because I am sure you are waiting with baited breath to see our progress! :)

This first piece is 6X9 inches.  It started out as the back cover for the last art journal I made, but was too thick to go into the machine that punches the holes for a spiral bound book.  So, since it was already taped and paper covered, I decided to make it into something else.  I had signed up for a "letter writing project" that turned out to be anything BUT letters, and my partner in that was the recipient of this bit of collaged mixed media.  She said it was, "the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given her."  Made me happy that she liked it! :)

These six Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) are for a "jam" or "round robin" where three artists collaborate, then each one ends up with two completed cards in the end.  The first is a young man in Michigan with whom I have been swapping ATCs for a couple of months.  Great guy!  I put on the second layer, then sent them on to a pen-friend I met on Instagram with whom I am doing all sorts of swaps including both art journals I have sent off!

This is one of two ATCs (both shown below) I made for a swap-bot swap with a Valentine's Day theme.

The Facebook group I am part of (Mixed Media ATC Artists) does two swaps per month.  This one is Red or Pink with a heart.  We make three cards to swap, this and the next two are my offerings for this swap.

One of my Instagram friends is a teacher in Neosho, MO, and is doing a handmade postcard swap with several of her students 5th-8th grade.  She asked for volunteers who would be willing to swap with the kids, so I did this one. I recycled the cover of a calendar I received from my daughter who faithfully brings me all sorts of crap wonderful crafting materials. :)

This picture is my first art journal page in one of the traveling journals I am participating in.  The owner of the journal likes purple and blue, butterflies and outdoors.  It was a tremendous learning experience for me, and while it was not what I would have made had I known at the beginning what I learned in the process, I think she will be happy with it.

And, lastly, more giftings from Elizabeth (Victoria Secret packaging) turned into post cards.  I covered them with vintage maps, used washi tape, modeling paste, some new stencils, embossing powder, Dylusions inks, Stickles Glitter, some stamped tissue paper I got in a swap, embroidery floss and found letters. One is a thank you card for a RAK I received in November, and the other is for a mail art swap.

I took these postcards to the Post Office to make sure I had sufficient postage on them, and Ornery brought the boxed mail up to the counter while I was there.  Apparently there had been wild speculation among the postal employees as to who the recipient of all the wildly decorated mail was.  :)  I think they were disappointed that I was just an ordinary patron, not some Casanova with lots of girlfriends from all over the world.  :D  However, they seemed to be enjoying all the colorful mail I get.  Sadly, they don't get to see much of the wild stuff I send out!

Home Alone

After company for Ornery's birthday and a full week of overnight company, Ornery and Elizabeth (who had the flu earlier in the week) are finally back at work, my sister and brother-in-law are on the road headed back to Tucson, and the house is empty for a few hours, except for little ol' me!

The construction project, while fraught with challenges and accidents, is mostly complete.  We have a wall, French door with knob and lock, window, power, (which was quite a feat requiring a new breaker box, ceiling outlets, wall outlets and a new exterior porch light, exhaust fan motors...) HVAC connected to the main house with return air vent, exhaust fans and insulation overhead and in the wall.  The green-board sheet rock is up on the inside wall and other than a bit of sanding, ready to paint. The exterior hardi plank siding is up and also ready to receive paint.

There were weather related issues to deal with throughout, since the entire country experienced record breaking cold temperatures.  Fortunately, we had a propane heater, and borrowed Ornery's mom's double burner model, so the guys were able to pour the floor leveling material (required to install the door on a level surface) and dry the joint compound on the sheet rock so it could be sanded.

CW spent about 10 hours in the attic on that coldest day since 1912, and was so cold when he finally came down his feet were too numb to balance on the beams and he almost fell through our bathroom ceiling.  The only actual casualty was the staple gun he had in his hand which he flung in his effort to grab hold of something to break his fall, and because of the deep insulation, he was unable to locate it.  The project was rather hard on staple guns.  I think they ended up breaking/buying 3 or 4 by the time it was all done!

The blown insulation was a three person job requiring two in the attic yelling instructions to the third person in the garage tending the machine.  In the end I think they broke that as well as part of Ornery's shop vac.  Other than those casualties, however, I haven't heard of any other disasters.

Ornery is delighted to be so far along on the project, although he has a whole lot more work to do before we are close to ready to start planting any seeds, but overall it was worth the wait for CW and Mimi to be able to come.

Mimi did a lot of the cooking while they were here.  She is more of a foodie than I am, and frankly, I tend to just throw something together at the last minute and hope for the best.  Not her!  We ate high on the hog for a whole week, and that without gluten, sugar or (for me) any dairy or nightshade foods!  Other than the cooking, however, I had her steadfastly occupied in my studio making her first Artist Trading Cards, some greeting cards, and on the last day, prints on my new Gelli-plate printing plate.  Of course I was occupied in similar pursuits, and have a few photos to show for my week's worth of absence from the blogosphere...

Elizabeth finished the green shawl she had on the loom before Christmas, and came over one afternoon and started this new one for Michael's sister.

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 The first day in the studio with Mimi, we got out the Twinkling H2O watercolors and painted assorted random papers.  Then we played with them.  This ATC was made using some emboss resist (chicken wire stamp) and the Twinks.  I was all set to swap it until Mimi said she wanted one just like it, so I gave it to her. :)

 This is a post card for a SwapBot swap called Gift-wrap Mail Art.  I used tissue paper for the background, added washi tape and flowers, sealed it all with gloss gel medium, and then added the flowers, brads and eyelash yarn on the right side.  I was going to send it "naked" but in the end put it inside a clear plastic sleeve for mailing.  No point in clogging up the mail machines, right?

 After we finished with the Twinks, I showed Mimi how to use Alcohol Inks.  This background paper was just a slick white paper I added various ink drops to.  I applied the felt applicator to parts of it, and used a coffee stir stick to "blow" to make the runs.  I stamped a jar image on some silver vellum, added the gold cap with liquid pearl, and stuck on the little asparagus spears I had in my stash.

 Then I decided to just get busy and make a few ATCs for trading.  This one is using some new papers I got for Christmas in a 6X6" paper pad.  Nothing extraordinary, but certainly fun!

 I ended up sending it to one of my pen-friends inside this card.  I found the stamp of the little chick in the clearance bin at Hobby Lobby on the day Mimi and I were sent on some errands for the guys.  We took a rather long side-trip to HobLob and spent my Christmas gift card (plus a bit more) and Mimi bought some yarn for Elizabeth to make a shawl for her, along with a few fun paper crafting items.

 Another card I made using the paper pad...

 Then we got out the modeling paste and silks acrylic glaze.  This was my first attempt at using a rubber stamp on the surface of the paste.  I didn't care for the result of that part, but by the time I added inks and silks to the ATC, I was pretty pleased with the final product.  It traded right away, so someone else liked it, too! :)

 After my success with the modeling paste on the first one, I decided to just get several cards out and play with it some more!  This one (and the ones following) were painted white with acrylic paint, then spritzed with Dylusions spray ink.  Then I applied modeling paste through various stencils, some of which I mixed with the over-sprayed ink on the mat, then highlighted with silks acrylic glazes.  And a bit of Stickles, glitter glue.  The little butterflies are punched out of scraps...

 This one uses just little spots of the modeling paste, a little tab I cut from some QuicKutz dies, a torn bit from one of the papers we painted with Twinks, some washi tape, and a wire tree. I used silks around the edge of the card to add a bit more dimension and sort of frame it.

 This one was probably my favorite.  The white acrylic paint on the surface of the card mixed with some inks left the base pretty shiny.  The modeling paste has no shine whatsoever, so you can really distinguish the outline of the stencil I used as an imprint.  I added drizzles of silks over it and around the edge, then I used a heat gun on it to make the paint bubble up.  When it cools, the uneven surface gives an interesting texture.

The hearts are cut from scraps of old Russian sheet music I had in my scrap box, and I edged them with gold stickles.

 For this ATC, I squeezed some modeling paste onto the surface of the card and used a notched tool to drag through it and give it some shape.  Once it was dry (and very WHITE) I decided to add some Key Lime Silks acrylic glaze.  I applied it with a stick, so it is pretty thick on the surface of the modeling paste, but it is almost eye-popping bright under the lights.  I love the shimmer of those glazes!!

 For this ATC I used a clock stencil with some colored modeling paste (mixed in some ink from the overspray) then sealed it with gloss gel medium.  The other accents are washi tape, Tim Holtz metal embellishment and Eyelet Outlet doggie brad.  It is my last dog brad, and I think I may need some more of those!! :)

Yesterday, which ended up being a bonus day since they were able to stay longer than originally planned, Mimi and I got out my new Gelli printing plate.  We started out using my acrylic craft paints but quickly discovered that we liked the look we got from the Silks much more, so we ended up going back and applying silks to all the first prints we made.  After they were all dry, I cut them in half so we each got to keep 1/2 our work. It was time consuming and very messy, but we both had a great time with it and I am sure I will get it out often to make background papers for future projects.

So, that was my week!  I will post photos of the before and after garden room once we get a little further along.  I would like to get some of the mess cleaned up before I put photos out there for general consumption! :)