i have a new plan ... really it might be an old plan .... or it could even be considered no plan at all.....

my plan, you see, is to do more art .... to get myself geared up for this show that i'm doing and that i have nearly no art for .... how can i sell a bunch of paintings if i don't have a bunch of paintings .... so ..... what if i FINISH a painting every day? how long can i do that .... how long can i post a new painting every day ...... well.....let's find out ...... this happy flower painting .... i'm calling it jack's flowers ...... is my third painting in three days ..... and that's with living a hugely full day (i won't bore you with the details...i'll stick with the "it's an art blog" thing ) ...... so ... tomorrow .... day four ...... and i'll have a fresh painting to post .... and .... i plan on working ahead so that saturday and sunday, which are tough days for finishing art, i can post something new .... so how many can i do? i know i can manage five, six, even seven ..... but what about 10? fifteen? 20? ... i actually have no idea how long i can keep up the momentum ...... we shall see!!!

happy editor's note .... or, editor's happy note... added later: i added this to my flickr site before soccer practice ... and now, just after soccer practice, it already it has quite a few comments and a favorite ....... gotta love that happy flickr thing ....... shout out to mary carmen, becorama, and lisa kettell for already telling me they think jack's flowers are groovy toovy ......

when i was a kid, i loved to play monopoly with my brothers and especially liked when i got both utilities.....no fretting about affording houses

i had another happy day in my art room ...... all my planning out of projects on saturday is really working well for me ..... i feel very productive .... and don't spend much time dithering about colors and pieces and papers and things .... cause i did all that dithering on saturday .... and for the most part, i didn't do much mind changing ......

if you want to see the beginnngs of this piece you can look at the bare paper background ...i think this is the bottom left one ..... and the first glazing....i think the far right one..... and then with some stenciled letters ..... it is the one on the right, though it took me a while to figure that out cause it is upside down .... and then, on saturday, it was all planned out and ready for the final work ......so ....that's the process ...... and now it's done .... i wonder if anyone will ever love it enough to buy it? .... or maybe it'll be a gift for someone come christmas time .... or maybe......or maybe i don't know what ...stay tuned ....i know i'll have another new piece to post tomorrow ...... and yes, it'll be more flowers ..... in fact .... i think i will be able to post a new flower canvas every day this week ...... cross your fingers for me!

i win, i win...i won the coolest mom contest ......my mom ROCKS.....

no, no...not ME...i'm not the coolest mom .... i HAVE the coolest mom .....thereby making me the big winner ..... i guess it means my brothers win too ... but really, it's my blog....so i'm the winner, ok?
anyway......
my mom just sent me this email :
Yesterday I was awarded the "art activist of the year- 2006" award by the tampa tribune and the brandon News! With another person with whom I worked to found the GREATER BRANDON ARTS COUNCIL last year. Will send article when it appears in the paper
LOVE, your mom, the activist!

how groovy is my mom? starting art councils and winning prizes and being an activist? .... she rocks!!
...here's her website too ..........


.... and ... this blue bingo-ness is a painting that i finished today ....... you can see the original background here ....and surely you recognize the green paper leaves from the big batch that i painted and posted yesterday..... i'm quite happy with how it turned out ...... even happier that i spent most of my day in my studio ...... tra la la......

gearing up to be a prolific artist and get loads done .....

hooray .... i got a ton of good art stuff done today ...... i started by painting dictionary pages green ..... they're lined up here light to dark ...... i did a ton because i have about 6 backgrounds that are READY to be flowerfied ...... i'm on the brink of having quite a few finished pieces ..... yippeeee!!





i have BUNCHES of canvases that are back- grounds .... ready to become something fabulous .... this one is a back- ground that started with a poster from and english newspaper, of herbs ....... i'm going with a jumbo sized playing card and ceramic disks i made last spring .... i'll use those red papers for borders or berries or some such accent color thing ..... it brings out the red in the jack, you see! ......



this piece is a background that is AT LEAST a year old ... maybe older .... not sure why i never felt the urge to finish it ..... though i suspect it is because it is not my usual size or shape .... it is smallish, and not square ... but .... while working in my studio and prepping for a bunch of foregrounds, i got out all my partial canvases and tried hard to figure out how to finish them ..... so, for this one, i've chosen the king and queen, matted them, picked some bottle caps ..... and we'll see if in the next couple of days if it works out!!



..... and this is one of the multitudes of canvases i did one day .... VERY small for me ..... it is 10 by 10 .....about a quarter of the size of my favorite small 18 by 18 ....... but i think with the electric company and some grape flowers, it's going to make it to finished this week as well .....

i also have a three foot square canvas under way ..... it is mostly brown ....except for the scrabble board on it ..... so it isn't much to look at ....yet ..... it is the painting i'm MOST excited to work on tomorrow morning ...... so .... i had a busy weekend of getting ready to finish some pieces ...... i'm thrilled with the progress ......

my pal, al, asked about doing an art show soon .... she'd heard there might be an opening and they'd be looking for last minute booths ..... the good news/bad news is that i really have hardly a bit of art in my house ready to do a show .... that's fab .... it means my work is sold, or on display at lola's ..... so that's good ... the bad is that i've signed up to do the marist show in about two months ....eek ..... so that's why i'm cranking .... and now that i just typed that all out, i wonder if i've already written this out in my blog ..... and i'm being repetitive for you .... if so, that just goes to show how it is weighing on my wee little brain !!

happy week to you ..... be artsy ......

it's a beautiful day and i walked the dog and we got muddy playing in a sprinkler and then i bathed her but now it is time for art ......

i have a GREAT day planned .....
three in the family have gone to play golf....
sophie and i are seconds away from going down to the studio to be artsy .....
so has a noon soccer game ....first of season....rah!
then, i plan on some more art moments in the basement, cause i am certain julia will want some time there with me .....
i might go to the tennis store to get new sneakers....i have shin splints.... woe is me, but i think new shoes will help .....
and then this evening we have a sitter, andy is putting on a tux (can i wear my new groovified skort? maybe not?) .... and we are going to a grand hooooha for the big brothers/big sissters ......
somewhere in there i have to gather together art supplies for my sunday school class ...... how groovy a sunday school class is that?
hope you have grand plans for your day too ......
in the meanwhile .... check this out:
i was at aj's website .... and she has a link to a groovy, cool glue sight where you can click on what you are gluing .... this to that ..... and they recommend the right glue for your job .... i'm into glue .... and found it interesting that neither e6000, nor gorilla glue are on their list, but, e6000 did get a mention in the faq's .....one frequently asked question that made me giggle? how do you glue half marbles onto a bowling ball? ponder that one ........
happy day....go glue something .... tra la la ......

...as you can see, i picked the pink and orange batch of fabrics to fancify my shabby skort .....

..... i've started my project that i told you about yesterday ..... i didn't realize just how many holes this skirt has .... it seems like in the last wash and dry that the fabric started to disintegrate ..... it has boatloads of holes .... it would give swiss cheese a run for the money ..... but .....on i go ..... i think i've done about five large patches .... and blanket stitched some seams and some hem ..... it's nice easy work that i've just been doing on the couch (tonight, the family watched a movie, so i stitched the whole time ......) ..... sophie was watching me stitch and said "mom that is going to be so groovy" ..... she doesn't actually use the word groovy ..... i think she was trying to give me a big complement ...... speaking my language ...... i told her thanks .... she thinks i should sew colors on all my clothes ...... that'd be quirky, huh?

what happens when the grooviest little skort EVER gets so shabby that it is toooooooo horrible to wear?

i have a favorite skort .... and it has so many holes in it that it probably isn't even decent to wear in public ..... especially for someone old enough to be my children's mother ..... so, it has been sitting in my closet, defying me to throw it out, rag bag it (which actually means putting it under the sink in my art room) or give it to goodwill ... not that they'd want it ..if you go see this skirt on flickr you can get a good look at some of the holes .... roll your mouse over the pic for tages....... i finally decided that i missed it enough as a wardrobe staple, that i needed to patch it .... so patch it i will ..... which means i got to dig out my fabric stash ..... i keep all my sewing things in a small set of rolling drawers ... plastic .... stores under my art table ..... lots of notions in there ....and when i moved into these drawers, i pared it down to manageable .... and it still seems a ton ... so i pawed and sorted and thought about what i might want from a re-lovelified skirt ...... picked some color palettes ..... and got nowhere ...... so.... took some pics and now i'm here .....waiting for skort inspiration ......
oh ... wait .....i'm gonna sew? do i realize that in less than two months i am supposed to have a booth at an art fair? and that i have no art to put in that booth? really, none to speak of? mostly not ....now, that's a great thing .... that my art mostly has somewhere to be ... but surely i should be working on canvases not skorts? .... oh well ..... i believe you have to do what the spirit moves you to do .... and i just want to wear this skort again ..... i'm thinking i'll do it up to go with some orange shoes ..... we'll see ....

so... this is a GREAT video you've got to watch it and then i have a little story to tell you .....

i saw this video on someone else's blog a couple days ago .... i copied it and saved it for a day that i didn't have a finished piece to show you ..... i LOVED it ..... kind of for the art thing ....we all have a vision .... and sometimes others can't seeeeeee our vision ... but you have to persevere .... and when you really get there other people can see it .... maybe ...... you hope!!

anyway, the black crayon-ness of it made me think of this story:

when my son was little, kindergarten i think...... he got a paper home in his folder and it said on top of it ....drew turned this in without completing it, please help him do it and turn in ...... so ..... i took the paper .... got the boy, got some crayons, and said, honey, why didn't you do this page? and he said, i did ..... and ever so very lightly , barely visible to the naked eye, he had put one faint yellow bit of crayon on the sun, identifying it as the s word ..... and the dog , the d word, had one wisp of orange .... each one was correct, on the entire page .... but if you didn't know that you were looking for a shadow of a crayon mark, you'd assume the page was flat out blank, save for the enormous DREW scrawled across the top ..... so, drew, in kindergarten there's lots of coloring ..... i understand that you understand all the letters and their sounds, but you need to put a titch more effort into the coloring .... draw darker.....color in the whole picture... don't just do a speck of color ...... he recolored that paper, did great, i felt like this fab, patient, helpful mom ..... until ..... the next day ..... when drew brought home a paper .....the c is for clown paper ..... with a post it note that simply said "is everything ok at home?" ....... eeeeek .... that is NOT the note you want to get ..... drew had taken me at my word.... he had colored darker .... he had colored every gosh darn bit of that clown ......ALL in black ..... every speck of that clown was jet black ....it was fully unrecognizable as a clown ..... he had to have used an entire crayon to achieve the thickness and the blackness ....he put his ALL into it ...... he followed my directions perfectly ....... what a good boy! now..... let's just retalk through those directions!

here's the process .... and hooray .... i finished a painting, even if it is a little on the small side for me ....

this collage on the right started life as a blank ten by ten canvas .... a titch small for my liking ... but, in theory, i bought it to stretch myself (to stretch by shrinking, how odd) .... anyway, i covered it in quirky papers and glazed it with a variety of colors ....mostly yellowy oranges and bluesy purples .......
then ..... after the glazing, i did another layer of acyrlics, with letter stencils ..... here, it is the one on the left .... purplish yellowish with letters now ..... to me, looking like a completed background ....ready for something .... at this stage, many (most?) of my canvases sit in my studio ..... sometimes for days...weeks....months ...and , truly, years ... waiting for what should be put on the canvas ..... divine inspiration needed ... the art muse whispering in my ear ..... alas ....there is no time table, sometimes it comes on quickly .... sometimes, oh so slowly .....
... but hooray .... we are talking days and weeks .... beginning to end ..... i did 11 backgrounds and this is the second small one i've finished .....if you look for the U in the corner you can tell that this canvas got rotated 90 degrees ( so that my purplish vase wasn't sitting on a purplish spot ...it needed a yellowish spot, of course) .... i picked grape soda flowers to go with the purplish in the background .... i SEARCHED high and low for a nice round hole punch .... couldn't find the one i wanted (how old will i be when i learn to put things away when i am done with them?) .... so instead of the good sized circle punch i used and ordinary hole punch that you'd have in your office desk .... small.... but i actually think having lots of small ones looks great .... kind of like berries .... or buds that are going to turn into bottle caps ..... right? ..... anyway ..... i have loads more art all set out in various degrees of doing on my studio table ..... so hopefully i will have a prolific week of flowers .... that's what i mostly have going on .... flowers of various make believe varieties ...... i have high hopes!!!

lots of dots and birds and orange and pink and green and daughters and painting and a sun shine day .....

happy labor day! ... we labored today on our chairs for the back porch ...... got them finished and out there .... i made a happy chair set on flickr so that you can see all of the chair shots easily ...go check out the close ups of the bird chairs ....pretty cute, if i do say so myself ... tra la la and happy day to you and yours ......

words to live by .... on a shopping bag

.... i knew a brand, fresh produce, because i have bought my girls some of their clothes ..... usually at the beach .... usually more expensive than i like .... usually off the sale rack, consequently ... but i've always thought it was cute, cute stuff.... soft cotton, bright colors, fun prints ..... and whadddaya know? when i was shopping today i found a whole store called fresh produce .... FULL of GREAT stuff ... a little more expensive than i like to spend ..... but oh so cute .... and, luckily, with a FULL sale rack ....waiting for me to find some end of summer colorful bargains ..... i got a cute tshirt, a turquoisey flippy skirt and a shrug ...though, i have trouble remembering the word shrug, it's not in my personal lexicon as an article of clothing, so from heretofore let's call it a cute little jacket ....anyway, three cutie pie purchases .....and they all came in the MOST fab bag.....


yes, i know it is peculiar, but i am blogging about a shopping bag ...... i saw it and thought, that is ME .... now, that's a weird thing to think about a paper sack!! but it is just MADE for an artsy girl ..... particularly for an artsy girl who is all about color .... loud, vibrant, woooohoooo color .........and, when i unpacked my things, inside on the bottom of the bag is a HUGE sign that says laugh .... it is on the cardboard that helps the bottom of the bag keep its shape .... so, i ripped it out and it is propped up for all to see .... sophie said, didja buy that today? nope, they gave it to me for FREE when i bought some clothes ......WOW! you are always so lucky, mommy! ......

laugh ..... i've had a happy day and hope you have too .... i'll show you the progress on my chairs tomorrow ... today, it seemed more important to share my shopping bag .....

i was going to have to post that my only artistic endeavor today was a trip to michael's but i pulled through in the end with some painting ...

i went to michael's with sophie sunshine today ......
i bought:
-e6000, my favorite, stinky, strong glue
-some wooden $1 nutcrackers to paint with the kids one day (hopefully for this christmas, but i won't count on it!)
-about ten boxes of various shapes .... to paint for a church fund raiser ... hopefully i won't do them all myself, i'll invite some pals over to help me do them ..... luckily some of them were clearance (the boxes, not the friends).....
-some on sale paint brushes, i can't resist good nylon brushes when they are on sale .....
-a head band witches hat for sophie .... she decided to be a witch for halloween... though we won't count on it ....it is kind of hard to commit to it at such an early date
-some dollar bin notecards and posty notes
-and FIVE sets of clock findings.... cause, tick tock, i'm thinking about a clock....or two .... or five .....

after michael's, so and i went to target .... for clearance summer tank tops for me ( my white one is shabby and it would be nice to start next summer with a fresh one, when you love something, buy another!) .... and for dental floss .... we use those little flosser stick things ..... and then sophie was at the jewels counter ...." oh, mommy! come here! there are engagement rings!" ... she had spied these HUGE garish lucite rings ..... YOU have to have one, mommy! ..... so i tried them on for fun .... and there was an orange one .... GET THAT ONE, mommy, cause it goes with all your best outfits ...... ha! what does that say about me, when the only person in the family who cares a whit about fashion thinks that orange lucite defines my look? who cares that she's six .... anyway .... i love her, and i bought it..... it is fab....very fashion forward, dontcha think?

later edit: i'm adding this bit in .... i just noticed on the pic that i am also wearing fashion forward bracelets!! i went to a hootie and the blowfish concert last night ..... at an outdoor venue .... and it rained!! but we still had a grand time .... it didn't rain too, too long ..... anyway, i always try to have glow in the dark bands when we go to concerts .... and i just so happen to be wearing some still .... i gave the others to sophie today ....once she figured out that they glow in the dark still, she needed some!

anyway.... the day was nearing an end, and i had done nothing more artistic than cruise the aisles of michael's ..... so i took a photo of my orange shoes .... so that i could show you how RIGHT sophie is ..... i wear a lot of orange!! the funniest thing about this pic to me is that i could only find one croc..... typical! ..... i'm a bit scattered... and so are my shoes ..... drew, just ten years old, has been wearing my crocs ..... his feet are bigger than mine now ..... so i'll blame the missing croc on him.... anyway.....
-orange nikes ...that i walk in, i don't generally run ..... these are old ...but because of their divine orangeness i have kept them ....
-orange snow boots .... lands' end
-one orange croc ... my first pair of crocs ... that my family gave me two years ago before i even knew what crocs were
-my orange clogs ....painted them myself to go with a mona painting that got published in cloth, paper, scissors ......
-my orange mary janes .... i ADORE these shoes ... but wear them less and less because i don't ever want them to wear out ... and the velcro is getting less velcroish....
-orange flip flops.... old navy .... used to be rhinestoned covered... but gradually lost most .... many of them are in ashley's creek ... or were last summer .....



and then .... at the WAY end of the day, after dinner, "but you said we'd paint!" .... so we did .....



these chairs have been in my garage WAITING for me .... and today we started .....


we've done some spots and dots and such ..... we'll work on them some more tomorrow .... staytuned ......



ok then...... go paint some porch furniture .... or some shoes ... or at least send me a link to your favorite shoes!