a dazzle a day keeps the doldrums away

in lieu of getting art done today to show you....i.....um.....i have nothing....
but...since i now have your artistic attention....i think the world would be a better place if we all used the word dazzle more often.....say it....dazzle...sounds good, huh? ...when's that last time you used it?
be dazzling...
be dazzled.....
ask someone how they become so very bedazzling.....
think on that.....
please use dazzled at least twice a day for the next week......
whew.....new week starts in just a few hours.......got this post in just in the nick of time...what dazzling good luck......

daz*zle (verb)
blind temporarily (She was dazzled by the lights.)
figurative: amaze or overwhelm (someone) with a particular impressive quality (I was dazzled by the beauty and breadth of the art show)
dazzlement (noun)

...now i'm off to surf the art blogs of the world wide web in search of dazzlement......

i'm not sure what to title this, but i was in my art studio for a long time today and got a ton of art work done...nothing finished though....almost

i don't ever dream about being a famous artist (do you?) ......instead, i dream of being a good artist...or a better artist....or in lots of galleries......or of selling my work easily.......BUT....let's just suppose, in twenty years, some art historian....or some contemporary folk art / collage academic art historian was interested in my work....... and was dating my things .....and figuring out my progression and my growth ......TODAY would be a moment in that progression...a new thing...a new element.....a moment on the time line where, in the book that is being written about me, it would say....in early july 2007, elizabeth was going to the happy sumo with her family and arrived much earlier than her friends...rather than blow their minds with her earliness, they are the types to always be first there, she decided to DASH into michael's, dragging along the whole clan (happy sumo is in the same strip mall)...and lo and behold she found a new and fabulous stencil........in mid july, we see the first bold background covered with these five inch letters.....the letters are remarkably similar to the stencils she had been using for years, but to someone truly analyzing the content of her textured, lettered backgrounds, the difference is remarkable......

















so, can you see? i got a new set of stencils (two actually, but i've only used one) ...these letters are quite a bit squatter than my usual...bulkier, thicker, less tall and thin, more substance....really....can't you see that? ......it's important....to me anyway........ so i stenciled the blue green dictionary background i've been working on......i love it.....makes me wish i was an abstract artist, cause this could be art all on its own right now......it is lovely and nuanced and yummy in person.......but, i am a representational artist....that's just who i am....so......i shall continue on the art path.....













that's the ground...can you tell.....i was thinking ocean...but now i'm thinking sky.....i have a fish all planned out....but somehow i'm just not feeling fish.....i'm feeling mona lisa......so, as of today i have houses and moons and stars and mona lisa laid out on the canvas.......we'll see if it actually gets glued down tomorrow......or if i feel fish instead......

oh....ps....i played life again today....i was the artist!! hooray!!! ...even better, my salary was 80k for about half the game......the other half it was 30k, but we won't talk about that......my mean child got to swap salaries with me...the nerve!....another child landed on the BUY artwork for 125k ....that's a LOAD of life money!!! ...all for me.....yippee.....
i LOVE life......

i was the green car, got married, was a salesperson with 70k salary, had one set of twins, and three more children, one was cattywampus on the car

i'm just going to assume that YOU (whoever you might be) are here to check on my art....and if, perhaps, i don't do any art, that you are perhaps interested in a bit of light reading....perhaps you are even wondering, well, why on earth didn't she do art today? ....so....i'll tell you......i've got this game thing going on with my kids....we sometimes play five or six games in a day...but, ya know, when you are playing five or six games, you don't play long ones....you play toss up, gobblet, top trumps, rat a tat cat, swap, zigity......but lately, we've been playing life.......i remember thinking it was pretty fun when i was a kid.....but it was SOOOO long that we seldom played it..... but the life i've been playing with my three kids, looks remarkably similar to my growning up version...but this one is WAY better....for instance, yesterday julia was a doctor and sophie was an artist......today i was a technician and got 50k every time the spinner messed up...and sophie is six, so i was RICH.......today julia was a police officer, so anytime someone spun a ten, they had to pay her a fine....5k ...not bad!! .......anyway......i've been spending hours with my kids playing life........my big kids are old enough to be the banker....but i do it......i'm pretty sure i could have hours of free art time if i'd just let them play without me.....alas.....i'm hoping that tomorrow i can be doctor.....or maybe the entertainer......hmmmmmmmm........





and as if the game of life wasn't all consuming......we also went to see harry potter today....it was SUPER....fab...great....everything i wanted it to be....how big a geek am i that i wanted to go first day out?
that voldemort is one scary dude....... and ginny weasley rocks....... if someone made up one of those weird internet questionairres, which potter character are you....i'm certain i should be ginny weasley.....i'm not brave enough to be harry...not smart enough to be hermione..... not quite goofy enough to be ron....... but ginny, i want to be ginny......
or that weird divination woman, but i'm not that odd.......i hope......


well....looky here.....i found the exact website that i was imagining....of course it exists......

Which HP Kid Are You?

and i confess...first time out, i was ron weasley.....so, i took it again, and whew, now i'm ginny

and tomorrow, i, ginny weasley, will do art......i have a large blue, green three foot canvas to work on...a small, 18 inch square yelloworangepink canvas to work on....and i have an idea about a scrabble board.......

tra la la......i'll squeeze in life, art, and three dental appts for the doctor, the police officer and the salesperson........

painting and papers and prettiness

blue green background
Originally uploaded by eeeee.

i had some art time in the basement today......i just worked on backgrounds....this is the one i was happiest with....it is a three foot square canvas.....now with dicionary pages and tissue paper and acylics.......it is ready to be something......but until i'm grandly inspired, i'll just keep doing backgrounds....ok?

gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of glue

we got back from our fourth of july trip.....and there were TWO HUGE BOXES on the porch....my jerry's artarama boxes came earlier than expected.......jerry's artarama is my very favorite online shopping spot......great prices and great selection on art supplies.......or at least on the art supplies that i need! .......i got a GALLON of mat medium......that should last a while... i also got 80...yes, eighty, journals.....five by seven note books...Reflexions Sketch Books...for a class that i am teaching next week.......hooray for that.....delivered in plenty of time!!!












so, once we got home and i had a gallon of mat medium to open and adore and want to use....the kids and i headed down to the basement.....they worked a bit on this spool.........we got it TWO spring breaks ago while biking with their grampa......biking with the grampa is ALWAYS a huge adventure....and finding this AND toting it home is a memory of epic proportions.....they painted it red a couple weeks ago...and have begun adding some details.......in a few weeks they will, no doubt, be arguing over whose room it is going to go in.....













...and while they painted....i worked too.......i used the back of my dictionary, the spanish-english section....and covered a three foot square canvas......i used GOBS of my new mat medium....and a bit of turquoise...that is NOT turning out very blue in this photo.......then i proceeded to make an almighty mess by trying to get some of the gallon of medium into more manageable sized squeeze bottles...that gallon bucket should say: this is glue and you are just ASKING for trouble if you think you can pour it without making a humongatoid mess....but it doesn't say that....and i tried...and i did ok....but julia was grossed out when she stepped, barefooted, in a puddle of glue.....oops.......

trips are nice....
but it sure is nice to be home......
i have big art plans for tomorrow.......
and that red spool needs more painting by my little apprentices.......

sometimes when you are on vacation and you still want to blog...you blog oddities.....don't you?

oh....today is world hula hoop day .......time to rummage through the garage and find your hula hoop and give it a go......i was a PRO hula hooper as a child......i'm not as good now......though i would be, i believe, if i could find a hoop with the perfect hoop to hip ratio for maximized hula hoop stability........

startlingly, this clip art looks a bit like me......happy hula hooping.......

lld, pbck, and other peculiarities.....

i am on vacation.....and our dirty clothes are piling up...beach towels and swim suits ( two or three suits in a day sometimes) ......and i'm wishing there was such a thing as self washing laundry......self folding and self putting away while we're inventing new fabulousness......
so ....i still have an LLD .....a laudry learning disability....i never have really gotten a hang of the just do it mentality.....it's my own small struggle.....

i used to have a PBCK disability...but after much work, occupational therapy, and lots of repetitive effort , i finally seem to have overcome the PBCK disability....(paint brush care and keeping) ....whereas i, once upon a time, used to leave my paint brushes on my table, covered in caked on acrylics, suffering an ingnomiious last moment as a paint brush, i now have a system....it's all about systems you know......

i have a double sink in my studio......first rule, i never run water in the right sink.......in the left sink, while painting, i keep a small tub of water......if i haven't time to immediately wash a brush, i put it in for a soak.....when possible, i wash right away....all painty bits get put in the left sink: paint brushes, palettes, stamps, stencils......anything that needs to be washed.....once, washed all items get moved to the right sink...to dry.....so, don't leave the studion unless the left sink is empty......and prior to starting a painting adventure, empty the right sink of the things that have been drying there.......so....no more paint brushes that would be more useful as chopsticks than for spreading paint......

i'm certain there is someone, somewhere, that is thinking "well, duh!" ..but no, for some of us it is not that easy....i'd like to say it is my creative bent that makes me so peculiarly incapable of tidy ....but i'm not sure that's really the case......but it is most certainly a peculiarity of my brain! .....

i know someone with oclwdf ......obsessive compulsive laundry wash dry and fold .....her kids barely get their clothes off and they are in the washer.......

i know someone with cftsjbm ....can't find the tape so just buy more......easier to buy a new roll every time than to find the last unfinished roll.....

i know someone with ngltmbf.....no grocery list and too much butter in the fridge ........

i know someone with .....hkpbdlc....housekeeping is perfect but don't look in the car........

so......i'd contend that peculiarities are what makes life interesting.......what's your peculiar disorder?

there ought to be a law .....

isn't the post office run by the federal government....i think yes....so, that means there should be a federal law....called the postal decree for increased felicitation.......the happy act for short......whereas everyone who mails a package has to decorate it.....like this one...that sophie and i decorated for my mom.....happy birthday mom, i love you...... if everyone had to decorate packages, more people would be forced to explore their artistic side....we'd all have to seek out our inner doodler.......imagine how happy it already is to get a package in the mail....and now imagine an exponential increase in that happiness factor....so there ya go.....that's my idea......stickers, stamps, doodles, paints, murals, comics, collages.....you go right ahead and decorate your boxes any way you want...but definitely decorate them......the postal decree for increased felicitation...you heard it here first.....e for president.....it would make my mom so proud.....

happy birthday, mom.....love, e....and a, d, j, and so.......

happy fourth of july.......

happy fourth of july.......
i read this book today....in its entirety....well....i read the first chapter last night before i went to bed...but technically, that was after midnight, so still counts as reading it today.......we are on a road trip...while andy was driving i was laughing out loud at this book.......the only thing sad is that now i'm done with the book......i should have read it more slowly and savored it....but no........
my favorite thing about the fourth of july is watermelon.....and corn on the cob......and hamburgers....but mostly watermelon......
happy day to you and yours.....
if you need a bit of joy, have some watermelon and read a good book......

maybe i should ALWAYS have deadlines.....

...because, apparently, with a deadline i actually do get more work done and much less diddling around...my diddling around is always joyful......painting and puttering and pondering....but certainly not geared towards a finished product......but here ya go....a finished product...that probably took the same amount of time to complete....but FAR, FAR fewer calender days than usual.......
let's just call today happy tuesday with white flowers ......

oh...ps......i just looked at this on the blog...you should definitely click on the picture to get a close up......see the nuance of the groovy toovy lumiere paints i used......ok? go do that now....click......

let's just call monday, art day... ok, you say? hooray.....

i got quite a few hours of art in today....hooray, yippee and yahoo for that....... this piece is (more or less) a 12 by 20 canvas...which is a smallish one for me....i started with a layer of novel pages glued on the whole thing...then i did some letter stencils in a dark blue with a titch of brown in it......from there i layered on three or four colors of tissue paper....in the blues and greens and aquas family.......then i used a sienna glaze (burnt sienna, raw sienna, burnt umber, raw umber....i can NOT keep my browns straight...but i used my fave and best brown glaze) i used a glaze that, to me, seems like antiquing a piece...takes the brightness down a notch.....and now, i wish i were done...at this point ...this point being the lovely background is finished stage.....at this point i usually prop the canvas on a wall for a week, a month, a year...years even......until i have a foreground idea and BOOM decide that's the perfect background...but no.....i need to finish this one for a deadline....so i'll work on it again tomorrow.....with my fingers crossed......i'll letcha know how it goes.....

i really love doing art...especially on days like today...the kids and i just hung out in the basement together......my girls washed brushes for me.....blow dried the things that i wanted to rush along.....me, three kids, and a dog......instead of it takes a village....it takes my whole family to get a collage going.....

ok....who had a new year's resolution...or, more to the point, who hasone that they made EXACTLY six months ago and they are STILL working onit.....me, me, me, she said with her hand waving in the air andbouncing frantically in her seat...me, me, me, i'm still working onthat new year's resolution.....

game journal
Originally uploaded by eeeee.

december 31st, 2006...hmmmmm....a resolution....hmmmmmm.....should i do my usual....clean my closet....my usual that i am seemingly incapable of following through on.....(side note, in 1999, i cleaned one closet a month for an entire year.....six closets, one a month, i did each twice that year.....but, it did nothing to transform my existence... i do recall it as a success story....pitiful? maybe?) ........
where was i......new year's eve...what to do....make a resolution......and my dear little boy had a number of suggestions...."let me eat candy every day" ....."let me stay up til ten every night for a whole year"....."play a game with me every day" .....
wait...what was the last one?
then, my thinking went like this.....he is always asking me to play a game right when i start making dinner....or right at his bedtime....i WISH i could play more games with him...... but EVERY day..that seems impossible.....some days are too hard, too busy.... hmmmmmm.....pondered that....
and....
i resolved to play 500 games in 2007 ......
more than one a day...but not bound to the calender and playing every day...we can do game binges.......so....there ya go......

today, july 1st, the first day of the second half of the year....and my family played game 282 .....after dinner, we played pirate's dice......a brand new game that drew and i bought today!!! ....we played it with our cousins two weeks ago.....and LOVED it...ok...i loved it....the kids like it...but drew is a pirate convert....the five us played....then andy went to put sophie to bed...and julia, drew and i snuck in game 283...... yippee.....we are MORE than half way....how 'bout that? pretty good, huh?

oh.....i didn't do art today......
but i just wanted to blog anwyay....is that ok? so much for just blogging about my art!

i was going to blog about the patriotic songs we sang in church today (loved that!) ....... but thought i'd brag about the half way mark of the year ........
so...anyone out there have a new year's resolution? that you are still doing? that you bagged ages ago? 'fess up....

how 'bout a july 1, half year resolution....to never make an un fun resolution on jan. 1 ........