OLW #84: LIGHT **Good Morning, Sunshine!**

The lovely Lisa Saunders has chosen "Light" as the Word Up this time around at One Little Word.  

I knew exactly the feeling I wanted to capture with this project, as I've been relishing it every morning now that the kids are out for summer break and our morning routine has become very relaxed.  

"Good Morning, Sunshine!"

Just some watercolor and black pen to document this luxurious nicety.  

Head on over to One Little Word to see what the Designers and other Wordsters have created this month!

Wishing you a lovely light and bright day! ;)

New Love: Fabric Twine

I. Am. In. LOVE!!

I saw this tutorial for making fabric twine on Pinterest and just had to give it a go.  Finally!!  I'm putting fabric to use that has been in my stash for 20 years!!  (Not even exaggerating!!)

Once I had a good amount of twine twisted up I played around with ways to use it, from tying up pretty packages to making this:

I painted a canvas with a couple shades of brown, then covered it with a piece of burlap.  A bit of pinkish paint around the edge to coordinate with my twine, and then the fun of looping the letters began.

I used needle and thread to carefully baste and weave the twine securely in place.  What's next?  Words, shapes, pot holders, a rug??  Who knows!!  But I'm definitely going to be twisting up some more twine!!  

Thanks for stopping by!

He Eats Like a Bird

This is my son, Jeremy.

He eats like a bird.

I submitted this layout in one of the challenges during Cocoa Daisy's Fall Crop earlier this month, and
I won!!
 Happy Happy Joy Joy!!

Somehow the kid keeps growing.  He's 14 years old and over 6 feet tall!

The challenge was to use various types of stitching, including some specialty embroidery stitches.
 These bird footprints were inspired by a stitch called the "Y".  

He tells me, "I'm just not a food type of person."

I added these stamps on the back of my journaling card with one of the funny quotes Jeremy has been
known to say in response to our wonderment of his lack of culinary inclinations.

I'm waiting…perhaps impatiently….

Seriously.  I cannot wait.  I'm a bit on pins and needles about it.

I wonder if he will leave the nest with his little birdie appetite.

I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself for my paper and embellishment choices. :)
Birds, feathers, the background paper echoing the footprints, a stamped nest and a clock for my waiting and wondering, the ruler as he grows, and the train schedule that mimics meal times.  High five!

This is my son, Jeremy.

And also, he hates this layout.  Just thought I'd better mention that.  :(
Luckily, I can still take him in an arm-wrestling match.
I tell you though, don't challenge him to a battle of wits.

He'll annihilate you.

Scatter some seeds on the ground and RUN!

Lol!

Have a great day!

Monochromatic Poetry

I have this funky CD, Death By Chocolate that I bought on a whim at some point because of the band name and the cool album art.  Turns out it is a bit of a family favorite.  It's kind of 60's-psychedelic-lava-lamp with British spoken word and school yard chants and school book recitations(?).  But it's, well, smarter than that.  Very hard to explain.

The One Little Word this month is "Color" and I immediately thought of some of the short tracks on this CD which are titled with a color's name and then a monologue of objects and feelings about the color are listed.  It's quite poetic.


I thought I would do my own version, using the same colors from the album but with my own associations.  Knowing there would be a lot of handwritten words on the page, I opted to collage my title from letters cut from a magazine.  I think it also speaks to the seeming randomness of the poems themselves:  a bunch of unrelated words that together create cohesiveness due to the single color they conjure; the letters, all of various color, font, and size yet they come together to form words.

MUSTARD YELLOW

large envelopes

high school jackets

Pee Chee folders

#2 pencils

baby food and jaundice

Cowardice

rain boots

banana slugs

curried chicken

school buses and taxi cabs

flowering weeds

pollen, saffron, sulphur

Burning nostrils

caution tape

Yield

Slow

Bump Ahead

 SKY BLUE

cotton candy

swimming pools

worn denim

Mom's eyes

bubble gum ice cream

cartoon elephants

tropical seas

chlorine and clean laundry

toothpaste

robins' eggs, candied and real

Restful napping in a hammock

For a couple  of the colors, I couldn't think of enough items to fill the space I'd painted, so I just repeated my words to fill up the area.

ORANGE

sunsets

popsicles and Happiness

orange peel smiles

basketballs

pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns

carrots

kumquats

monarch butterflies

campfires and construction vests

tigers

orangutans

Fall leaves and Halloween

cantaloupe

San Francisco Giants

OLIVE GREEN

wallpaper and carpet

my teenage telephone

frogs

grass stains

damp forests

eucalyptus scented lotion

army men

dinosaurs

split pea soup

Frankenstein

spinach and herbs

concert smoke

Pop-pop's face after a roller coaster ride

I painted this face on a piece of deli paper placed over a magazine ad, loosely tracing the model's face with black paint.  Once collaged onto my background of blocks of color, perhaps you see that the idea was inspired by the CD's cover art.  

RED

ladybugs

fire trucks

cheerleaders

scraped knees

stop signs and stop lights

spaghetti sauce

Embarrassment

red cheeks

Kool Aid moustaches

Valentines

Santa's suit and Rudolph's nose

cherries

strawberries

Chapstick and cough drops

Passion

Anger

Love

Thank you for stopping by and checking out this creation!  Head over to OLW to see all the fabulous and COLOR inspired pieces by the designers and readers alike!  I'll be linking up to Friday's Art Journal Every Day feature on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog, too!

A Tale From 6 Year Old Me

I found a book at Goodwill the other day.  Actually, it's more like it found me.  It wasn't shelved; it was "randomly" sitting out on a piece of furniture as I walked by.  ("Randomly" in quotes because I don't believe The Universe deals in randomness.)

"Living Artfully" by Sandra Magsamen at Amazon.com

Naturally, the title drew me in, but when I sat down to read the preface, to see if it was indeed a book meant for me, I was surprised that the story there was one I had read on a blog (I apologize for not being able to find which) just a day or two before.  And if that wasn't a big enough sign that I was to buy and read this book, the half-price-tag-color of the day was yellow, and so was the $3.99 sticker on the spine. :)

So, I'm reading it, and I'm liking it, and on page 56 in Chapter 2 "Imagine the Possibilities: Rediscovering Your Creative Power" there is a quote by Pablo Casals:

Which brings me to this post's title, A Tale From 6 Year Old Me.

This is not an "uncovered" memory, but rather one that I've always remembered.  I think because I felt so misunderstood by my 1st Grade teacher, whom I liked a lot and trusted.  Do you remember this sort of paper?  Newsprint with a blank area for drawing and a few lines below on which to write a sentence or two?

Available at www.teacherssupplycloset.com

Well, on one particular homework assignment, I wrote like this:

as opposed to this:

Note the letters of each are the same height, and differ only in width.

Why did I do it?  Did I have a longer story to tell and needed to make sure I could fit it all in the confines of the paper?  Was I experimenting with developing my own unique font?  Or was I merely bored and messing around?

What I remember is Mrs. Crosby pulling my mom aside when she picked me up from school and asking her what table I did this work on (huh????) and telling her not to allow me to do my work there anymore.  My guess is that she assumed a grainy wood table was to blame for corralling my pencil into such a penmanship atrocity.  (Um, it was a laminate table if I remember correctly…)  

The memory inspired me to write dear Mrs. Crosby a letter:

Mom, I know you were just as perplexed by Mrs. C's demand.  And you have always told me that I am a marvel.  Thank you for that.  I love you!