For now...

No pictures, but it was a pretty creative day. Worked on some art dolls in class. We went to Pat's house to make some cards for soldiers. I'm not really a card person and when I do them, it takes me at least an hour to do just one card. ( we were supposed to do 10, I did 9. Not thrilled with them either) I did get excited about the bottles that Adriane brought for us. We are to do them for our secret santa friend. Nice bottles too.
Gathering merchant's permission to paint their windows for Halloween is sucking up my time, so the desk is on the back burner for now.

Happy Birthday Pat

Yesterday I painted some more of the desk. I slept over my mom's and because the room was filled with so much early morning light, it was an opportune time to paint. It's coming along.. but I thought I'd have more done by now. Oh well. Made Pat's birthday card last night. Also worked on a 6x6 pen drawing. Now I need to run over to Pat's house and put it in her mailbox.

signed: The Procrastinator

Hot Flash!

I've been playing around with this doll. She's called "hot flash" for all the menopausal women out there. A woman's autumn years. I like autumn. It's my favorite time. Don't care much for the hot flashes though...
My friend Mai-Liis , http://mailiis.blogspot.com/ held an online class through joggles and that is where the idea came from - her wrapped spirit dolls. I made one and I have been wanting to make more of them. Friday I took most of the day for myself and made one. She started out with white hair - I'm not ready for that and she seemed to be calling out for her flaming hair. Fun to make!

Head in the Clouds

All weekend we talked about having our head in the clouds...literally.
Today in my mail box was Head in the Clouds, a "cloud meditation" from Daily Om.
Nice weekend.
I did have an insightful moment too.
Monday morning I woke up realizing how lucky I am and had a deep sense of gratefulness. Gratefulness is a path I fell off of this past summer. Yikes! I had forgotten. This was the "theme" to my daily devotions and I had forgotten. How did this happen??
I had become a bit (a bit?!) self-absorbed with the way things had turned out - not the way I had planned...(we all know how that goes). Well, our weekend had some glitches with it also. We (John) broke the sink in the bathroom... don't ask...and all I could think of was "they will never let us come back" and what will this cost me...
What it cost was an awakening. The owners are really nice (and handy) and were not in the least upset by it. Either that, they completely fooled us. They fixed the sink and said it was no big deal. This cabin is 120 miles north of us and feels like we are in a foreign country. The people are friendly and there is so much beauty around. Even clouds take on a certain splendor.
So I think my head finally came out of the clouds... the fog lifting... and I began to appreciate all that great stuff again. All the blessings that are around me, all the beauty that is out there. I realized it was this that I had forgotten. I got side tracked. Took the wrong path. I need to take out my pens and twinkling H2O's and play again. Maybe I'll play with some clouds :-)

Fresh from the Esopus River....This is one of the fish that our neighbor caught in Phoenica,NY  

Dreams of flying....another one of the fish tags 

altered fig

Delicious figs this year and a lot of them.

I decided to play around taking a break from painting....

Painted furniture

I've been painting the hutch in the kitchen. This has been unfinished since I bought it many moons ago. This place is filled with raw wood and now it's all ready to be transformed!
I paint a little here and there. I like functional art.
I painted six drawers and changed the knobs on three of them (top, not shown). I took out the wood burner and wrote on the drawers. They are painted with Lumiere. I started to use it on the doors on the bottom, but didn't like the way it was turning out.
I'm not sure how wild I am going to get with this yet... but it is far from done.

A fortunate fish.. bringing you luck... who will get this one? 

The collector - gathering it all in hopes of transformation 

Party girl searches for the sweet life 

Hope - the recycle fish 

She traveled the deep ocean to find her true passion 

The magician. He dreamt of flying and could because he knew magic 

In her autumn years, she chose to change direction 

created using this great fabric by Sherrill Kahn 

she wanted to be a star 

another fishy - rainbow hippie 

tag for fancy fish fashionistas swap 

up til now...

What I have been doing is dressing up some fish.... not for cooking but for a tag swap... Fancy fish fashionistas that is.
Here are some...
I forgot to write down what I wrote on the back... but these are close or maybe I just made them up.
On to the next project. Furniture. Painting a desk.