I hope you all had an amazing weekend!  Our weekend was mostly a work and Reno weekend (i did babysit my sweet grandson Cillian for a few hours on Saturday).  As you see here Mr. G is repainting the deck.  Those white bits are primer covering up the raw exposed wood.

This is what the deck looked like before.  Mr. G power washed the living daylights out of the deck to remove flaking paint.

I repainted the carpet on the deck a mottled green colour (three shades of green).  The edge has to have small checks painted all around – a very tedious job indeed. I will tape off the edges with green painters tape to prevent myself from going too haywire with the paint .

The old park bench has seen better days – i think this year might be it’s last year but until we turf it I may as well give it a fresh coat of paint right?

Doesn’t that look better? As you can see i painted one purple slat a darker green colour just because i didn’t want to go searching for the purple paint.

The front porch and sidewalk were looking very dingy so we bought some mauve porch and floor paint and i painted them as well. 

This is what my hands looked like at the end of the day – all painty .  It took forever to remove the paint.  We went out for dinner last night and i noticed i had brilliant green paint on my legs and taupe deck paint on my arm.  I am not one of those neat painter folks.

Now i have a bunch of magical garden metal pieces of art to repaint.  I designed them about 14 years ago and a fellow who owned a metal shop cut all of the shapes out with a computerized MIG welder machine.  They all need sanding down and repainting again.  I add glitter to the star and the spiral for that extra bit of sparkle!

Years ago i tried to start a business selling my garden art pieces.  The only problem is it took a couple of hours to paint them, I had to pay for each of them to be cut out not to mention i had to double the costs in order to make a bit of money.  If i wanted to wholesale my items they cost way too much for consumers to buy so i ended up abandoning the venture.  But i did end up owning some magical garden art plus all of my family and friends owned a piece of art for their gardens – whether they wanted it or now !

See you all tomorrow!

Yesterday while walking up the walkway to the hospital I came across several planters filled to the brim with these lovely tulips.  I just had to stop and snap a photo with my camera.  As you can see the photo was taken looking down on the tulips!

I’m still a bit off today as I was given sedation for the minor surgery.  I was told not to drive for 24 hours – what????????  I have so much to do today in preparation and driving around for two workshops I’m giving tomorrow! 

I’m guessing the surgery went well – the doctor didn’t say anything to me afterwards and I have another visit with him in a month and a half – guess I’ll find out then!  Thank you so much for the well wishes here and also on my Facebook wall. I was blown away by all of the kind wishes. I’m sure they helped. I wasn’t even nervous!

Cynthia Gagen’s Cropathon happens on Saturday May 5 – Creativeedventures – it’s an all day live event.  I was supposed to have a turn teaching art journaling but got too busy with life (i hope to participate the next time around). Dale Ann Potter, Suzi Blu, Rebecca Parsons and a whole bunch of talented people will be demonstrating and teaching that day!  Sounds like a fun time!

I won’t be blogging tomorrow as I’m off early to set up for the workshop so I’ll see you on Monday!  I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Here is the illustration I created for the Surrey Hospice Society fundraiser.  I thought you might enjoy seeing a bit of the progress pictures.  I ended up using acrylics on the background as i wasn’t happy with the way the substrate accepted pencil crayons.  As you can see i added some ribbon for headbands on my girls.  I still plan on adding some glitter and gemstones but didn’t want to mess up my scanner so I’ll be adding those embellishments later.

Peace Bus by Tracy Dove

There is a lovely interview with my friend Tracy Dove over at Spark the Heart – if you’ve ever wanted to live the creative life you’ll be inspired by Tracy’s story and artful journey.  I met Tracy and her husband a few years ago while in Arizona at Acrosanti.  It was so lovely to finally meet her, a kindred spirit that i had only met via the internet.  She’s such a lovely spirit, incredibly talented and inspiring artist. 

I’m going in for some minor day surgery today – if you could send me some good vibes that would be groovy . I appreciate it. xo

I’ve worked a bit more on the donation for the Surrey Hospice Benefit.  As you can see since I’m not crazy about the way the cardboard is accepting paint and pencil crayon I’ve decided to add other bits and pieces of collage.  I also plan on adding gems, lace, doilies and maybe buttons.  It’s all about doodling however i don’t think there’s any harm in adding embellishments do you?

Here’s a close up of the face.  Be true to you! 

Sorry this is such a brief post – have to run errands now. I’ll post the finished doodle collage tomorrow!

On my art table today

A couple of weeks ago i received an envelope with this flyer “Do you Doodle?” and three pieces of cardboard from the Surrey Hospice Society. I am not sure how they got my address but of course I’ll participate. I’m having some problems working on the cardboard – it doesn’t take pencil crayons and watercolours too well.  Maybe when i start playing with micron pens I’ll have better luck!  After going to the Hospice societies website i see that they have asked celebrities, artists, politicians and Sports Stars to create amazing doodles that will be auctioned off during an event.

Since Mr. G and I live in a small magic cottage we don’t have tons of storage space. So I thought it might be nice to have a face cloth towel caddy to mount on the wall.  I began drawing up some ideas (I’d show you the sketches only Mr. G already threw them out ) and gave Mr. G a couple of options.  As always he tends to create something even fancier than i had drawn. I’m very happy with the results.  It’s fun to collaborate with Mr. G – he can pretty much make anything i can envision out of wood!  If you’d like to view two videos where Mr. G and i collaborate on a sketch of a crow caddy i came up with check this out:

Art Tool Caddy part one

Art Tool Caddy part two

The project was featured in Studios Magazine (Spring 2010)  a couple of years ago. It was a project focused on recycling – the wood and tin cans are all discards.

That’s it for today – i plan on going to a coffee shop while the housecleaners come today to work some more on my doodle/creation for the Hospice Society.

See you all tomorrow!

When i visited my friend Kym in Fairhaven i couldn’t help but pop into the local bookstore to peruse the shelves in their arts and crafts/mixed media section.  There is always a better selection for those kinds of books in the States than Canada so i like to take advantage when I’m across the line. There on the shelves was Suzi Blu’s book Mixed Media Girls!  So naturally i had to scoop it up!  It’s got a DVD too – I haven’t had the chance yet to check out the DVD but will later tonite.  Check out Suzi’s blog here.

As you know I already know how to draw faces but have really enjoyed Suzi’s art and her lovely faces.  How could i pass up Suzi’s gorgeous book with all of the colours and juicy photos that help you to step into Suzi’s magical, glittery world?  I often receive messages in the comments section of my blog and via e-mail asking me how to draw faces.  I usually offer a simple step by step process but often this is not enough.  In Suzi’s book she shows you how to draw faces using grids and lines and how to shade in easy steps.  She also shows you how to create beautiful whimsical textured paintings after you’ve learned how to draw faces. 

I spent over 20 minutes drawing the above face (and i’m not done) – usually i draw with my trusty micron pens but this time decided to draw a softer face using Suzi’s suggestions.  I didn’t have the proper pencil crayons so used what i had on hand.  I think I’ll be enjoying drawing faces even more now!  Thank you Suzi!

The Quirky Art Cafe

The other day i was googling art journaling and serendipitously came across a Cafe in Edmonton, Alberta called The Quirky Art Cafe. It was started by Cathy McMillan who is a caricature artist and illustrator.  You can go to the cafe, have a latte, get a caricature done and maybe even take an art journaling class. How wonderful is that?  Pretty darn wonderful!  Wish we had something like that in White Rock!  If you click on the link to her blog (i can’t give it to you now as I’m having difficulty getting there) Cathy chronicles her journey 8 or so months ago to get her cafe up and running.  It was challenging for sure but she persevered.  If you are one of the lucky ducks who lives near Edmonton why not hop on over to the Quirky Art Cafe and support your local artist/coffee shop owner while absorbing in the creative vibes!  You could even meet one of your art journaling buddies there for an artist’s date!

I meant to post this yesterday but my server was down so was unable to! 

Well I’m off to babysit my little grandson Cillian for the second day!  See you all tomorrow!