Click your heels..

I've been trying to get my etsy art/print shop open again since being on vacation and I've been working on some new originals. So far though the gallery has been getting them all because it's a busy time of year and they're selling fast, but I'm hoping to have a few for my etsy shop soon too.        

Today I was missing Kansas a little so I painted this one. It's pretty tiny, only 4.5cm X 4.5cm, I blew it up slightly so that you could actually see it. 
This will be in the gallery on Monday, along with a couple more. I'll be sure to have some prints made for my shop though, and some new originals!

Snowy Watercolours- A Simple Tutorial and a Memoir

It's getting awfully chilly around here, and although I haven't seen it myself yet, there are reports of the four letter word. SNOW!

I woke up to a thick layer of frost across our garden and felt that dreaded confirmation that winter is indeed on it's way. Autumn is my favorite season, and unfortunately it always feels so short, especially here in Ontario. If I had my way, I'd still be raking and rolling in leaves in December.

I remember back in southern Illinois when I was little, we went Christmas carolling just the night after we filled our ditches with freshly raked leaves and set them ablaze. Of course, we rolled around in them all afternoon before they were lit. (oh how i love that smell!) And being small, of course, It was easy to bury myself from head to toe.

And then we moved to Canada, to a townhouse with one pathetic freshly planted little maple tree.

My sister and I would wait anxiously for those spindly little leaves to finally drop. We'd make a little pile and attempt to jump in them, but who were we kidding?

If we had actually allowed ourselves to fall freely into this poor excuse of a pile, we would have broken our necks!

And to make matters worse, we usually didn't get a chance to make the pile before the condo maintenance men would come around with leaf blowers and blow what little hope we had right out into the street. (I hate leaf blowers, by the way. They're loud, and pointless! A vacuum would make more sense!)

It wasn't all bad though. We were opening a church that had a lot of property, and a lot of trees. We'd spend many weekends there while my parents were fixing up the building, and we had a lot of opportunity to make use of the leaves there.

 A bit later, we'd move into a house with a massive yard that had a huge maple, and plant even more. Autumn was never boring!

And one thing that Ontario did have that we'd never seen before was more snow than we knew what to do with. We would spend entire afternoons hollowing out the piles that the snow plows had left in our front yard, making forts, caves and tunnels.

For the record, (in case you were wondering,)  I recently walked by the old town house, around this time last year. That itty bitty maple now towers over the house, and then some, and has more than it's fair share of leaves. I hope there are children living there and loving that tree.

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 I was just going to post a fun little beginner watercolor tutorial in theme with today's snow, but it turned into a story. So we'll call this part 2!

This is a fun little beginner lesson with masking fluid. It's pretty fast, and doesn't require a lot of skill-making it fun to do with children too!

 

 LE COURS D'INSTRUCTION

(the tutorial. I think?)

You will need:

I promise that i didn't steal this tray from Ikea. My friend Pleuntje gave it to me as a gift because she knows I'm obsessed with the place.

I can't guarantee though that she didn't steal it. (However, I'm fairly certain that she bought it, as ikea was selling them for a little while;)

A pencil

An Eraser

Paper

something thick weighted, preferably watercolor paper. I have done this with Bristol board though a couple of times back in an art class. It ends up looking a little different because it doesn't hold the paint the same, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if that's all you had;)

Paint brushes

some that you like, and some that are junky, that you don't mind possibly ruining. Dollar store ones will do! Even a Popsicle stick could work, with some determination and a bit of patience.

Masking Fluid

This is available at most art stores, and I've even seen it at Michael's, Joannes, and hobby lobby. So it isn't super hard to come by. Look for it with the watercolor paints.

Watercolor paints

even the cheap stuff will do for this project-of course quality watercolor paints are more rewarding. If you're doing this with kids, use the cheap stuff.

An old Toothbrush for "splattering" (optional.)

The first step is to draw out your large snowflakes. (There's no rule that you have to do snowflakes. If you want, do something else that's white. Like sheep, or stars!!)

I don't have a picture of my snowflakes at this point because I'm a bad teacher.

But basically, I drew out 4 snowflakes across the paper.

 If you wanted you could make paper snowflakes with scissors, and then trace those-and the little detailed cut outs in the centre as well!

Next, take the masking fluid. It smells like dead fish, I know. But it's worth it.

This is where you want to use brushes that you DO NOT CARE ABOUT. Masking fluid is weird stuff, it's a liquid rubber. It is possible to get the brushes clean later by using warm water and soap, but I wouldn't go using any kolinsky sable brushes with this stuff.

Fill in every space that you want to remain white (so, all the "snow") Be sure to leave small detail in your snow flakes blank if you want the watercolor background to show through later. Don't worry about the blue of the masking fluid, we'll remove it eventually.

Make sure that everything is covered with the masking fluid. You may have to look over it and spot touch anything that didn't get coated. It won't be perfectly even, some spots will be thicker. It doesn't really matter, so long as it's covered.

Now, if you like, you can use an old stiff bristled tooth brush to make some extra tiny white sprays around the snowflakes. Just dip the bristles into the masking fluid, and run you thumb quickly over the bristles, over the paper. Of course, you could do this manually with a tiny brush, if you're really bored.

Now for the fun part!

Completely coat your paper in whatever colours you like. (Yes, you can use your nice brushes now.) 

Experiment with different shades,  and blend away. You can make it as dark as you like, or light if you prefer. You don't have to be careful at all to "color in the lines" as the masking fluid is doing all the work for you. You can paint right over it if you like.

Once you're finished, do whatever touch ups you like, a second coat, some different colors, anything. But then let it dry completely. I know, it's hard to be patient, but you really don't want to do the next step until it's fully dry, or it will ruin your work, and your life.

(no, not really, Just your work. AND it will make you sad. I don't want you to be sad!)

l e t      i t      d r y !

Ok, now that it's dry, this is the really really fun part. Remember when you were little and your great aunt had peely wall paper that you were just dying to pick at? Now you have the opportunity to make up for lost time.

With your finger (not your fingernail, but your actual finger) start rubbing the edges of the masking fluid. (you can use an eraser too, if you like.)

It will start to roll back and ball up into stringy little rolls of rubbery fun.

Once you have a decent little edge pulled back, you can start to peel it off.

Peel off the rubber from all your snowflakes.

Next, get out an eraser, and begin to erase the little spray dots that you made with the tooth brush. You could do these all with your finger if you're a real glutton for punishment.

Also, now you can erase any pencil lines that might have been hiding under the masking fluid.

If there are any white spots that you didn't intend to be left white, you could touch them up now with a bit more paint.

And now you're finished! This would make a cute Christmas card, don't you think?

Christmas Baubles Giveaway

I have some new retro ornament rubber stamps in my shop, and thought it would be fun to give away a set! There are no conditions for this giveaway-no need to follow my blog or "like" my facebook fan page-but feel free to do either if you wish.

The only rules are: One entry per person, and entries must be made from humans only. No pets posting on behalf of their masters. (hehe.)

Open internationally.

Contest will close at 11:59pm on Monday November 8th. The winner's name will be drawn at random and announced on Tuesday November 9th.

To enter, simply comment. Good luck!

An Autumn Gathering

I went for a walk a few days ago with the boys to collect different leaves, and other tidbits and morsels that nature dishes out this time of year.

It started with acorns. There aren't a lot of oak trees in Hamilton, so I was giving the boys each a nickel for each complete acorn that they could find. I like having little dishes of the outdoors to sketch from.

But then we travelled down to Missouri a couple of weeks ago and hit the acorn jackpot. I had to stop handing out nickles eventually. (but yes, our acorn collection is plentiful;) Now they're on the hunt for berries, moss, fungus, leaves etc.

We arranged the colorful little pieces on a plate and it almost looked delicious enough to eat. (especially with the quail egg shells! We always have these on hand anyway, as Reuben and my niece are allergic to chicken eggs, these are their alternative. And really, they are so much cuter!)

We had a little watercolour party, inspired by our plate of goodies. The boys are still working on theirs, and are looking for even more to add to it.

I made a little nest out of the goodies, and can't wait to make some more. The colours were so inspiring!

This print is now available in my shop

Sketchbook Project

I promise that I meant to mention this earlier. In case anyone is interested, there are only two days left to sign up for
the sketchbook project.

I ordered mine a little late, so I'll have a lot of sketching to do between now and January!

For my theme/topic, I picked "I'm a Scavenger". (oooh, so true) You should see the assortment of leaves, twigs, feathers, moss and fungus that I collected on today's walk...(actually, you  WILL see them in some upcoming artwork!)

If anyone feels like participating, sign up soon!

I'll be posting pics of mine as I go. I'd love to see yours!

They're Back! Soda Can ornaments

People Magazine's Order when they featured my stars in 2008 in People Español and with Sabrina Soto on HGTV

It's that time of year again! The time where I get a craving for shiny metal paper cuts and force my friends and family to pack on a few pounds by drinking absurd amounts of these addictive beverages, so that I may keep the cans and make all sorts of sparkling beauties.

Ok..I kid, I kid. I'm actually really fortunate to live right next to Poco Loco, a fantastic Tex-Mex restaurant who's sweet owners allow me to raid their recycling bin on a weekly basis.

I have, however, gotten Mark to try different beers, based on the beauty of the cans. (Which is no worse than when he gets me to drink beer or pop based on the bottle so that he can make these... ) Let's just say as suckers for pretty packaging, we've tried some fairly putrid beverages, all for that shiny pink can or classy looking bottle with a painted label! Luckily, we've found a few that we do like as well!


These will be available in my shop until the 1st of December. I don't trust Canada Post's shipping past that point.

"Well Poopsie, Ya got em".

Grandma & Poppie, 5 years ago at a "ho down" ;)

We're back from visiting family back home (Kansas) and starting to get back into the swing of things. I'm finally caught up on orders, now for the custom requests. (I received over 160 different requests for stamps while I was away.) Yikes. I have some work ahead of me!

We on a rather unplanned, last minute trip because my Grandma isn't doing very well.
She's had dementia now for quite a few years, but it's gotten really bad, really fast, and I wanted to see her again while she still remembers who I am.

Talking to Grandma has always taken a bit of training and guesswork,  for quite a few years, because she talks in so much slang and abbreviations that you have to guess at what she's saying.

For example, years ago, she'd ask me to get something from the pantry. (in their mud room.) I'd ask where it was.
 "just reach round' the corner and on that dodad. There ya be!" Little things like that. And these got even worse as her dementia has gotten worse.

She did remember me to some degree, but couldn't remember more recent things, like who my children were, or how many I even have. She'd ask me every 10 minutes if if any of the kids in the room were mine. How old were they? Were they boys or girls?

 I'd say "I have two boys, Grandma, they're right over there, the bouncy blond ones."
"oh, well I like that, that's just dandy", she'd say. "Now tell me, ya got me any more?"
"no Grandma, just the two".
"hm. Well that just won't do. I just, you know.."
 (she'd make a lot of hand movements at this point trying to find her words)
"i like a lot of em'. Cause ya know, when somethin' happens, well poopsie, ya got em' ."

 (Translation: If something should happen anyone in your family, you have a lot of other people to lean on. Now that she's older and is facing this really scary condition, she still has her eight children. If something should happen to one of her children, they still have other brothers and sisters to lean on.)

Then she pat my leg and said "well, hm. Yup!" and it was gone.
This was one of many short little conversations we had.

Another was about my skirt. She didn't like my skirt one bit. Well, she did. But the problem was, she thought it was an apron, and she thought it was odd that I was wearing it out of the house. (which I actually have done a few times, but that's besides the point.)

I had just arrived and she came slowly towards me and took off my sunglasses, and slowly realised who I was. She then pulled me over to two chairs and sat me in one, directly facing her, as though she were going to interview me. And that's exactly what she did.
First she said, pointing to my eyes, and then hers "you and me both, ya know?" (we both have blue eyes.) Then she slapped her leg and said "garsh darnit". She had lost her words again, and looked around helplessly, wringing her hands together.

Then she started tugging on my skirt and said "now tell me 'bout this. Why d'ya 'spose this happened? Is this somethin' the girls go for up there?" (I was surprised that she remembered that I'm in Canada now, actually.)
I said "oh, I don't know grandma. It's just a skirt. I guess it's a little colorful. I made it.."
She put her finger on her chin and raised an eyebrow and said
 "well, my mother, she used to...you know".
"Momo had a lot of aprons, didn't she?"
"yeah! all kinds. you know. I was just too hot, liked to be outside." (translation: She would have rather been outside on her tractor than inside, wearing an apron and cooking. Although, she did do a lot of that as well. Most of her favorite stories to tell are about when she and her cousin, "Arlie" were out on the tractor.)
"but this", she said, grabbing the edge of my skirt again, "so indoorsie. Not for church". (we weren't at church..but I didn't say anything about that!)

Then she looked at my nose ring (the tiniest stud ever, I swear!) and told me that I had a "boogie" and needed to "go get that fixed." Then she motioned to my Grandpa, pretended to use a cattle tagging gun in my nose, and laughed. He had a little chuckle over that too.

Poor Grandpa, I can't imagine how this would be for him. This was a good day too.
She has days where she's much more miserable, and won't take her medication, or wear her air cast (she has a badly sprained ankle and hobbles everywhere, but won't wear her air cast long enough to let it heal.)

She also thinks that doctors, medicine and air conditioning are the devil.
If we ever talk about medicine, vitamins, chiropractors or massage therapy in her presence, she starts humming this and making "jazz hands" and says "yeah, hokey pokey".
Translation: "it's hogwash. I never needed anything other than sunshine and pond water."

(which is also hogwash, Medicine really could have helped her, had she been on it a long time ago when she first started showing signs of dementia, but she would refuse to go to a doctor.)
She's also diabetic, so add that into the mix and Grandpa has a lot to deal with. Thank goodness one of my aunts is able to be there a lot with her, and help out, give him a little bit of relief.

I feel so bad that I can't be there more, I'm just so far away. Visiting always leaves me feeling a little easier in one sense, since I finally got to see everyone, but homesick too.

I just miss them all so much.