Class with Kelly

I had an awesome time with Kelly Kilmer this afternoon. It's always so much fun & an awesome learning experience when in class with Kelly!

Random Journal Pages

It has been a long time since I devoted myself to this blog. My life has undergone a complete restructuring in the past several months and blogging took a backseat to the reality of LIFE.

I feel as if I have gone through a long period of hibernation within my cocoon. A time where deep thinking and self reflection on my life were the total focus. This phase was followed by a period of struggling to break the bonds that held me. The time to cast off that which made me less than WHOLE, made me feel as if I were an empty shell, involved great emotional struggle. yet I know full well that nothing worthwhile in life comes without struggle. Without casting off your old life in order to make room for the life that is waiting for you.

Finally I entered the phase of joyous rebirth of SELF. Of becoming fully ME again. Many things were cast off, relationships that were not what they should be. Thought processes that allowed others to be happy but kept me in sorrow. All things must change, ebb and flow in order to be renewed. From caterpillar to cocoon to vibrant Lunar Moth I have gone and it is my ART, my CORE SPIRIT that helped carry me through.

The pages shown here are a few that show a bit of my renewal, my empowerment and my desire to be fully me again. I hope they inspire you as they inspired me to become myself once again....

9/03/09

10/30/09

12/26/09

Merry Christmas

The snow is coming down fast!

Vietnam War Memorial

The Place of Names Vietnam Memorial Worcester MA

The Place of Words

The Place of words.... Fully inscribed letters from men who served, and were killed, in battle. All of them are from Massachusetts

My special spot...

I love this pond. It brings me peace and restores my balance.

A nice place to sip some Witches Brew

The Salem Witch Museum

A Mini Salem Witch

Scary Early Morning Witches!

A couple of Salem Witches

I want to live in this yellow house!

Beach fun

A very foggy beach

Mail call!

My out of control front garden

Jet In Concert

JET!!!  One of my favorite hard rocking bands. And so close to the stage I could almost touch them.

More Decorative Tape

I just received a new batch of decorative tape in the mail!!!! Now all I need to do is locate my digital camera so I can get photos of it up here!!!

If anyone is interested in ordering the tape I have here just shoot me an email at vesta116 at gmail dot com. THANKS!!!!

On a side note, I just looked out my window and saw my husky running down the road with the terrier/Chihuahua mix (otherwise known as the miniature menace) catching up fast. Obviously those two have busted out of their pen again so I must run!!!!

My boy driving the 4-wheeler.

Decorative Tape Photos

Here's one pile of the decorative tape I have for sale. It doesn't look like a whole lot in the picture, but there's a dozen each of the narrow tape and 6 each of the wide tape for a total of 96 rolls of tape. I also have another bag full of different designs, but I can't seem to find it at the moment!!!

Wide tape is 2" wide by 25 meters (approx. 75 feet) long $6.00 per roll

Narrow tape is 2/3"wide by 25 meters (approx. 75 feet) long $3.00 per roll

Shipping is based on number of rolls and destination.

UPDATE 7/3/09: You can shoot me an email at vesta116 at gmail dot com if you're interested. SUPPLIES VERY LIMITED!!!

Decorative Tape

I have a HUGE supply of decorative tape for sale! Woo Hoo!!! It actually arrived a few weeks ago, but since I've been having my annual Winter Is Over and I've Gone Nutty Spring Fling I haven't gotten around to mentioning it yet. Although, the day after it arrived my Art Partner In Crime, Raine, did come over to go through the box with me and pick out what she wanted. What a blast that was, the two of us oooooing and ahhhhhing over all the different styles.

I'm hoping to get images of all the tapes on here ASAP because you HAVE to see this stuff!!!! There's wide tapes, narrow tapes, tapes with skulls, shoes, cats, designs, Russian nesting dolls, you name it. I am in tape heaven and I want you to be in tape heaven too!!!!

I'm feeling a little witchy tonight...

Air Mask

I made this mask ages ago and it's been hanging on a mirror gathering dust ever since. Because east represents the element of air and the mask is covered in feathers I decided it would look cool in a tree on the east side of the yard. I was right-it does!

Living It Up

Dianne & I partying down at the old watering hole!

Painting I Love

I love this painting. It hung in the hotel room we had in Florida last year. The canvas was huge! I wish I owned it because it's truly awesome!

BTW: I am LOVING mobile blogging!!!!!!!

Prom

My nephew went to his first prom. Doesn't he look handsome?

Sleep Is Good!

Last night I hit the sack early and slept a total of 10 1/2 hours. That's more sleep then I've had in the last 10 days combined!!!! I hope my SISTAHS are up for a wild night out because I am well rested, primed and ready to go!

I drove all the way to my niece's today to feed her cats only to find she didn't leave the key under the mat where she was suppose to. Poor kitties! It's a nice day for a ride though.

New Tattoo

My new tattoo-done on May 7. Custom designed just for me!!!!!

Living Large

The Diva's on the loose! I've been living it up every night & loving it! Check out the new tattoo on my arm!!!!!

On The Go

I'm trying to set this up so I can blog on the go via my mobile phone, but haven't succeeded in posting photos yet. Will keep at it until I can!!!!!!

April 20-22 Journal Pages

Just a quick posting today to show off a few of my latest journal pages. It's cold and rainy here this week so I've been hurting. I'm thankful I can still make art even when I'm in pain. That's one of the things I like best about art, you can do it anywhere! I make a whole lot of art while laying in bed, not just working in my art journals, but also making ATC's, small painted/collaged items, hand-bound journals, postcards, mini art quilts, etc.

I have a bunch of cozy spots inside and outside my house that I regularly create in. One of these days I'm going to photograph all the different places I work just to show people that making art absolutely anywhere is indeed possible!!!!!!

New Banner

All morning I've been monkeying around with my graphics programs trying to create banners for my Art-Fire store. Their banners are so narrow it's hard to come up with an image that looks decent. The one I added at the top of my blog looks just terrible compressed to the 100 x 760 Art-Fire requires, so I won't be using it there. Though I like how it looks here, uncompressed the way it should be!!!!

I did finally come up with something to use, made from a digital collage I created, seriously cropped down & with text on top.


Here it is:

I also made up a bunch of collage sheets. I started with vintage postcard & cabinet card images, super-imposed them over my own landscape photos or journal pages, sized & retouched for quality then created full size collage sheets. It's a time consuming process, but I love doing it!!!! I'm out of my 28 lb. paper that I like to use for printing so getting to use them in my work will have to wait until I hit a supply store.

The little guy is spending the day with my mom & I hope to have a highly productive day because of it. There are at least three charm bracelets I need to finish, a bunch of items to photograph, journaling I want to do and a few supply orders to be placed. If I want to do all that I'd better stop playing with Picasa and get moving!

April 15-19 Journal Pages

This week I've been altering a lot of photos for use in my journal pages. I had a whole stack of them completed and ready to go, but now I have no idea where they are at the moment. So I started doing another batch. I love the one I used on my April 15 page. The picture is one of my duplicates from my Provence trip and just seeing it brings back great memories!

Remember all the time I waited anxiously for my replacement Sakura Glaze pens to show up? Friday I was looking through my bins of extra markers and I discovered a ton of them in there! Three weeks without using a Glaze pen when I could've been using them all along. *sheesh* I really need to have some sort of inventory of my extra markers and pens. I'm always stocking up on them when they're on sale so I should've known the ones I sent in for replacement weren't the ONLY ones I had. Call it a Duh moment.....

Art-Fire Update

I just finished adding two mono-prints to my Art-Fire store. You know, I am finding writing descriptions, scanning or photographing items and getting it all listed very time consuming! At the rate I'm going I'll never have a full shop!!! I hope that deco tape I ordered comes with photos of each kind otherwise I'll be spending days and days getting it ready for viewing.

Anyway, these are the two prints I added:
HEART THEMED MONOPRINT

FLORAL THEMED MONOPRINT

Lester's Wisdom

I knew an elderly man named Lester. I'd never met him, but enjoyed his postings on the paperbackswap web site very much. Lester is gone now, but thanks to one of the PBS members, his wisdom lives on. She put together a long list of excerpts from the posts he made in the members forum. In honor of Lester I now share some of these bits of wisdom, humor and life with you.

On aging:
• If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have 1) saved more money and 2) waited longer to retire the first time.

• I'm about to turn 81. Life just keeps getting better. I don't recall having difficulty with turning 30, 40, 50, although perhaps the cult of youth was not so strong then as it is now.

I do remember when I turned 60 realizing that most of my life was behind me, and making a new resolution to make the best of every day, to find the good in every day. Since then I have been more mindful of my life, more aware of the seasons, nature, the small pleasures life brings, or can bring if you're alert for them.

• I certainly don't expect to receive respect because of my advanced age.
Presents are good, but respect not expected.

• ...and now my great-grandkids are going to school. Wasn't but about 10 minutes ago that I was doing the Blue Bird/ Camp Fire Girl dad thing ... for their grandmothers. Life goes so fast.

• What on earth makes you think that I have started to feel like a grownup?

I know that I have to act like a grownup, but it's an act. Sure, there's some wisdom that comes along with growing older, one hopes, and some perspective, and there ain't much that life can throw at me that it hasn't already thrown at me once already, but if you mean "grownup" to be the person who always knows the right thing to do, the one who can always be in charge, the automatic authority for all matters spiritual and temporal...

...then I guess my certificate of grownupness got lost in the mail.

• One of the benefits of this age is the amount of practice I've had in tuning out what I don't want to hear.

• Now that I'm very old, if I'm sitting on a bench at the mall waiting for my wife to choose between two apparently identical pair of black pumps, beautiful young women sit down beside me and start talking. I was feeling rather studly about it until my wife informed me that they do it because I look "safe." Of all the things I wanted to look like in my young and wild days, safe was never on the list. sigh Looking like Grandpa is not a chick magnet.

• It makes me nuts when I find out that people have protected me from something - in my case, because of my age. Don't want to upset Grandpa, now, do we. Makes me feel like a child, like I'm being discounted. That kind of thing just makes it worse when the truth emerges.

• Yup, old people don't have sex. Everyone knows this. We don't think about it, and we sure as heck don't do it. (eye roll)

• If you live your life with zest and continue to be curious about things, if you have something or someone that you care about, if you have passion about something - even if it's collecting... I don't know ... matchbook covers or something - but have a passion, you will likely never feel old.

Les <-- off to the gym and then will be fixing supper and then take the dog for a walk and then read some before wife comes home from work to enjoy said supper. This morning, I worked at my part-time job and did a couple of hours of volunteer work at the nursing home.

• Honestly, I never thought I'd live so long. I'm grateful to have seen so much and to have been able to love and be loved so much. As the song says, "Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste."

On education:
• I am frequently taken back by the deficiencies in the people's fund of general knowledge. There are people who can't tell you the century of the Civil War, who think George Washington commanded Union troups during the Civil War, who can't pick out names of Presidents from a list given to them, who don't know what H2O is, who - for heaven's sake - if you describe spontaneous generation of living things from non-living matter to them, think it sounds scientifically correct. If it isn't on TV, they don't know it.

And these are not knuckle-draggers, Missing Links. They're average people living average lives.

I remember some of my elderly relatives and their friends being highly upset that my K-12 education did not include Greek and included only 4 years of Latin.

• I don't think you have to be able to recite a recipe from memory, or name all the Presidents in order, or be able to describe the Krebs cycle on demand. But I do think a certain ... awareness of the culture in which you (generic you) live is required in order to live life fully and to understand and put into appropriate context the things you see and hear daily. I think anything else is mental poverty, and sad.

• Some of my grandkids did not have phonics, and those kids to this day don't read as well as their siblings and cousins who were taught phonics. If they come up against a word they don't know, they don't know how to deconstruct it. That's purely anecdotal. They're still all dedicated readers, however, regardless of which way they were taught, which I still think is as much as anything else the result of having all the adults in this family constantly walk around with a finger stuck in a book as a bookmark.

Something we always did was spell words we were using. "That's a horse: h-o-r-s-e" from the time they were babies. "Here's your milk: m-i-l-k." "Time for bed: b-e-d." Some of my kids to this day will do it unconsciously: "Man, it is hot h-o-t today." "Where are my keys k-e-y-s?" It always makes me grin.

• In 1776, a well educated person could have a complete command of science in all its branches, including biology, astronomy, and chemistry; know at least 4 languages, 2 of them dead; be able to recite the names of the emperors of ancient Rome in order; write a 1000 word essay on some abstract concept such as freedom; reel off pages and pages of the Bible and classical Greek poetry and the mediations of Marcus Aurelius from memory; - you get the drift. It was possible to know pretty much everything that there was.

Boy, can we kiss those days goodbye.

• The smartest, wisest, and most successful (in business and in friendships) man I've ever known had 2 years of formal education. He was almost entirely self-taught. I think no matter what your background, you can go on learning and learning and learning as long as you keep your curiosity sharpened and your will strong.

Decorative Tape

For a while now I've been contemplating selling decorative tape via my Art Fire shop. After much back and forth with myself on cost, setting up with wholesalers, etc. I finally made up my mind. I just finished placing an order for an outrageous amount of tape and will be selling it soon!!!!!! You hear that KELLY??????!!!!!! I'm gonna have a boat load of tape for sale. Just what you need right?????

I can hear some of you now, "Tape, why tape????? " Because it is one of the hottest, coolest art/craft items out there and you can never, ever have too much of it.

When the order gets here I'll post a photo of the enormous box of tape I foolishly, I mean WISELY, bought..........

Random Art Drop

I went out tonight to do a random art drop. This time instead of dropping a painting somewhere I left a hand-made art journal tucked on a shelf at the local library. This isn't the first time I've left a journal somewhere and it certainly won't be the last! I just hope whoever finds it puts it to good use. Who knows, maybe this little journal will start someone on the road to art journal happiness!

The front cover, made from an old concert program and an image of a film strip. I covered over the cover with clear packing tape. The spine has metal tape added to it for strength and interest:

Top View of the painted pages:

The note inside telling the finder what it is and some suggestions for how to put it to good use:

And finally where I left it:

I'd intended to leave it in the art section of the library, but our library actually has a pretty crappy art section. So, I left it in the spiritual/self-help section instead. I love how the 'Pick Me!' tag stands out so well.