Son of "Lie of Omission"

OK, here are some misleading photos from my front yard. Well, actually this photo is NOT misleading...this poor birdcage fell off my deck in a windstorm and ended up suffering some serious structure damage...but I keep it on my front porch anyway.
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I got tired of these glass ornaments hanging in an indoor window so I moved them to the garden last year. They've weathered the elements awfully well...and I love the color they add. The stake is an old curtain rod from Ikea that I didn't need anymore; I plunked one half of it in the ground and used fishing line to tie the glass ornaments onto it. The 2 blue glass orbs in front are solar-powered and glow rainbow colors at night.
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My friend Tracie offered me this funky little house after she unearthed it in the wild jungle of her backyard when she first bought her home. Personally, I thought she was MENTAL to give it up, but she thought I was MENTAL to want it. Clearly, MENTAL is in the eye of the beholder...
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And this ethereal statue/vase was given to me by Piz, a dear friend who is an avid gardener and even more enthusiastic garden-arter.

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My Garden...A BIG Lie of Omission

OK...here's my disclosure. These photos of my yard are NOT representative of my garden in general. They are the tidy, fun, artistic bits...the ones that might make people say, "Wow...I wish MY garden were that nice." Gentle Readers, please understand that my garden is in fact NOT that nice. I very, very deliberately neglected to record the bedraggled, weed-ridden areas for posterity. Oh, they're there, all right...just ask my (long-suffering) neighbors. So enjoy the pictures, but you are NOT allowed to feel guilty for neglecting your garden for one single nano-second.

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This is the side of my house...a shady pathway that leads down to the (dreaded) backyard:

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A neighbor was giving away all of these bamboo stakes last summer so I scooped a bunch up and "planted" them on the side of my house. And the city of Seattle sells old street signs and I thought this one would be a fun addition:

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And here's a "plant" that even I can't kill!

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I would NEVER eavesdrop...

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I bought this beautiful handpainted metal shrine in New Mexico during our Sacred Dirt roadtrip a few years ago. I have no idea what this little guy is saying, but he's clearly QUITE passionate about it...

A wall of blue flowers

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I found this tablecloth at the Mukilteo Artist's Garage Sale a few years ago...someone had put an ENORMOUS amount of work into it, painstakingly embroidering hundred of tiny two-tone blue flowers. It even had the little metal hoop with a needle and thread still on it. I use it as a wall covering in my little sunroom, rusty metal hoop and all.

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Carmen Clone?

I recently posted a photo of a head vase I turned into a miniature Carmen Miranda. Turns out I am officially OBSESSED with Carmen Miranda head vases, because yes, I have ANOTHER one in my kitchen. This one is sporting not only a fruit salad on her head, but a parrot as well.

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She's in good company, surrounded by Prince Albert in a can (well, you better let him out!) and the Happy Home seamstresses.

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Is there a support group for people like me? On the flip side, I keep head vase manufacturers alive and well even in these difficult economic times.

Mosaic Madness

I made this tabletop at a Mosaic Madness art day last year; it sits on my front porch and makes a handy place to set down grocery bags when I'm trying to get into my house. I'm pretty sure this exotic bird is found only on Artgirl Island.

And speaking of silliness...

Here's another entry in the silly ceramic parade that runs through my house:

Pincushion Love!

These are 2 of my most favorite goofball things in my entire art room. I purchased the chipmunk pincushion several years ago (have you ever seen such a ridiculously jaunty expression on a chipmunk?) Then my crazy friend Maureen made me (or should I say made the chipmunk) the pink cat companion pincushion. It's pretty much impossible not to smile looking at the sheer silliness of them...

A Match Made in Heaven

I bought this delightful weathered metal trash can from the Salvage Studio when their retail store was open. At first I used it as an actual trash receptacle (imagine that!) until one day I needed an oversized vase for an enormous bunch of silk flowers. I went into that scary place in my head, where I start seeing ordinary objects off-kilter, that place where nothing is safe...(run kitties, run!)... when I had a brainstorm to use said trash can as said oversized vase:

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The flowers looked fabulous in it...and then when I placed the funky little ceramic bird in front of it...well, it was kizmet, fate, karma! They obviously belonged together forever and ever. Well, until I get a wild hair to redecorate, that is...

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My art studio

Here are a few shots from my art room...huge silk flowers in a old "BEST Fancy Oranges" tin on top of the shelves that hold my jewelry supplies:
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This is a funky little storage unit I made. I cut the lids off 3 cigar boxes to create the "drawers" and then embellished the fronts. Then I found cardboard boxes or cigar boxes that were slightly bigger than each "drawer", cut off the front panels and then covered them with decorative paper. After stacking them, I tied a ridiculously long zipper around the whole thing to keep them together and then glued little spools of pink thread on the bottom as feet.

The "cupcake" in the background was a birthday present from my good friend, Julie Sotomura; she made it as part of her "Knitted Nonsense" line. The "A" and "I" blocks represent "Artgirl Island".
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This is a simple wire basket filled with random vintage papers and journal makings and a small painting I found at a thrift store:
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And this little embellished trellis purchased at a dollar store covers the door:

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Carmen Miranda?

I love head vases. Don't ask me why; I have no idea. I just know I love them. I think because you can fill them with all manner of goofball objects. I turned this one into a mini Carmen Miranda. And if you're too young to remember Carmen, check her out here. She used to dance with an entire fruit salad on her head. Do NOT try that at home; leave that to the professionals... like the one-and-only Carmen.
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Jimmy Buffet even lamented that:
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"She had a big hat, my it was high
Had bananas and mangos all piled to the sky
How she could balance it I wouldn't dare
But they don't dance like Carmen nowhere"

Berries Jubilee

I had fun dinking around with my new camera, a Kodak EasyShare M863, this weekend. I took some photos of a bush with cool pinkish-red berries and then used some of the special effects options that came with the camera software. MUCH better!

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Silver Nest

This is a piece I made for my first gallery exhibit. It's an annual event named "Out of the Box", so called because each artist receives a rough wooden box, about 15" square as the basis for their entry. Anything goes as long as the box can be hung up on the wall afterward.
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So I painted the box black and created a funky found-object nest inside the box and wire & bead "peacock" feathers on the top.
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I took apart an old metal tape measure and small metal baskets and used those strips of silver metal to form the nest. Then I added torn strands of turquoise silk and all manner of found objects including game pieces, silverware, costume jewelry, glass buttons, strands of seed beads and handmade embellishments like the funky black birdcage.
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On the top I used twisted wire, wiring in silver washers around blue glass beads and beaded leaves, to create the peacock "feathers".


I happened to bring it into work the day I needed to drop it off at the gallery and my boss liked it enough to buy it. So now it's hanging in our conference room. Yee-haw!

Goodwill Score

I stopped by the Mother of all Goodwills last night on the way home to drop off some recently destashed items from my art room...and what did I do? Bring home NEW items to fill up my recently destashed art room. Sigh.

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But check this out. This was in a small plastic bag of random lace fragments...it's so beautiful. I'm telling myself it's many years old even though of course I have no idea if that's true. But I love it and I think I'm going to add it to a wall vignette I'm planning for the guest bedroom at home. I'll post photos when I (eventually) do it.

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Here's a closeup...I can't even IMAGINE trying to make something that fine...

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Procrastination by Zentangle

Last year I posted about a fabulously fun doodling technique found on Zentangle. I had forgotten about it until a friend sent me an example of her work and I happily avoided paying bills and changing the cat litter this week by creating this Zentangle Sampler. I'll be teaching this class at the Kirkland Library on Saturday, April 17 from 2-4. Stop by...it's FREE!
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I tried to replicate some of the examples from the site and just kind of made up some of the other squares. It's surprisingly relaxing...and addictive.

The key is to break down a pattern into the smallest repeating image and then draw multiples of it. Using a fine-tipped black pen (like a Micron) is good for the lines but definitely use a thicker one to fill in black backgrounds.

I lived to tell the tale!

Gentle readers, I am thrilled to say that I survived my up-close-and-personal encounter with the eerie, enormous mushrooms in my Botanical Illustration class. Here is my rendering of the fearsome fungi.

Like all of my watercolor attempts, it looks better if you squint. For some reason the dark shadow in front of the largest mushroom looks like a dancing centipede...

Here are earlier unfinished attempts at an imaginary pear (drawn from memory) and an all-too-real pinecone (who knew there were so many shadows!) I think I'm slightly improving...

Fungus, Schmungus!

Yowza! Here's the latest assignment for the Botanical Illustration class I'm taking. We'll be drawing and watercolor painting this tonight. .

Is it just me or is there something kind of eerie about mushrooms this close up???

I'll post my attempt at recreating these bad boys in a few days. Send a search party for me if you don't hear back from me soon...and tell them to look for giant mushrooms...

I did my homework!

Remember the botanical illustration class I said I was taking? Remember the watercolor of the onion that was our homework? Remember how I didn't want to try to paint the "miles of veins" on the onion skin?

Well, I am here to tell you that I did complete that project. However, rather than try to actually, you know, paint on the minutely miniscule veins, I just used a really tiny (.005) brown Micron pen. Hey, I never claimed to be a purist after all.

Here's the end result. If you squint, it looks more like an actual onion...which is kind of ironic, because onions make you squint in real life...

I love my necklace...

I bought this fabulous necklace from local artist, Rebecca DeVere, a while back. I had it hanging in my art room, not wearing it because I felt it was too short. It only took me about a year to think to add more chain so that the length worked for me...and today I'm wearing it for the first time.

I adore the beaded flower...

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...and the way she spaced out the green pearls by using silver crimp beads. Rebecca is one of the coolest artists ever!

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Postcard to Carla

For those of you who follow the delightful Carla Sonheim's blog, you may recall that she asked people to send her postcards for her new studio in Seattle. In return, she would send that person a postcard. Well, a body would have to be MENTAL to pass up an offer like that! Who wouldn't want to get a postcard from Carla? So here is what I made this weekend to send her... -------------

Because it was going through the mail, I didn't want to rely on glue to hold the fringe-y trim on, so I found some colored staples in my stash and used those instead.


And I love to use those little paper drink umbrellas in my collages. Just open one up completely (it works better to do this BEFORE enjoying too many of the drinks that accompany said little umbrella), snip the little white spokes that hold the paper to the stick and work the stick through the hole at the top. I just affix with white glue like Elmer's and they end up wonderfully translucent.

And look at the laundering instructions on the wrapper from really old embroidery floss...it recommends using Ivory soap.