Lost Aussie on the loose

Eye Candy Parade

Yesterday was a great Mail day - I had a surprise treat from a blog buddy, Pat!  Her envelope contained a lovely piece of work, sent to me as part of her "Pay It Forward fun from her blog.
Thanks Pat.....this piece is quite delicious!

Next I received a box from my friend Chris, over at Prism Trail.  We have been cooking up a little mischief lately and decided to work on a woven paper project and it had to consist of re-cycled magazine pages.  It is most interesting to see how differently we interpreted the challenge - and I will leave it to Chris to post pics of what I sent her.  These are some images of her wonderful creation - totally amazing and such a sculptural piece. 

And last but not least are the pics of my finished book from Lynne Perella's class.  After I got home and it had dried a bit more I attacked it with the sewing machine and free-motion stitched all over the canvas to give it just a BIT more texture....ha ha!  (It's quite tall, measuring 12inches x 6 inches when folded into the book format.)

A few more snaps from the weekend

I think my camera had as much fun as I did this weekend!  The location of the workshop I took was down by the "Meat Packing District" and Greenwich Village.  Lots of fabulous funky old buildings, heaps of graffiti and textures that were just ripe for the snapping!

The odd ball is the top pic, one that was taken after we had participated in a fun, out of the box sort of exercise that Lynne had us do!  Amazing what was created out of nothing!

And to close for tonight, a piece of poetry by one of my favourites, Kahlil Gibran
Appropriate, as regardless of what I am doing, the boys are always foremost in my thoughts...

Your children are not your children.

they are the sons and daughters

of life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

and though they are with you

yet they do not belong to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls.

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

Kahlil Gibran

Get Ready, Get Set .....Gesso!

This weekend, as I've mentioned I went off to take a class with Lynne Perella and what a wonderful time it was!  We splooshed gesso and paint around, textured, made marks and collaged to our heart's content, all under the watchful eye of the 'master' (no gender bias intended!)
Lynne is certainly a gentle and inspiring teacher with a positive and supporting  air which makes it impossible to create anything less than pleasing to the eye!

Not only was it a fun and artful day but the company was great too!  There were five of my art pals and blog buddies in the same class which only served to make the experience richer and more wonderful.

The night before the class we all caught up and had dinner together including my friend Nancy and Karen, plus a Saturday class defector...Seth, from the Altered Page.  My thanks go out to our hostess Joy, for her hospitality and generosity!

As far as Artsy weekends go, it could not have got much better.  Catching up with friends was simply delightful, DH was nominated as Portfolio Pastel Procurer of the Year and he even managed to shop for a wonderful treat for me from the studio of Johnathan Adler while I was painting away - fabulous indeed!

We topped the weekend off with dinner at the Spice Market on the way out of Greenwich which was absolutely delicious and will now hit the list of our top 10 NYC faves!

I'll post pics later of the finished product as these snaps are just from my iPhone and I've yet to download the pics of the day from the Nik.

oxxo
hugs to all

Getting Ready to go Gothic

I've had an incredibly fab and productive week (at last) and managed to knock off a number of things that have been lingering on my 'to-do' list for some time.

Early in the week I headed down to the basement and fired up the sewing machine and completed three lovely baby blankets for two friends who have recently been blessed with new arrivals...one boy for a friend in Connecticut and twin girls for my art friend Chrissy Howes (of ARtistA fame)..the quilts are now safely in the post and on their way, hopefully to wrap the new arrivals in a little downunder love!

Then I completed my fun paper weaving exchange piece with my blog-mate Chris, got several Etsy orders off in the mail and put the finishing touches to a watercolor painting that I've been working on for my Aunt - a picture of the lovely little church in her small town of Eardisley in the UK and finally got ready a print for my SIL that I had been promising to send for ages.

Thursday saw us with guests for drinks so I spent the day in the kitchen and cooked up a rather yummy asparagus and shitake mushroom quiche,  some ham, bacon and brie filo wraps and a little homemade guacamole to round out the supper line-up.....thankfully there were a few left-overs which took care of dinner tonight!

Today I have been getting ready for my class with Lynne Perella (Medieval themed) which will be held in New York City on Sunday.  There will be a bunch of us attending her workshop on either the Sat or Sun who know each other from Blogland and we are going to meet up for dinner tomorrow night, so DH and I decided to just grab a hotel in town for the night rather than trek to and from the Island.  And of course, true to form,   I got a little hairball this afternoon and decided to make a few 'treats' to take along for the dinner guests....so there are now 9 new pieces of art in various stages of drying and preparation for packing up to take with us - the pic above is one of them!
Funny how you can pump out the work when the deadline is just inches away from your nose..now why is that?

Anyway, the weekend should be a lot of fun and I will be sure and take lots of pics and report back when I can!

Hope you all enjoy a wonderful few days off too..........

Ciao for now

On The Road Again

I am pleased to report that I am feeling much chirpier, my stitches are out, the oral surgeon is alive and well - no bail-making required and my face is slowly returning to normal!

In the past few weeks that I have been feeling 'down and out' I have been tremendously consoled by all the blog comments, emails and phone calls that I have received, enquiring as to my welfare, and for that I am very very grateful!  To each and every one of you I send a heartfelt "thank you".

Best of all my artsy 'mojo' is on the mend, which is good considering I have a printmaking class to finish this week, a class with Lynne Perella next weekend and a bunch of work I have to compete for exhibition submissions before the end of the month!...........no rest for the wicked!

Ha.....life is good!

Coming Up for Air

Finally, I am starting to feel somewhat human again and my face is thankfully resembling something that I am moderately familiar with...only a small gobstopper sized swelling left and I have quit sticking pills down my neck at a rate of knots - which is nice!

In between naps and aimless wandering about the house I have managed to make some progress on a fun little project that my friend Chris and I have cooked up - namely a little paper weaving of old magazine pages.  So far I have created a re-cycled journal for her and have another piece of woven strips ready to be fashioned into something funky..not sure what just yet.....

I think about the only other productive thing I have done this week is spend and hour and a half on the phone with #2 son in Australia, helping him with his English homework.

Tomorrow I face the surgeon again...this time for him to take out the garment's worth of stitches he left behind!  I have already warned DH to have Bail money ready if the guy messes me around again - there is only so much "laissez faire" practice that this Bear will Bear!
(Yes, too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing!)

Seeing Stars

I am finally surfacing after having had to deal with yet another week of toothache and on Friday I finally agreed to go 'under the knife' and had surgery on my jaw to fix the problem (I hope).

It would be a vast understatement to say that I feel better...my tooth no longer hurts but the surgeon managed to beat me up pretty well and I have spent the last three days cowering under the covers and dosed heck up on antibiotics and as much pain medicine as I can safely stick down my neck!..or between lips that will not open very far!

I am not a happy camper - no not at all!  And since, there's an adage that goes - "if you dont have anything nice to say, then dont say anything at all" - am going to just lie low, keep quiet and come back to Blogland when I am feeling a little chirpier.

So....see you in a bit.