this is where I started you can see where I went!!!

realism.....

back of above piece

crayon background ...then anything from the scrap box

detail from the piece below

the background is a piece of painted fabric with bits of browm paper, tulle, and white plastic garbage bag adhered...them FME'd then the SSL applied ...the SSL is painted on with a limited palate of stencil paints then FME'd to define the individual shapes

sharpie pens then sprayed with alchohol

crayon covered by black acrylic paint then scratched off

crayon

collaged with fabric bits and FME

this is my self portrait that I am sending in to " quilting arts " it is double sided but I forgot to take a picture of the back...you'll have to wait till they publish it on the front AND the back of the magazine...HA HA

post card creation

I did a sreies of post cards for a swap with the theme of " body parts ". In my paying job I do teeth so naturally some of them had to be about that, and also I found some quotes that had to be illustrated too.

post card

postcard

postcard

post card

post card

we drove through some forests that burned last summer...this piece is inspired by that scene as the sun starts it's downward slide...it is called " after the fire "

new piece finished...called " the face of mercy" inspired form a sermon a couple of months ago

the moon 2 nights ago...so cool...

these post cards are for a swap ..the theme was color based....lime green maroon and grey

I finally finished this guy called " swimming upstream " it has all kinds of fun things like foiling and " chicken scratch " embroidery and hand painted fabric and etc....it's good I like the black and white checks for the graphic quality

A frenzy of creativity

Instead of paying bills today I created!!! Finished alot of almost done pieces and made some postcards for a new yahoo group I recently joined. I had more ideas than I could accomplish and bounced around like a ping pong ball from one thing to the next but, am I am happy with what got done. Here are a few of the finished items, I can't show the simple still life things just yet though and one of those pieces I am really pleased with.

refresh

My guests left this morning so creativity can begin again. It was 3 weeks of company cause the first week was all about getting a room ready. I had thought of putting them in the room that my son vacated but he never got around to really cleaning before he left for bootcamp and with the quitars and computers I didn't think it would be a good place for a 2 year old. And the biggest reason is that the day my cousin called to say she and 4 of her 7 children were coming, our groundsource heat pump died. So, the best place for her was the basement which meant a cleanout of the " dumping " room. The heat pump is still not fixed. The problem stems from the incorrect installation 8 years ago when we built this house and we have had ongoing issues that have ended in complete failure of the unit. I find that there is some advantage in soon being 45 with hormones that are unreliable AND a houseful of small children that keep you edgy. The manufacturer of this heatpump unit finally gave me to someone who was helpful and I am hopeful that we might be on the road to mending the whole problem at last. So I have spent a quiet afternoon re-orienting my brain and heart and I will post some photos this evening.

not much creativity going on around here...my cousin is visiting from southern california...with 4 of her 7 children....it was her birthday yesterday and we had a party!! 

dieting and boot camp

My husband and I have been dieting and exercising faithfully since our youngest left for boot camp. It is one way we can sort of empathise with him. As usual David looses much faster that I do, everyone at our party last night noticed that he had lost weight!! We have done our walk almost every day...it is quite a pleasant walk in the summer. Below are some pictures of the scenes as we walk along.

this is in the shady area 

this is about where we usually turn around and come home