Crows

ABAA's challenge today is "Something to Crow About." Anything that involves crows. Personally, I hate crows. They eat baby songbirds in the spring and I can hear the little bird parents raising quite a ruckus and fighting the good fight against those mean old crows. Where I live, they're as big as chickens. Maybe the only good thing about crows is that they clean up the trash. I often see them gathered around somebody's gross out McDonald's litter thrown out of their car (PET PEEVE) .... and the crows do a pretty good job of cleaning it up. They're good for something I guess.

There are several old counting rhymes about crows. I picked this one:

One for sorrow, Two for mirth

Three is marriage and Four is birth

Five crows for laughter and Six for crying

Seven sickness, Eight dying

Nine for silver, Ten crows for gold

And Eleven a secret never to be told

And because they are such good trash collectors, I've used cereal box cardboard for this piece. The top layer is the cereal box sanded with rough sandpaper and fine sandpaper and then inked well with 3 colors. I wrote the rhyme in sharpie and then cut out my crow with an x-acto knife. The behind layer is also cereal box and is painted with black acrylic paint and scribbled while wet to reveal some of the underneath colors. The 2 layers have been glued together and then coated with beeswax which gives it a really great shine and really makes the colors pop. The finished size is about 8X11 inches. Thank for looking!

I Love This

Simple Gifts

I enjoyed a special date with my dear old Dad today. After a simple lunch of clam chowder and his darling wife's special homemade Sauerbraten, we went to his local art supply store. Any time I go anywhere with my Dad, they all know him by name. It's really fun to watch him bring sunshine with him as he just walks through the door of a place. He's funny too. The sales lady knows him as Rich - her name is June - but he calls her Junebug - and then he said, "Junebug, today my name is Jose. Jose Jose." What a nut. 

Anyway, he said to me, "What do you want? You can have anything at all." Of course I "needed" beeswax and "wanted" paper - and he got me both. Simple gifts and a lovely lovely time.

Tea on Tuesday - a twist

I'm breaking my rule and incorporating a challenge with my tea today. I originally wanted Tea on Tuesday to be all about the simple things in life - like favorite books, doing puzzles, thoughts, basically nothing that is "type A."  But there is a very simple idea out there with an art challenge attached that I found over on Ooglebloop's World.  A couple of days ago she linked back to The Altered Page (Seth) and a project he's working on and opened up to anyone who wants to try it. It's called "Disintegration."

Now comes the "simple thoughts" part of Tea on Tuesday. I've been really mulling over something that I'm totally sick of in my life. Has anyone ever given you the silent treatment? Have you ever given it out? For me, the very first time I encountered it I was in 3rd grade. There were 2 neighbor girls I had taken up playing with after school. They were my age, but went to a different school. After several weeks of playing together very happily, they asked me what religion I was. I wasn't sure what they meant my that. So they said, "Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?" I had no idea what a Protestant was - and I knew that I was a Catholic - so I said so. They said, "Well we can't play with you anymore." And from then on they completely ignored me as if I were invisible. That is the silent treatment. You have no idea what you did wrong. You have no voice either. You no longer exist. It hurts like hell.

Since then, I've had it happen to me again and again .... as well as train me up in how do dish it out. I am currently on the receiving end of it again. Over the summer I read the book "Odd Girl Out" because my pre-teen daughter has been encountering the silent treatment. Reading that book, I believe, has set me on the road to seeing it for what it is ... and facing it ... and dealing with it internally. Because, you see, there is nothing you can do externally to fix it. You can concede the unknown offense and get in somebody's good graces again - maybe - but it WILL happen again. (Here's a very well written article about the silent treatment, if you'd like to read more.)

This is where the "Disintegration" project comes into play. Art is silent - but also has a very loud voice. This piece is me - shouting. Shouting back at the silence. It's interesting that disintegration means what is does.  Disintegration: to become reduced to components, fragments or particles. Integrate, on the other hand, means: to make a whole by bringing parts together. Disintegration is when it all blows apart.

I have assembled the pages of Alice in Wonderland and nailed them to an old board. I have wired a treasured teacup from a long lost friend to the other end of the board. The teacup is filled with a special potpourri made by Dominicans in Florence Italy. It is called Santa Maria Novella and is an ancient recipe of herbs and flowers. I have tied lace over the opposing elements. The lace is very old and is also from another long lost friend. I have set my assemblage on my favorite place to sit in the summer time for my morning cuppa. I can see it from my kitchen window. I now leave it out in the long silence of winter - to be treated silently to a slow disintegration. While I remain hurting but whole - and shouting back.

Altered Canvas

Rose Collection

One is just one, two is a couple, three is a few ... and four must be a collection. My dear husband (an urban farmer at heart) has well over 60 roses. Not a collection anymore - maybe an obsession? Obsession or not - it gives us (and the whole neighborhood) joy. Early morning is the best time to take in their fragrance - it's the cool damp morning air that brings it out.

This piece is for Linda and Rosie's challenge at ABAA. Rosie's examples are stunning and I took great inspiration from her use of lace and old fashioned label holders.

Here's the process: I spray painted back side of a stretched 6X6 canvas with silver spray paint; adhered vintage lace to wood parts; attached small bouquet of ceramic roses with a large decorative brad; attached label holder; added aluminum tacks and washers for decoration; strung stamped pennant flags on string and wrapped the ends around the tacks. There is a picture hanger on the back for hanging it on the wall, but because of the depth of the canvas, it can also stand up by itself.

2X4 ... Snow!

Snow

Theme Thursday's challenge this week is to try out a new size. 2X4's ..... I think it's a great proportion. I really love the elongated shaped as a change from the atc size which is more boxy.

I made this piece using a Christmas card from a friend ... inside the card, she mentioned that the image was so cute and was just begging to be made into something fun. I roughed it up a little bit with fine grade sandpaper. Stamped "snow!" Adhered vintage silver tinsel and added black photo corners. Oh - and also an old button.

Thanks for looking - your comments are always appreciated :)

Windows

Friendship Windows

I discovered a new challenge: "One Powerful Hour." The idea being that using their prompt, you create something in one hour. Today's prompt is "windows." I literally did this in one hour. Starting at 9:10 and ending at 10:10. It was a fun challenge because I kept adding stuff and doing stuff until my hour was up. I think the only thing I'll add to this will be a wire hanger.

My windows are actually charms with the loopy thing broken off with pliers. The door is made from a scrap of an aluminum pie tin. The roof is handmade paper I made over the summer. The rooster is from a children's book. The faces are stickers. The ric-rac is velveteen.

I put a number 2 on the door because the little girls are "2" friends. The door itself is gold because "old" friends are "gold" friends, and though they are young, their friendship is not only for today (aujourd'hui) but also for many years to come .....