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Showing posts from May, 2011

I Love Nerds

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Add caption A sweet special order I finished up this morning and plan on shipping tomorrow... Nacho salad - one of my favorite parts of holidays. I've planted an avocado tree in my back yard and can't WAIT for it to start producing... Me loves avocados, but they're way too expensive for everyday. I'm a nerd

The Eddys at Cayucos Beach

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Looking out at the Pacific Ocean - I love California!!!! Brian and I have wanted to take the kids to the beach for a while now. Kenneth quotes Bugs Bunny a lot and keeps saying "Pismo Beach! And all the clams you can eat!" So, to ensure that we heard that quote a LOT, we planned on going to Pismo. I was sure I was going to have hours and hours to do art, so I packed a lovely bag full of paper, watercolors, origami books and a huge book to fold. Of course, we got impatient going to Pismo and ended up stopping at a beach that was on the way and looked just as good - Cayucos. It sounds fancy, no?   I ended up folding most of this on the trip to the coast. It's my Press Forward With Steadfastness pattern. The wind was rather incessant and I had to turn my chair so my back was to the wind. Still, my pages kept flapping around and I quit after a little while. The pages started looking a little worse for the wear and I'm excited to see how this one turns out becaus

Stitching on More Paper

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If you are good with many false starts you may continue reading. Remember the photos I posted a while ago with the stitched paper? The darn thread is so slippery and fine that I'm ho-hum about the project. The paper twine that I bought from Paperphine is still taunting me with its "there-ness" and I'm trying to use it again. If the twine is too thick and unwieldy, I figured that I just need to use bigger paper with bigger holes. So here: I took a page out of a large encyclopedia dictionary. I layered two pages together with some kind of Wonder Under-type stuff. Then I poked large holes with a dart. (Of course I used a template I printed off the computer)   The paper twine is heavy enough to use without a needle. The problem I keep having is that it is so stiff it doesn't pull through the holes easily. Several holes have ripped while I've pulled the twine through. I don't know if this one will work either! It also doesn't lay nicely on the paper.

I Am the Cheese

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I have learned how to make cheese! With a kit from here and a gallon of milk and a half hour, this is what I ended up with: I used to see the fresh mozzarella balls in the deli cases back East when I lived in NY. I believe I even tried some. Still, it was too expensive for me to buy again. All it took was a gallon of whole milk, the rennet table, citric acid (which I already had on hand for making homemade dishwasher soap ) and cheese salt. I made this late in the evening so I could not take pictures of the process. Needless to say, it's rather unappetizing to watch. Milk tends to do gross things. The next day I took my cheese from the fridge and made pizza. With pesto sauce made from the basil in my windowsill. With dough I made with my bread machine. Yay me! Another goal from the 101 DOWN! Even the boy likes it. A meal with a view...

Fame and Fortune, Here I Come!

I'm in the local paper today! Woo hoo! Fame and fortune HERE I COME! I admit to harboring a secret fantasy of quitting the library business to be a designer/artist full time. How this would be accomplished, I don't know. Maybe a patron from the library who is so impressed with my kindness will leave me all his money so I can retire... Does anyone else feel that way? Is it normal to not like working outside of the home? I would also love to be with my kid (that wasn't an afterthought, by the way!). At this time, he's learning things from his aunt and cousins that I wish he weren't... Perhaps all of my dreams will come true eventually, even if it's not in a way I can imagine.

Poppies

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Here are a couple more pictures of flowers I took when I went to San Diego the other day. Poppies are some of my favorite flowers...

Watercolor Sundays

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Thursdays are good days. That is the day that our library puts all of its unwanted donations and oldie, moldy stuff out on carts to be taken away to be recycled. The carts are piled high with books, flattened cardboard boxes, old magazines and other detritus which accumulates in even the most organized libraries. Oftentimes, I see something that strikes my fancy. Since it's going to recycling anyway, I pluck it for my own... I found this interesting looking book on the pile a few weeks ago. It's an old poetry book and was down in the basement until it was allowed to die. I was surprised that it had last checked out in 1952 (according to the slip inside) and that fines used to be two cents a day. Now fines are a quarter per day. I was looking for something new to do with my watercolors when I picked up this book and took a look at the paper inside. It was soft and toothy - perfect for watercolors. I drew a quick and easy sketch on the paper and tried a few splashes of color

A Different Perspective

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If you put your camera down underneath the flowers and point up, you see the world from their perspective. Rather awe-some, no?

Butterfly Wings

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There are so many variations you can do with a single pattern. If you take a simple circle pattern, you can alternate doing some open and some closed folds. The end product is butterflies! (was that proper grammar?) Anyway, this is where some chalks in different colors would look lovely on the folded edges...

Mother's Day

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My mom was the young wife of a Navy chief who served tours of duty on board ships. I was born when he was in Naples, Italy. He and my mom had discussed names, so when I was born, he sent her a telegram wishing her and MELANIE lots of love. Apparently, mom changed her mind when I popped into the world. I wonder how life would have been different if I'd been a Melanie instead of Heather. Growing up in the Navy was nomadic. We moved every three years or so until I was 14 years old. I never really got to set down roots anywhere and longed for a life where I could just STAY. At 18, I left for school. I moved back and forth between home and dorms and apartments for the next five and a half years. After that, I moved between home and apartments every year or two. Then I got married. Brian has lived in Bakersfield his whole life. He's been to Germany where he served a short mission for our church (he got sick and had to come home after only 3 months) and he went to Japan for his

Coastal Inspiration

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My sister April is a nanny in New Jersey. This past week, her family flew out to San Diego for an extended stay. Brian and I took the opportunity to crash on her hotel room couch and see some of the sights. (The family had given her a private room so she would have time by herself) Our first site was the San Diego temple. It was on my 101 goals to-do list. Check! With the three of us we were able to do sealings for tons of names April had brought with her. She's so proud of herself for finding all of them through Ancestry.com. There were beautiful poppies in bloom. I took many, many pictures. I might hurt you with all the pictures I took. Be prepared. Next we went to the La Jolla beach. It was really crowded so I was a bit self-conscious at first about doing my normal scavenging for neat things in the sand. Then I forgot about everyone and let them all see my booty sticking up in the air and the treasures down the front of my shirt as I bent over. It's my way of givin

Stitching on Paper

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Remember this post about sewing on paper? I have been thinking about what I want to do and have realized that I love just a few things in art - words and letters most of all. Therefore, I decided to embroider a word on a piece of paper. A little while back, I indulged myself and bought some paper twine from Paperphine . It was kinda expensive, but I love paper, so decided to give it a try. The shipping alone was half the price of the product because it was coming from Austria. When it arrived in my mailbox, I was a bit disappointed - you know when you pay a lot for something and it's not ... very big. Yes, I know that diamonds and babies are small, yet wonderful things, but still ... Anyway, I wanted to stitch with paper twine on paper. It seemed the perfect match. Unrolling it off the spool (which is a vintage wooden bobbin - very cool - almost makes up for the high price), it reminded me of wire. It was thick and not very flexible. Hmmm... and that's when I realized that

Dahlia Folded Flower Pin

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See what happens when you give a girl a circle punch and leave her alone in McDonalds while her son runs around like a lunatic? SEE? Dahlia flowers ! And then she gives up her exercise time to take fancy, romantic pictures of the pin, making you think she lives among roses and chamber music when, in reality, she has a four-year old boy crying to have her can of Diet Pepsi and yelling "You wascally wabbit!" at the top of his lungs. I live the goooooood life.

Flower Garden folded book

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I have a pattern called " Bachelor's Button " that uses an arc and a basic shape. I decided to simplify the design and just use a basic grid for both of these parts (instead of an arc for the stem of the flower) and - well - it looks the same to me! Without pages holding the shape in rigid lines, the stems arch naturally...

Arches and Circles Folded Book

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Please note artistic pose. Yessirree... that's me. Artsy as all get out.