Experiments and Experience

It all started quite some time ago, really. Actually a few years ago! I don't know how long ago but maybe 2 years, or three, my friend Gwenda joined together nine little canvases - I had plans.

Blue Bazaar's mixed media challenge got me started. Out came the canvases (I knew where they were!) and my new Memories Mists and a glorious mess ensued. I had a wonderful time spraying the Memories Mists on my canvas and it looked SO good. The problem was it just didn't dry. After about 10 days I decided that I would have to rub it into/off the canvas.

Plan B. I stuck my home made paper onto each of the canvases and sprayed them with the Memories Mist. My hope was that they would dry on paper products. They didn't seem to.

Then I started doing some research. I found out that Memories Mist is NOT paint, as I had assumed, but pigment ink. Aaaaaah! That puts a new light on things. I aimed my heat gun at it for a while, then parked the whole lot near the heater for about a week. Finally it is dry.

Unfortunately I stuck the gorgeous gold buttons on before the paper was completely dry. Bad plan. Very BAD, BAD plan! (That's Woodley-style for all you Lano and Woodley fans out there.) The buttons stuck to the paper but the paper wasn't dry and it was quite happy to relinquish its hold on the canvas.

Hennyway. It's all stuck now.


About the buttons. They are a treasure. My Dad found them at a garage sale and sent them to me for the kids. The kids!!! No way! I snaffled them. That was years ago - like 12 years. There is one button that didn't come from the garage sale.


This button (correct me if I am wrong, Deb and Mum) is the one button I could find (where are the others?) that was on a fabulous dark orange, beautifully knitted cardigan that used to be Mum's and then mine, and then my sister's and now I have no idea where it is.

Back to Blue Bazaar. The mixed media challenge for this month is to use metal. I was very happy to give my stash of gold buttons a special spot. Some of the buttons are metal, some are plastic but they all have some form of gold on them. The paper has gold glitter in it. And I sprayed gold Glimmer Mist over the well-inked paper.

I have actually stuck the whole pezzo nove creation onto another larger canvas. I do hope the whole thing holds together.


That's all for now.

Refugee Week Community Dance

I said to DH the other week, "I want to go to a bush dance." I was remembering the fun our family had at bush dances years ago in Glen Innes. Hearty, healthy, family fun. I could hardly believe my ears when, only days later, my good friend, Fay, said she was organising a dance for Refugee Week. (There are a lot of commas in that sentence!!!)

The great thing was that the WHOLE family got to go to the Refugee Week Community Dance. Here's a glimpse of the fun that we all had learning to do African, Arabian, Israeli, Sudanese and bush dancing. Unfortunately the Indigenous dancers couldn't come at the last minute.


My creative mind is in overload at the moment. Show and tell coming soon.

I wonder what people think...

...when they see me get out of the car and cross the road to get a photo.

Or, as was the case when I took this photo, I get dropped off on the side of the road and the car disappears from sight, and I am left in the middle of nowhere with my camera?


Actually, I wasn't really in the middle of nowhere. I was just south of Ballandean. Renae spotted the pyramid when we were on our way up to Brisbane for the Scrapbooking Convention and we made a mental note to look out for it on our way back.

So what is this pyramid? A bit of research (read Google) found this.

Today, as I was driving into town, I saw a lady get out of her car and hurry across the New England Highway to take a photo. "Ah!" I thought, "A woman after my own heart."

That's what I think. What do you think?

Fun Fun Fun

I've decided to give you the long weekend as it comes - totally out of order - cos otherwise you may never get it.

On the Monday evening of the long weekend Chris drove up to Brisbane from the Gold Coast so that he could take me out for dinner. We headed down to South Bank, checked out the scenery and took photos.


We finally decided on Viet de Lites to have dinner after walking the length of South Bank twice. I took this photo at the restaurant - I love it!


I can just see it being on the front cover of their menu! The food was scrumdiddlyumptious and a very health-friendly choice.

After dinner Chris took me on a wild goose chase to get a photo of some orange creations in the window of a museum - maybe an art museum. After doing a drive past a number of times - which also involved going over bridges and getting onto the Gold Coast Hwy - and Chris suggesting that I jump out at the traffic lights and he'd go and do a u-ey (how do you spell that!?!), I decided to do a snatch and grab from the traffic lights. Here's a photo of the things I wanted to photograph but we couldn't find a parking spot to get out and take - sad :(


Then I was on a roll - I took a number of photos from the window of Chris' car, snapping architecture, signs and other things of interest. We headed back to our apartment for a chat before Chris headed home.

Louise was kind enough to take a photo or two (or more) of us. We didn't employ the hints that Sara Pearcy and Andrea Thompson gave me in the photography class I did at the Scrapbooking Convention only that afternoon. It was suggested that we do Blue Steel pose - much hilarity ensued and I managed to get some photos of Chris with his braces. Yay.

Inspired by another music clip

Aussie Scrap Music gave us the film clip Little by Little by Chasing Bailey to be inspired by. And inspired I was. I didn't listen to it much but I watched the clip and got lots of inspiration from it. Here's my rendition.


I used cardstock, gel pen and a variety of ribbons and had great fun :)

Architecture

Just so that you don't think I have disappeared... Here's a collage of some of the architectural-type photos that I took while I was in Brisbane.

The Alms-basket of Words!

It all started when Kelly from Scrapapple decided that we should add a bit of Shakespeare to our Weekend Workout.

The first challenge was to find a Shakespeare quote that I wanted to use. It didn't take me too long to find this one. I love playing with words and this was as good as it gets for a quote.

I decided to incorporate May's challenge on Aussie Dares which was Words, Words, Words.



This is what I came up with.


Firstly, I set up some of my fave word games (that was fun) and took a few photos. Then I tore a few pages out of Hamlet (an ex-school book) and stuck them randomly on the page. I painted a bit, wielded my pen a bit and agonised a bit.

For the title I found a relatively blank page in the book and printed my title onto it with a space between each letter. I then chopped it all up and stuck the letters onto black cardstock - I'm am impressed with the effect (even if I say so myself!).

I just liked the little shield-emblem thing and decided to add it to the layout too. I looked up non sanz droict and it seems that it may or may not be Shakespeare's motto.

I grew up with a love of words, a passion for language. Playing with words, quoting and misquoting words, singing words - this is my life. Words are the bread and butter of my intellectual existence. Hence, [I] have liv'd long on the alms-basket of words.

Products: I used the back of two Scenic Route papers; Reeves paint; Uniball Gel pens; Stazon Ink; VersaCube Ink; Bazzill and ColorMates cardstock; Prima flowers; Kaisercraft Rhinestones (thanks Nae); and pages from a book.

I'll tell you a story...

Because I changed schools so many times I happened to read Romeo and Juliet more than once. In Yr 12 (maybe) we were working our way through Romeo and Juliet. Various people in the class would read their assigned parts. I grew up with the King James Version of the Bible, so understanding Shakespeare was no difficulty for me. This was NOT the case for everyone else in the class. It was so painful listening to student after student stumbling and stalling through their reading.

I was prepared to sit quietly and listen because I was super-duper shy and absolutely terrified of reading out loud. But it came to the crunch one day. I looked ahead and saw that the apothecary had, like, four pages the next day. The thought of enduring this was even worse than the thought of me reading it out loud, so I volunteered to read the apothecary part the next day.

I didn't sleep well. I was sick with the anticipation. But I read and I survived. Phew!