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Wow, we had a long, and lovely, but damp, day at the flea market in Sparks and White Cloud.  Both towns were not full like they usually are due to the drizzle, but there was enough loot out to make it worth the trek to get there.  Plus, it is an Event- with a capital E- for Beth http://bethleintz.typepad.com/) and I twice a year.

It was Twinkle’s first Flea Mkt and she was pretty popular.  Beth and I decided we needed to hang a sign that said "Twinkle/ Girl/ 3mths old/ Dorkie/6 lbs when grown" because EVERYONE wanted to know.

She made some friends, and besides peeing on Beth once, and barfing on me three times (her first big car trip didn’t agree with her), I think she liked the day.

We didn’t buy much, only had to unload our carts once all day!  Normally, we will make 3 or 4 trips to the car to empty out so we can refill.

I got this oval frame (to paint white and put a rose painting into), this pink bird vase, and a sparkly K. I tied the K onto my azalea pink shopping cart for the day.  Now that I have it home, I’m not sure where I’ll need to use it, but do know that there is an important spot waiting for it somewhere.

A green bucket with just the right amount of rust, and a nice little box came home with me too.

My highlight of the day was finding jewels for $3 a scoop.  I spent 20 minutes hand picking just the right ones to put into my scoop!  It was a treasure hunt, digging through the bucket of plastic beads, broken bits and made in china crap to find enough delightful sparkles to fill a scoop.  I don’t think, that even if I had enough time, I could have filled a 2nd scoop, the pickins were slim.  I got all the ones that spoke to me.  ( I did have the  permission of the proprietor to hand pick, she didn’t mind at all.  I think she was just happy that someone was shopping during the rain) 

My biggest surprise of the day, is that I didnt’ buy a single thing with a rose on it!!  Unusual for me.  So, for Day #3 in my ROSE FOR A DAY FOR 10 DAYS IN MAY in honor of Caring Blogger’s Rose Day on May 10th- here is an oil painting I did a couple years ago of some white roses.  (I saw a vintage painting in a book and stole the look,repainted it for myself, I’m afraid. – Hope I didn’t infringe on any copyrights!)

Happy May Day! check out all the pretty May Baskets at: http://www.artsymama.blogspot.com/.  She planned and arranged this fun swap.  I am enjoying my May Basket swap gift from Karin at: http://www.creativechaos.typepad.com/.  Karin was thoughtful to include tiny canvases for me to paint, so here is my May Day painting of roses in a basket to go along with the theme!  Next to it, is the lovely basket (box) she made for me, I am using it as a center piece on my studio dining room table. (I am lucky enough to have a giant studio, divided up into areas for multi functions!!!)

The rest of my studio doesn’t look as nice…. Thats what happens when I work on jewelry, paintings, charms, and who knows what all at the same time. 

Whats in the pink bag under the work table at my feet?

Twinkle is using her carry bag as a doggy bed.  She must think it is pretty cozy.  I hope she cooperates this well on Thursday when I go to Sparks and White Cloud for the giant annual flea market and take her along in this bag!!

This is a close up of my painting.  It is on my gifted canvas, and is painted with acrylic craft paints.  One trick I use with acrylic paint, is to paint in layers, blow drying in between and adding clear coats of polycryllic.  After it was done, I coated it with crackle glaze to age it, and covered that with a light coat of umber paint.  Over that went more clear coat.  I’d say it took me a couple of hours to do, thank goodness for blow dryers, or I’d go crazy waiting for things to dry!  I get impatient and just want to get it done!!  Of course, I never have a blow dryer in the house, it is always out in the studio. Explains why you don’t see ME in these photos.

If anyone is interested, the May Basket painting is $45.00

Well, it wouldn’t be May Day without a fairy flitting by, would it?

Here is a mixed media, tiny little painting I did.  She is in a 5×7 mat that I painted and sparkled up to match. 

This is day #1 of my 10 days of roses in honor of

http://brittarnhildshouseinthewoods.typepad.com/brittarnhilds_house_in_th/

and her Caring Bloggers Rose Day on May 10.  I will be posting a rose a day till then.

And please, keep entering my May Bucket giveaway!  I make an entry for you with every comment you leave. Some of you who have had trouble leaving comments, I have entered you when you email me. 

Here is a reminder of why you should enter!

By the way- I found a Pretty Hat to use for the drawing (as per #7, if you read the rules posted April 16th).

Lucinda, my jewelry lady, is modeling the hat now.  Of course, if she had a lick of sense, she’d be modeling the jewelry I am supposed to have ready for the art show on Sunday. Not too many pieces are hanging on her, are they??

Beth has a lot ready for Art in the Park, and has been showing it on her blog: http://bethleintz.typepad.com/

She is way ahead of me.

I was looking at the pictures of Beth Leintz’s collections on her blog:

http://bethleintz.typepad.com

  I have seen her home, and this is just a small taste of the enviable things she collects.  She really has an eye for the unique.  Beth was showing the photos because she saw the call for collections by Michelle Ward’s blog at: http://michelleward.typepad.com/how_cool_is_that/

  So, I checked out Michelle.  Loved her hand assortment the best, but had a hankering for the Pierrot figures.  Mostly I was glad to find a site I enjoy looking at.

Time can sure go by quickly clicking from one blog to the next.  There is a wonderful network of art work and interesting things out there that I never would have known about without all the connections from one to the other. 

Here is my contribution to the obsessions, I mean collections.  You might have noticed, I kind of like Fairies.  Also am wild about roses.  I am always on the look out for any little fairy creature, preferably vintage, but not necessarily.  I mix the little winged beauties in with my dishes in the china cabinet along with porcelain or china roses .

Karla and Karla’s computer are a little under the weather, but Karla plans to be back on line by Mar 12, so please check back then.

This week, I had out my fabric dyes and treated a hand made scarf by my friend, Beth, to some springlike colors.  We have listed it as a group project to sell on Etsy.  If you’d like to check it out, click on this.

hand dyed hand knitted scarf

I seem to have issues with spilling things on my favorite shirts and ruining them.  I have figured out a way to fix the problem with fiber reactive dyes.  When I have my dye mess out for an art project, I’ll grab a ruined shirt and doctor it up.  Here are two pink ones that suffered through coffee dribbles, but are now wearable again.

You can tell by the look of my studio mess, that I need to get as much done as I can while it is all spread out on the tables.  Not something I pull out every day, it kind of takes over!

I actually (with help) figured out how to display my photo albums!  They are listed here, with multi categories now too.

Although that took me a good part of the day, I also had time to paint fairy wings onto ladies on  vintage postcards, and other ephemera. 

Considering the fact that my husband needed to be picked up earlier than I had planned and I spent most of the day lost, and dealing with a poor sense of direction-  I found some good things in Wichita on my partial junking day.  One giant mall, Paramount, could have taken up much more time, if I had any!  Here is my loot from the day, not a big pile, but one full of possibilities.  The map of Paris under all of the goodies isn’t old, but still cool and will be wonderful to tear apart and use in collages.  The old ceiling tin panel is badly painted, but I will redo it and add roses, of course!

I have already positioned some of my finds, I love the Italian roses and have a collection of them throughout my home.  Here, I have set the newest addition to my obsession with pottery roses near the entryway to my studio.

Three of my acquisitions went in my studio office area.  I hung the HEAVY wrought iron roses on the solid, old door I use as a divider.  On the French door it is hinged to, I hung the open frame with the delicate porcelain flowers on it and the tiny rosebud shelf.  Normally, i am a do-it-yourselfer, and don’t buy other people’s projects, if they are something I can do- but I really fell for this cute and simple frame.  But, I did learn a lesson, other people aren’t always as conscientious as I am with their work.  The roses on this frame fell off already!! I could tell they were put on with hot glue, not a good plan.  When you are gluing items, you should always use the proper glue. Hot glue is easy, but rarely the best choice.  I have repaired it with "Crafter’s Pick -The Ultimate" one of my favorite glues.

The cut glass compote with the golden roses stem, promptly went into my new bathroom cabinets and was filled with soaps.  The only thing left to use is the robin’s egg blue drawers with spool knobs.  I have plans for it later on when I add some springtime touches to my living room.

I am desperately in need of some springtime cheer.  Now that all the piles of snow and ice are melting outside, the construction mess has become an even more hideous sight.  I could ignore it a bit easier, when it was under a blanket of white!  Here is a photo of some of what we are dealing with right now.  Between the city redoing the road, and the county redoing the bridge, both right in front of our house, the area was already bad.  Now, TMobile is putting in a cell tower also!  Well, at least they are all being done at once, and that will mean they will be done and over with at the same time.  And luckily, it is not garden season, so there are some plusses to having 3 construction crews invading my yard at once!  There is always the joy of planning some new landscaping projects too…

The last few weeks, my studio has become unbearable.  I was piling up messes as fast as I could make them, and was starting to lose my creative edge. I like my surroundings to be tranquil and pretty, so I took advantage of this awful, snowy weather to stay in and redo my work areas. 

My studio is a big open room that I can divide up with large pieces of furniture and hinged doors and shutters.  I was able to make certain areas designated storage for each craft that I do.  I also used a hand painted screen to make a hideaway for the biggest messes and storage of things not in use daily. 

Jewelry and soldering necessities went into the armoire. A lot of my collage papers and supplies went into a rolling cart that I can pull right up to the table when I am working, and when not in use, it goes back behind the screen. 

I lined the back of an ugly, $15 garage sale cabinet made of pressed wood and painted it a neutral taupe.  Then filled the shelves with things I liked to have within easy reach. Attractive containers helped cure the clutter.  Fairy dust (glitter) is in a cruet bottle, paint brushes are in flower pots and scissors are in an antique pitcher.

Fairy making supplies and more album and collage loot went into an auction dresser.  I bought it for a song because it was missing the bottom drawer.  After painting it a warm French Vanilla, I used the hole as a shelf to hold boxes of paper.  The boxes themselves are floral paper covered old drawers.

My brushes, paints, rollers (and boxes of junk) are behind the screened area.  I used an old door salvaged from our kitchen remodeling project as a wall by the sink.  The window is done with stain glass paints and lets in a lot of light.  This door was featured in Paint Magic magazine last summer with how-to steps I had written on making one yourself. My friend, Beth, made the apron for me to wear to craft shows and flea markets to carry pens and receipt books.

One of my projects for these cold months of January and February has been to organize all my photos and get some albums made up.  Of course, the first one I did was of my new granddaughter, Leandra Joy.  I call her Sugar Wings, so it was fitting to add wings to her pictures, here is my favorite.

Usually, I am a bit of a workaholic.  But for the last few months, I have been more of a putter-er.  I keep busy and keep creative, but haven’t been "working" so much as just enjoying making things pretty.  I’ve helped family repaint and redesign rooms and helped our contractor gut and redo our new wonderful bathroom.

The room used to be my son’s, but since he is out and has his own family, we knocked down the wall and turned it into a master bath.  The walls are chocolatey brown with tons of gold glitter mixed into the paint and the ceiling is the palest pink I could make. I lined the glass fronted cabinets with old sheet music and filled them with dried flowers, soaps, sea shells and apothecary jars.   Doing a lot of the work myself helped with the budget, along with scouring sales to find the best prices on tiles and supplies.  I also got curtains at the Goodwill store and remade them to fit the window.

After all the physical labor of redoing the bath, I was ready to sit down in my studio and get going on some scrap booking. When my grandma died a few years ago, I found an old album under her bed and after all this time, finally got it out and salvaged it.  I used her photos from the early 1900s as well as some pictures I had inherited from my mom when she passed away a couple of years ago. I hadn’t been emotionally able to go through hers and do anything with them, and felt guilty about stashing them in the closet.  So, taking advantage of a slow (and ice cold, here in KS) time of year, I made up an album in honor of Mom and Grandma, trying to reuse as much of the original album as possible.

I bought papers from hobby and scrapbook stores, one of them being a reproduction of an old ledger.  After I had glued these three photos in place on the page, I noticed that centered between them was my grandma’s name!!!  You can see it on this page "Mary Phillips", I have highlighted it by using an aging ink around the word and around the pictures.  Mary is pretty common, but put with Phillips?  I think that must mean that she is happy I am care-taking the album she started almost 100 years ago.

On my trip to Jacksonville last week, my brother, Randy, had me paint a pond on the floor of his craft room.  Every time I go to visit Randy, he has more for me to add to his "mural room".  We started about 10 years ago with a bottle of champagne, Phantom of the Opera playing on the stereo, and a crazy idea to add his friends to the wall of his guest room as fairies.  Over the years, and many bottles of bubbly later, the mural has grown to include  a sunny sky, an enchanted forest and a rock wall.  This trip was the most elaborate change, pulling up the carpet and painting the floor as a pond (with stepping stones in place for furniture to rest on of course!)

Here are steps to follow for a basic floor:

• Remove all traces of carpet (nail strips, fuzz, etc) and clean the floor well
• Prime with a water based bonding primer- use an extender poll on your roller or your back will go out before you even begin on the artistic part!!!
• Roll on your base color in eggshell interior wall paint (my fave is Behr from Home Depot-thick, good coverage, affordable)
• Using acrylic craft paint and artist brushes, add your creative touch. I recommend sitting on a short stool to stay limber while doing this, sitting directly on the floor is a killer.
• Top coat with a polyurethane of your choice, usually satin, but of course, it depends on what compliments your design. 

Steps to follow for a pond theme:

• Chose a blue/green you like for the base of the water
• Figure out where furniture will sit and add rocks or grassy areas, so the room doesn’t look silly with floating furniture.  Also add rocks in traffic patterns, and later observe how guests will always walk on the rocks, not the water of the completed pond!!
• Paint the rocks first with a tan color, add depth with 3 colors in a stoney hue that are dark, medium, and light and apply with a sponge for rocky texture. Splatter with all three colors after and don’t worry if spots land in the "water".  Little spots of rock colors will look like small rocks underwater.
• For grassy areas, paint a dark brown base, then with a 1/2 inch flat brush turned sideways, paint three colors of green in dark, medium, and light with quick strokes overlapping and going all directions, like clumps of grass.
• Using a darker shade of the blue/green mixed with a bit of clear glaze, paint shadows around all the rocks and grassy areas.  This is easiest with a sponge dipped into the paint and washed on.
• Start with the "deepest" areas of the water.  Use darker colors mixed in with some of the base coat to make fish and plants look deep.  Shadowey shapes and little detail are all that is necessary.
• Next paint the mid-level of the water, brighten up the shades you used for the deeper plants and fish, using less of the base coat color.  Still, use few details in your features.  Overlap your first layer.
• For the shallow parts of the pond, make fish and plants look closer to the surface with more detail and brighter colors, none of the base color mixed in at all.  Overlap this layer onto the other two previous layers. 
• Let the first three levels dry well, then mix white paint into a clear glaze and make "ripples" over the pond by washing big sweeps on with your sponge.  Make sure some of these ripples and waves overlap the edges of the rocks a bit too.
• Finally, add floating flowers and lily pads, once again, overlapping a bit of what you have already painted.  Add the white glaze mixture ripples around the flowers. At this point, some of your first fish might not even be discernible, but they will still add a sense of depth to the water.
• Let dry and top coat.  Keep furniture off for a couple of days.  If using a oil based poly, have plenty of ventilation and keep pets and small children out of the house, the smell can be overwhelming.