10:15pm

I got in the van to come home from work today and 107 appeared on the thermostat. After a few minutes 109 appeared. I felt very grateful I was not one of the cars pulled off on the side of the road. I felt very grateful to come home to coolness. Today's ICAD makes me feel cool. Thanks for stopping in. I hope you are staying cool.

A Wind Event

On Monday we had here what the meteorologist called a "wind event." Ha ha ha ha. I thought that was pretty funny actually to hear that after the fact. It caused hundreds of thousands of people to be without power for several days. Hence, my absence here. It's not really what I wanted to do at the time, but I could rationalize it as to no better time than having a "wind event." I bought a generator. You need gas to power a generator. You need to find a gas station that has power to sell you gas for your generator so you have power and you have to do all this by 10pm at night because you are hungry and very tired and cranky by that hour. You need to go to the studio and create but you can't do that for several days. I suppose I will thank my self later if, in the midst of a winter wind event, I might sit by a lamp with a hot cup of tea, and some index cards, and feel grateful. I played catch up with the ICAD challenge. Here they are for the last four days. I managed to do these IN THE VAN before work. I still showed up in the midst of a wind event. ha ha ha ha. And my mail box has been very happy lately as I've gotten some mail art and postcard from Kate in Russia. Thank you, Kate. Love the card and not just because you liked the card. And thank you to Dori in California and Debbie in the United Kingdom. Your work is awesome! How sweet is that! Thanks for stopping by.

The Thought Finds the Words~Robert Frost

Today is home made juice making in our house. On Sundays one of the things MY MAN does is crank up the juicer. It's been trial and error. You name it, I've had it. Today it's carrot ginger, apple celery and beet cucumber carrot. Some taste better at room temperature while others taste pretty nice with a hint of plain seltzer. But it's all good and much better than what's sold in stores. Today's ICAD is one of the monoprints I worked on a few days ago and I didn't really like them. I kind of like it now. One of the prompts this week was to use a quote. Thanks for visiting.

Live Your Dreams

Ok. A few things to share today... I received a post card from Aleks and Flo in Germany who really liked the mail art I sent them on Postcrossing and so they wanted to send ME something back. They knew I guess from my profile of my love of dance and so this is what I got today. Thanks you guys! It was a nice surprise to come home to after a "poopy" work week. (Yes, Robin, poopy sounds better than crappy.) Secondly, today's ICAD is actually similiar to some you've seen before. This is a larger index card and can also fall into the mail art category. Next, I fooled around again with monoprinting with the gel plate . This is my second attempt at this and so I did some larger index cards because they were close at hand and I took some of the first printing attempts and tried to do some layers on top of those. I have mixed results and feelings about these. That's all for now. I hope you've had a less than poopy week. As always, thanks for stopping by.

Not Dalmatians.

I left work today with 101 staring at me from the thermostat. I have to be careful what I leave in the emergency creativity bag in the car on days like today. And I was so tired last night I completely forgot I was supposed to be having some of this. Here is another ICAD with used waxed paper. It's fitting for today's 101. I hope you are keeping cool wherever you are. Thanks for visiting. Let me go to the freezer to get that HD treat.

94 Degrees

Good Lord! I got in my car after another worse than crappy work day and my car thermostat said 94 degrees. I decided this called for some drastic measures. When you have a crappier than crappy work day you must treat yourself especially in this heat. I don't as a rule eat this but I think I will indulge tonight. or maybe this In the meantime, here's today's ICAD made from left over paint drips on my work table. Thanks for stopping by.

Crappy Work Days

I really had no intention of putting much effort into today's icad if you really wanna know the truth. I really wasn't too enthusiastic. I attribute this partly to my crazy, crappy work day. So, I used this card I had done watercolor swirls on and took a pen and wrote how I was feeing in circles and then I wrote again the other way. I just wrote myself in circles. lol. Then I took some spray paint to give it some more color and drowned it enough so when I added some oil pastels the paper was soggy enough it started to rip.Ok. That's about how my day went. Too dark. I added some white gesso to lighten it up and give it some support. I was really trying to save it at this point. Still needed something. Ah. A stamp. Too dark. Needed some brightening. Maybe I was feeling a bit better. Ah. Red. I love red. I guess I did it. I wrote. I painted. I played. I showed up. Did you? Thanks for visiting.

If the Sky Falls, Hold up your Hands ~ Spanish Proverb

Here's today's ICAD - a larger size. I quite like the simplicity of it so I don't think I will be adding any more to it. I hope you like it,too. And here's a close up.

Never a Dull Moment

I caught a neat tip from Karen who picked it up from someone else about Katie Kendrick's technique of making backgrounds at Create Mixed Media Website. I watched the video several times and then tried it. You have to have this and a few things that have texture. I didn't seem to have much with texture around except punchinella. I tried a few stencils. You put your magazine page on top of these things and rub with Never Dull. You use rubbing etoh after you rubbed to get a bit more paint off. Then you can adhere your pages down and use clear gesso which will create another service in which paint and inks to adhere to. Kind of neat. Makes your studio smell like an auto garage. I even tried my Christmas trivet because it had texture and wasn't too thrilled with that result. But my trivet got cleaned. Blogger is acting crazy tonight.. Uploading is taking forever. I am going to switch over to Google Chrome and finish this up. So, I also tried this with stencils. The pics I just showed you were from today. This is what I came up with last night. I wasn't sure what kinds of inks she was using. So, I just tried a little bit of spray inks. Overall it does seem like this technique can produce some interesting background pages. And finally here is today's ICAD. I was playing around with water color and saw a landscape in it. Hope you are enjoying your weekend and thanks for stopping by.

We need the softening of hope and faith and love to come saturate our lives........~author unknown

I'm not sure where I read the above title post from but it sure rings home for me. Today's ICAD was made simply with crayon which, as you know, resists watercolor,torn paper, and bits of cut wipes used in the studio. Pretty simple. Hurray for the weekend. More to share tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.

An Icad a Day.............

Several months ago I found a video, I cannot remember where (I'm sorry to say) on making your own stamps with flip flops. It may have been Tracy Bunkers who never fails to inspire me. At the time I didn't have any in the house and ran around looking for some. This ICAD has a leaf stamp I made from a piece of foam rubber from a cut up flip-flop. It was a gold covered leaf I got off a Christmas ornament that I pressed into the rubber which I heated with a heat tool. So, the moral of the story is don't throw your old flip-flops away and get a heat tool and look around for anything to press in to the hot rubber. It's one way of making stamps no one else will have. I found little trinkets from jewelry, a key, a nut and bolt, button. Anything you've got laying around. Imagine it stamped. So, this is today's card. Thanks for stopping by and for all your delicious comments. Jo

More Blue Art

Not much energy after my stoooooooooopid work day..... feeling kind of blue, like this ICAD, but not in a bad way......a tired, pensive kind of way. I'm not too thrilled with it but I did show up. I hope you are having a good day. Bloody Frida, I'm tickled to see you here. Bloody good of you. Thanks for visiting. Jo

The Colors of Winter

I think one of the prompts for this weeks ICADS was "colors of winter." I must confess I cheated just a bit here. I had rencently completer a monstrous collage that took me several years to finish and it was titled WINTER. This is what it looks like. This was originally made with many layers of acrylic paint, waxed paper, original photography,torn paper, made foam stamps, a couple of magazine images, altered and reworked. It's about poster sized. For the ICAD I took a portion of this larger work and made it smaller to fit on an index card. I just couldn't resist seeing how it would look on a smaller canvas. It now looks like this. Ok. It still looks poster sized because I uploaded it large when I should have done so small and now blogger does not seem to want to let me upload any more images for now so you will need to imagine it index card size . Thanks for all your wonderful comments. I feel very supported. Thanks for stopping by and please do come again.

Blue Art

It's a new week for ICADS and there are a lot of different prompts if you want to follow them. I tend to be a rebel at times so I don't always do that. One of the prompts was for making blue art, so I looked at the scraps on my table and with some effort managed to come up with nearly blue or shades of blue for this ICAD. I love blues and tend to use a lot of it in my art. This daily challenge gets my juices flowing, allows me to share my little piece of art,see what others have done and encourages me to show up here. It's really quite fun. If I can create some art on an index card a day, if nothing else, it quenches my thirst. Usually.... for now..Ok. I'm not telling you the truth. I always want to do more. Baby steps. Remember? Small increments of time because there is life to be lived as well. Here's my take on today. What colors do you find yourself using more frequently? Please visit again.

June Jones

I went to a memorial service yesterday for one of the kindest people I've known. June Jones was a good friend, to me, and many others. Personally, she was there for me and my children in many ways when we were dealing with my husband's illness and eventual death. And years after that she was a confidant, an advisor, a sounding board when I had some tough times being a single parent, a widow at 43. She was a good, thoughtful, kind hearted person who was always looking out for other people, always making sure people got fed, remembering their birthdays, always getting stuff done. I feel grateful to have known her and will always remember her kindness. When my daughter and I arrived at the church yesterday, we were greeted with a person who handed us a bright butterfly sticker. How wonderful! How June. And it was just as sweet to find this on the bulletin. Here are yesterday's and today's ICADs. I was playing in the studio yesterday morning. I don't know if it's done yet but I like the beginning. Wishing you a peaceful day.

I'm Sorry

I found a post card I should have mailed a few weeks ago to Kalenina in Russia buried in my art studio. Oops! This is what I mailed her. And today's ICAD is here. And lastly, yesterday's post title came from something that popped into my head.Rubber buggy baby bumpers said ten times really fast really tripped you up. It always ended up with rubby bubby or rubby buggy bagy bunkers or somee variation. I remember my grandfather saying it to us when we were children. Tongue twister, a- tripping -over- words- peeling- with- laughter- kind- of- grandfatherly- thing. It stuck. Thanks for stopping by. It's the weekend. Yay! Time for playing.

Rubber Buggy Baby Bumpers. Say that 10 times really fast.

I've been playing around with tags I bought from the office supply store. I've also been playing with stencils, particularly Julie Fie Fan Balzers stencils. I kind of went crazy with these things one afternoon and couldn't seem to stop. I think they can be used in lots of ways. Here's just a few of what I did. And here is another attempt at sewing on an index card for today's ICAD at Daisy Yellow. It's kind of fun to see what others have done at Flickr. Thanks for visiting.