Some Works in Progress

No words today........... Hope you have a good weekend................ Thanks for visiting.................jo

What's On My Table Tonight- The Woodcrest Palate

I thought about titling this post 'What's on My Work Table' but I decided to start posting what is on my dinner table once a week. MY MAN is a wonderful cook. No other way to say it. One way to a woman's heart, at least this woman's heart, is to have a man who knows how to cook well. By cooking well, I mean he knows about seasoning and spices, other than salt and pepper, who knows how to cook healthy and pretty much knows how to whip up a meal with next to nothing. He never prepares the same dish exactly the same the next time. He invents his own seasoning mixes, buys us wild caught fish,and makes us all kinds of fresh juices. I occasionally whine a bit about the clean up but when most of the time, he does wash the heavy pots and pans, I find I have very little to complain about. After I started eating tonight I grabbed the camera. The photo is not worthy of a fine cuisine magazine but what's on it certainly is. So, what's on my plate is wild caught shrimp lightly breaded with flour/egg and a seasoning of dried mustard, curry, garlic and sauteed in olive oil, broccoli florets pan seared in olive oil and heirloom tomatoes also lightly breaded with the same as the shrimp. Is your mouth watering now? Aren't you impressed? Maybe this will give you some ideas on what to prepare for dinner one night. Bon appetite...............jo

Doodling My Way

As I have previously mentioned I'm making my way though some of the workshops over at 21 Secrets and picking up some new ideas and information, not to mention having some fun as well. I have finished Cathy Bluteau's 'Doodling Our Way' class where she suggests we build and doodle around flowers cut out from magazines. I took it one step further and drew flowers from my own painted papersand built around them. I love Copic markers (which is what Cathy Bluteau used) but don't have many of them so I enhanced my color with water color crayons. And while I finished this project, I'm not oohing and ahhing over it. Maybe I'm critiquing it far too much, but it didn't turn out the way I had imagined it. Nonetheless, it was fun so I'll probably do it again. And just for fun, here is what I was doing a year ago on this date. I have to chuckle because it still looks the same today. Perhaps I might do something with it. I almost like it better than what I just showed you. It feels a lot more free. .............Thanks for stopping by..............jo

Baby Wipes

I am making my way through the workshops at Twenty One Secrets. I am picking up some interesting tips, techniques and ideas from each one, even if I do not do or complete the project for each class. For example I learned a much easier way to make a home made journal from Terri Kahr's I have a Secret class. She makes it from a mailing envelope, card stock and a simple pamphlet stitch. And talk about fun. Each page is gessoed and color is drawn on with water color pencils and then rubbed, blended in with baby wipes. I took it a step further and used water color crayons. I found that color will really pop when letting one layer dry and then adding more on top. Right now I am just having a ball covering the pages with color. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that after raising a twin son and daughter, baby wipes would again be a frequent item on my grocery list. Tomorrow I will show you another piece I made from another workshop through 21 Secrets. Thanks for visiting here.....jo

Burning Wood

I love thrift stores, yard and garage sales, flea markets and church rummage sales. I have found some pretty cool "stuff" over the years. About a month ago I found a pair of wooden salad servers for .75 cents. On the same day I had a coupon for 50% off at a local art store and so I took advantage of getting something I'd been spying for awhile. The salad servers now look like this after I had fun with a wood burning tool. I found it's not as easy as I imagined. There's several different tips for different kinds of marks you want to make. And you do need to let the tips cool down before you change them. I went to the garage and found some old boards- slats, I think they're called, that were under someone's bed at one time. I can use to practice on. Some patience is necessary but I found it a nice change from some of the other art I've been doing and I rather like the faint smell of fan blown burnt wood in my studio. Thanks for visiting...........................jo

Woman on Cardboard

Ok. It's at the end of a very tiring work day and I cannot think of a grand title for this post so you will have to please accept this pretty shallow post title. If I sat here much longer to think of something more interesting I would surely fall asleep or just dismiss the entire post all together. She started out like this Sorry. The photo is kind of at a wonky angle. And now this.. She's a work in progress. Thanks for stopping in................................jo

Not Laboring Today

I'm not trying to take away from the significance of Labor Day, however, it has given me a lovely long weekend to play and do some things I might not have otherwise. Like finding places to hang some of my ICADS and tiny works of art. It feels really good to have one's own art on the wall. I hope you had an enjoyable weekend. I have some other things I want to share with you this week. Thanks for visiting. ........Jo