nanke's stuff

It's been too long since I've posted - things have been pretty busy around here. Most recently, we discovered we've become the home for yellow jackets and another kind of wasp. Now I don't mind the bees and things, as long as they stay in their place - which is outside!! Last week I started seeing (and killing) bees in our kitchen. At first just one or two a day, but by Friday, I was killing several of them a day. Then I discovered the floor of the furnace room in the basement littered with their little yellow jacket bodies, and several of them hovering around inside the window. Time to call the exterminator!
It took several phone calls: "sorry, mam, we only kill mammals", "sorry, mam, we can't come for a couple of days", "sorry mam, we don't go out as far as you live". You'd think that exterminators would do a great business out here in Hooterville where all the critters live, but nooo. Finally this morning I found a nice man who would come out today! Yea!!! They're called Maples Exterminators, for anyone who lives in Livingston County, Michigan (they go to other counties, too). So, as the nice man in his space suit was outside spraying the dickens out of the little buggers, I stayed in the studio playing. I could hear the buzzing in the walls - it was a bit disconcerting, but I kept at it, working on a mixed media page in my journal. I had to go to the window in the guest room and watch from time to time, but I was afraid he would look up and be startled to find me staring at him and fall off his ladder, poison and all. He went around the house and ended up spraying 3 separate places outside and then came in to spray in the furnace room. He said it could take up to a week for all the bees to die ... I'm betting they'll be gone before then.
So, here is what I did while he worked. I like parts of it, and parts of it I don't like at all, but all things considered, it's a wonder I got it finished!


P.S. I just noticed that I spelled the name of the plant wrong .... it's Caladium!

I've finally finished all 9 ATCs for the Canadian exhibit! All three were done on black cardstock. The one on the top has a stencil design made with 101 Light Artist's Cement by USArtQuest. I added gold PearlEx to it before applying it to the stencil with a palette knife. When it dried, I painted over it with MicaColor Sparkle Gold from the Interference palette (also by USArtQuest). Then I embossed the butterflies with gold embossing powder and colored them in using Gel Xtreme metallic markers by Yasutomo. Last I used double-sided tape around the edges and covered it with Leaf Metal flakes by Eberhard Faber.

The card on the bottom left is painted with MicaColor paints using a variety of colors from different palettes. I put a few lines down using a white pencil before I started painting so I had something to go by.

The last card is embroidered using Guttermann Machine Embroidery thread and a pattern I got from the book "Basics of Embroidery on Paper" by Erica Fortgens. When I had finished sewing the card, I glued another piece of black cardstock to the back to cover up all the threads. The instructions in the book said to use adhesive tape to secure the thread ends, but that didn't seem like it would hold for long, so I glued all of them down with a bit of Aleene's Tacky Glue.

So, now I can get back to drawing plants from the gardens and yard!

Well, here are 3 more of the ATCs I've made to send to the Canadian exhibit. The one on the top is made from a scrap of denim material that I cut from an old pair of jeans I was getting rid of. I embroidered the clouds, flowers, and grass, added the sheep and sun charms, then used a blanket stitch to both attach the backing fabric and to keep it from fraying. I wasn't sure how I was going to add all the info to the back of this one, so what I ended up doing was spraying the fabric with workable fixative and then using my trusty Micron Pen. It worked really well!

The one on the bottom left has a page of text from an old book, a snippet of an old letter (I bought a pack of old letters at a garage sale), 2 old foreign postage stamps, and a packing tape transfer. I forget whose face it is, but I think he was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I ..... sorry about that, old chap.

The last one is ink and colored pencil. The shells were collected in Florida by a friend of mine who generously shared them with me .... Thanks Judy!

Here is another flower - this one is a Purple Cone Flower. My flowers are fading and falling apart fast. I need to really get going (at my usual snail's pace) if I'm going to draw many more of them from life. Oh well, there's still the mums which haven't bloomed yet!

Well, these are the first ATCs for the Canadian swap that I'm planning to participate in. As I mentioned before, I'm going to try to use different techniques on each one of them (I have to send in 9). The bird is done with watercolor pencils with a wee bit of ink on the wisps of the plant. The "Peace Is Possible" card has a background made of paper towel painted with Lumiere paint, a postage stamp, words typed on my really old manual typewriter, and a bird image cut from an old greeting card. And the last card has a chalk background with a stamp that has been colored in with colored pencils (my apologies - I haven't recorded where Any of my stamps came from, but I will start doing that), stamped words, and a small charm glued in the corner.

I don't know what I'm going to do next - maybe a few different transfer methods. Suggestions are always welcome!

Well, the last 2 days have been pretty busy, and I haven't really done much drawing. I've been working on an ATC (I'm sooo slow) that isn't finished yet, and I want to complete it and one other before I post them. I do have some rather quick ink and watercolor sketches of a few more garden dwellers. The ivy is done with colored pencil, everything else is ink and watercolor.

I really had trouble with the leaves of the begonia plant. I was using a very limited set of watercolors and just couldn't get the color right. Oh well, one more thing to practice, right? I have a wee vase on my drawing table with some flowers in it to draw, but I fear they may wilt before I can get to them. Maybe I'll draw them anyway ..... nah, probably not!

Sometimes I have a hard time trying to decide what to do in my art journal. I live pretty far out in the country, and it takes about half an hour to get to someplace where I can sit and unobtrusively draw people, which I dearly love to do. So, recently I decided that I would start to document the various plants we have growing around our house. I called this post "Garden Plants" (originally it was called "Garden Flowers", until I realized that many of the things growing here are weeds ... like the green stuff we call our lawn), so that I can include drawings of plants that are no longer flowering, or maybe never will. Anyhow, all of the things I drew for this first of a series are blooming as I write this, and I'm going to try to add at least 1 plant each day. All of these were done with ink and watercolor.

I'm also working on the ATCs I'm going to send to Canada soon for an exhibit in Richmond, British Columbia. I have enough cards that I've made in the past, but I'd sort of like to send 9 (the required amount) that I made just for the exhibit and trade. I'm finishing the second one now, and will post them 3 at a time as they are completed. I'm going to try to do them using 9 different styles and techniques. More on that later!
So, here's the first 3 plant drawings!