July 4th and other stuff

little patriotic cutie

I had a great 4th. Oldest DD brought the grandbaby (she’s just about 2 ½ now) up and we all went to the hometown parade, fairgrounds and that night the fireworks display. So glad it was a mild day, unlike last year—hot! We actually live in the country but 10 mins. either way are small towns that have festivities going on. The grand D played on those air blown jumping things until she was covered in sweat! She had a great time. When it was time, we went just outside the fairgrounds to watch the parade, we usually are farther up on the route and there are usually a ton of people, but not where we were. It came really close to us at the edge of the lawn. Grand D wasn’t too sure about being so close to noisy fire trucks and extremely large horses, but she did really well. Afterwards we found a place on the grass, spread our quilt and waited for the fireworks. When they started granddaughter was scared. She covered her eyes and kept saying she wanted to go home. Mommy and I tried to reassure her and get her to look, and finally I said we should cover her ears. Mom did and grand D slowly peeked thru her fingers to watch, but she kept her hand up to her face pretty much the whole time. Towards the end she started falling asleep! She actually fell asleep for awhile all the time the loud Booms! were going off! Who can figure out kids? Lol.











I finally broke down and bought some glass glitter. I’m not one to use much glitter, but I’ve been making some things that just seem to say “glitter me”. I bought a pound of clear to be able to sell a little in my etsy shop.

I also found a couple more clear glass containers to store arty supplies on my shelf. I got the pretty little lead crystal dish for $2 and the large canning jar for a buck more. The canning jar has some French words around the top which I think is so cool! I needed a large jar to keep the little bits of trim I have so I can see what’s there. I’m always forgetting I have some stashed here and there.


This little metal pan I found all rusty and I had the green spray paint so I now have a little tray to store all the little things that seem to accumulate on my desk. Now they won’t be knocked to the floor and lost in the corners. See I’m trying to stay organized.

Last Blast of Summer

We’ve had our heat wave (hopefully) the last couple weeks and now have some cooler temps, which hint of the coming fall. With that, I thought I would give a last blast to summer with these summery aceo’s. They’ll be available later tonight on etsy.

I’ve wanted to start using paints more in backgrounds of my art. I picked up a couple new acrylic paints recently (I only have mostly old colors from when I was painting my wood crafts and they are country colors, like pine green, and heartland blue, yuk.) So picked up some pretty blue colors. I love this new (for me) blue called Tahiti blue and with paint in hand and no idea what I wanted to do, and already out of my comfort zone just thinking about painting, I dove in. I thought I could always just throw it away and no one will ever know.

I picked a few scraps lying around my desk and divided them up on three cards. I randomly layered them along with painting the blue on the background and/over the papers. I didn’t like them at that stage. I then stamped French script with white paint. Seemed a little better. Then I went to my images. I had no idea what, but I decided to go with a type of image I’ve never used before, so I picked a couple nudes and bathing beauties and moved them around to find what background I like them on. Ok, getting better. Looking at the nude lying down, she didn’t fit on the card and when I looked at her I decided that she should be a mermaid. I’ve never done a mermaid in my life and always shied away from them. But I found a piece of paper that was a copy of a famous painting and thought it would look great as the tail part. I drew a tail section and cut it out, added some glitter, a few white acrylic paint squiggles and called it done. The other one of the nude looking in the mirror, I added a stamped crown done in the same blue paint. I added some cut pieces of white fine netting and tinted some gel medium with the paint and layered the netting pieces with the gel medium to add some texture. I then added some “spots” of glitter, and some tiny wings. The last one of the bathing suit beauty, I didn’t do anything special, but I did add some tinted gel medium to simulate the water under the pier. I’m pretty pleased how they turned out and they actually came together quickly, even though I used elements and mediums I’d never used before.