When The Cat's Away!

This week has been exceptionally productive. I have found that being unemployed while having your best friend (and live-in boyfriend) 2,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean makes for one lonely week! I have had a lot of alone time on my hands and while knitting my heart out (trying to get things done for my niece soon to be born into the Love family!) I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and get some painting done. The background story of my artistic streak starts a long time ago...all the way back to a freakishly warm and sunny day in early February. S. and I took a lovely walk up to Mt. Tabor park to take advantage of the 69 degrees and lack of clouds in the sky! While S. read his "History of Basketball" book I was busy lying in the grass trying to take a nap. But on such a beautiful day, napping just wasn't coming easily to me.


Instead, I used my handy dandy camera phone to snap these worms-eye view photos of the luscious park grass while enjoying the sunshine. (Yes, those are S.'s pants in the background...he is so big, it would be hard for a worm to miss him!)

While the photos I took are obviously taken with a camera phone, I found the remnants of that beautiful day to be quite inspiring when trying to use up the acrylic paints in my art supply box. The subject matter may be very simple but this was one of the most fun paintings I have done lately! (well, I guess it is my only painting as of late) I think the fact that I was able to sit out on our patio while painting it has something to do with the amount of fun had while spending the afternoon painting!

Oh, and something only slightly related: The Golden Artist Colors paint brand has recently developed a line of acrylic paints that stay liquid for longer! Now this might not seem like such a great invention, considering the invention of acrylic paint in the first place. But this means that you can now spend the afternoon painting your perfect worms-eye view of the grass OUTSIDE without your paint forming an impenetrable skin forcing you to mix more paint from the tube!

Anger Issues or Art?

Smashing bottle caps is more difficult than it is fun. In my attempt to begin a recycled art project I collected lots of bottle caps. Mostly (okay, who am I kidding? ALL) of which are from S. and my own various beer consumption (the ghetto Fred Meyer by our apartment has a surprising wide selection of various local and seasonal beers...guess that's Portland for ya!). I tried attaching these eclectically colorful bottle caps simply haphazardly to my plywood board with the golden "x" but it just didn't speak to me...well, the bottle caps didn't speak to me (that golden "x" speaks to me even in my sleep!). So, I decided to flatten them, and maybe (oooh just go with me on this one) overlap them? in a sort of collage looking effect?? But it is very difficult!

Have you ever tried to (with a clean effect) flatten a bottle cap? I tried just hitting them with a hammer, but that proved to leave me with caps that had more creases and crinkles than the corners of my eyes (yes, I am getting old)! So then I had to very carefully hammer the edges, and then very carefully flatten the center to get my desired effect. Now, although it worked out in the end...after just 3 bottle caps and I came out of my craft room with several sore fingers and probably several sore neighbors (fyi: hammering is loud) almost an entire hour later!

Time for a break! So I decided to be my lazy artist self and walk down to the corner coffee shop for an iced americano and some cover letter writing.

My lesson today is this: find a more productive way of flattening bottle caps...suggestions??