What will Mr. Rabbit Pull Out Of His Hat Today

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What a mess!

You know you have those days when you have great plans and none of it seems to work out? I had one of those yesterday :
First you must know that I took my kitten to be spayed last week. Everything went fine and she's been at home healing just wonderfully.... well, then yesterday I had set the entire day aside to just play! I wanted to paint some journal pages, try a collage technique I had seen, just relax and create, ya know? The only thing I had to do was take the garbage can to the road, that's it! So, I did that, then seeing that my kitten Lula had followed me, I stopped at Mom's house on the way back so Lula could play with her kitty-cousin, Marie. It was still early for us, only about 9am, so I'd sit and visit with Mom while they played for just a bit. Those little kittens were romping and stomping and generally trying to tear the house down LOL It's so much fun watching them play together, it really lifts my spirits! Then Lula does some acrobatic leap and my Mom goes "omg"!! I'm like "what"?!?! She tells me to get Lula so we could look at her tummy. Turns out the little rascal had pulled ALL her stitches out overnight. Uh huh... call the vet, they say bring her up here right now! yikes! So we get dressed and here we go .... to the vet ... with Lula ... again lol

The doc comes right out to meet us and ushers Lula into an exam room like we're bleeding all over the place or something. No she's not bleeding at all lol He looks at her tummy and then at me and says "oh, that's fine, it's just the top layer of stitches and there are 3 layers." I suppose we did everything but call an ambulance to get Lula up there asap and she's fine. : "Rub this ointment on it twice a day and it'll heal perfectly well on it's own". Oooook, I can do that. If she lets me lol So we bring Lula home. Of course my mom had to stop for milk and a few other things so we finally get home around noon. NOON!
I figure I can still salvage my day so I get settled back in my nest and Lula is playing around like the rambunctious little thing she is. All is well. Phew! Now the part of the day I've been waiting for, yaaaaaaaay!


I go gather my supplies to start the first (notice I said first) project of the day. I wanted to try a collage technique I had seen that you dry and then paint over, sand, grunge up, etc. It looked very cool and I knew I could do it. So with my supplies gathered and all this old crusty paper on my table that I've been collecting for years.... ahhhh I'm a happy girl. Let's get messy! Where's the glue?! lol About that time Mom (bless her heart) comes in to see what I'm working on. Issue #1 - The gel medium I bought to do this collage is too thin. Now I go scrounge for some sort of craft glue and find something about the consistency of Elmers. (Those of you who do this know how it's going to end). It took me 3 HOURS to do the 2 pages I had laid out. Just to get the torn paper glued down to them! omg lol My arm is still tired! Ok backtrack to me ripping up these old papers.... Issue #2 - Mom wants to READ them all before I can use them. : Even better, she wants to read them all to me! LOL I was patient, not sarcastic and acted interested. Yes they are cool Mom, that's why I'm using them! Anywho, once I finished gluing down the strips the paper was buckled so badly I was afraid what they would look like once they dried... IF they dried! Please pardon the bad photos but here is the finished STEP ONE:

See how bendy they are? And hard! Let me tell ya, you could hurt someone with these pages lol I've asked for advice on what to do with them and most have suggested putting them between some heavy books. That's what I'm going to do first. My only concern is will they stay flat once I get them back out? We'll see. I think my new motto is "trial & error" lol



Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you soon!



Hugs, Lisa

Monday, January 11, 2010

Welcome to my new space!



Hello my friends! You've arrived at my new space for me and only me! Since my GC blog has gone completely store related I needed a place to just write about me, my life and my new obsession, art journaling!

I made a big leap a few weeks ago and signed up for Tangie Baxter's Art Journal Caravan. I've always been drawn to this type of art but never knew where to start! lol I've collected scrap kits in this altered style and tons of physical papers and bits for years.... what to do with them? No clue lol You can get a closer look at what's included on the Art Journal Caravan Blog.


What prompted me to do this is the horrid year I went through in 2009 and it didn't end any better than it began. More about that later... Right now I want to encourage you to check out this class! Whether you want to try your hand at something new, recall what it feels like to make art just for you or have the urge to journal your thoughts and feelings, this class will get you there!


Now, for the fun part! I want to show you what I've been working on! omg this is complete therapy for me! I have my first 2 pages to show you and then a little something else I've picked up already on this journey.


This first page was inspired by a journal prompt. The prompt was "what makes you feel safe?".




















































































































Full credits can be seen here.















We're encouraged to really get down deep with the journaling so I let it all out and it was great!



(This is my first play date with blogger so please excuse any spacing *issues* lol)




Ok second page. This is what made me completely fall in love with this process! omg I sat down to do a sad, angry *get it all out* page about my fiancee leaving me. Yeah you don't want to know lol but I'll be telling backstories in later posts. Anywho, that was my intent. Get those feelings out of my head and let myself move on. Well, it didn't exactly come out like that, check this out !!














































































































































































Full credits can be seen here.




Looks like I am moving on cause this turned out so FUN and the things on the page have meaning to me about what I was trying to say! Oh, the joy I felt when I saw it finished!! That may sound lame but this has really been holding me back lately and I needed to do something with those feelings, kwim? Phew, that page felt good to do. :)

So I obviously have some serious blogger googling to do, I keep taking all that space out and it keeps popping back up! I hope you'll consider taking this journey with us. We've found support, inspiration and that "Anything goes" within this new group of friends! I hope you'll join us!

Love & Hugs, Lisa

Saturday, January 2, 2010

And away we go!

Testing testing