Election Art

I stayed up all night last night, watching the U.S. election results and then the candidates' speeches.  Mostly on CNN but a little bit on CBC Newsworld as well (interesting to see how the two nations covered the same topic!).  I found it to be quite stressful in the early hours of coverage - way too much red on the map, not enough blue.  It was fun to be be online while all of this was going on, commenting back and forth on Facebook and via email with my American friends. By 2 a.m., I was just plain tired but happy with the result.

I was doing minor things in my journal for part of the evening.  I was too stressed and excited to do anything major but it was calming to do things like stamp text on a couple of pages with individual letters and then cleaning off each letter afterwards.  Very Zen.  Another thing I did was draw this number 6 (for the date).  I drew in the outline with a black  Sharpie and then started colouring it in with red, white and blue Sharpie paint markers.  I drew the red in first, which is a bit unusual for me, as it meant I was working right to left, not something I might normally do considering that I am right-handed, I would normally do left to right.  Painted in the white and then the blue.  It seems I didn't wait long enough for the white to dry and it started to bleed into the blue and very serendipitously, it made little star-like effects.  So appropriate when drawing something that is meant to represent the Stars and Stripes!

Cool, eh?

America Votes, Canada Watches

That was the name of tonight's episode of "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" (a Canadian comedy show, similar to Saturday Night Live in a half hour format) and it's so true.   They had a great joke about Jed Bartlett being President of the U.S. from 1997 to 2007. When the moderator pointed out that George Bush had actually been President during that time, that Bartlett was a character played by Martin Sheen on the TV show, "The West Wing", the "reporter" responded that that's why Canadians wanted to believe it had actually been Bartlett/Sheen in the White House!  So true!!

I've got CNN on the TV and all the numbers and red states on the map are making me nervous, so I had to switch over to watching an actual episode of "The West Wing" to calm down.

Not sure how late I can stay up tonight (tomorrow's a work day after all) but I'm wondering what the news will be in the morning??!!

Foiled Again

I've been having trouble using my computer at home since these kittens arrived. They like to hang out on top of the laptop while I type which means they are constantly pushing various buttons accidentally.  Even more if there are 2 or more kittens on top of the laptop keys at once, as often happens.  Often it's the "back" key, which means I end up 2 or 3 websites back from the one was reading.  Sometimes it's the "delete" key, causing me to lose the paragraph I've just typed.  Or it's the brightness key, making the screen dimmer and dimmer.   Even if I sit in a chair with the laptop on my lap, there are always at least 2 kittens all over me and the chair trying to see what's going on on the screen.  It's cute but it's also just a little bit annoying.

Simone, Cherie and Calliope check out the computer.

Now that I am down to only 2 kittens instead of 4, I thought the situation would improve.  So far, not so much.  Then I had a brainwave.  Since I use a wireless keyboard with my laptop screen when I'm seated at the table anyway, I could cover the laptop keyboard with something firm and then if the kittens were to walk across it, as they like to do, no buttons would be pushed, no harm would be done.

I'm am rapidly coming to the conclusion that these kittens are just too smart for me, I should just give up now while I still have a little dignity.  Sigh.

Adoption Sunday

One of the other Abbey Cats foster parents posted on Facebook that kittens are usually adopted when they are either 3 or 6 months old.  The Belle Kittens and Calliope were about 3 months old when I read that and will be turning 6 months old next week (they celebrated last week by being spayed!) and sure enough, today, Belle Simone and Calliope were adopted. 

A lovely family came to meet all the kittens this afternoon - a dad, mom and their 3 year old daughter.  The parents have lived with cats all their lives and they wanted to wait until their little girl was old enough to understand how to play with a kitten before introducing a cat to their household.  Apparently this little girl's grandmother has 5 cats, so she's familiar with cats and she certainly seemed pretty excited when she came here and met my foster kittens and my own Maggie (Katrina, of course, was under the bed, unseen!) but was also very careful when petting them.  I did warn them that kittens can be a little dangerous without meaning to be, they just don't always realize those little nails are so sharp, but the parents definitely understand and are prepared for that.  These kittens have such sweet dispositions, they don't bite and would never scratch on purpose, so hopefully the accidental scratches will be few and far between.

Belle Simone

When we spoke on the phone beforehand, the dad advised they were interested in adopting Belle Simone and Belle Matisse.  His first cat was a black cat and he even has a black cat tattooed on his arm as a tribute to her, so Matisse was definitely the one he was interested in.  But as often happens, things can take a different turn when you meet kittens in person as compared to just seeing their photos and reading their descriptions online (much like internet dating but let's not go there!)

Calliope

During their visit, Belle Cherie spent the entire time under the bed.  She just wasn't coming out but I think she just really wanted a nap rather than to avoid meeting the guests.  The other 3 kittens were their adorable, friendliest best - purring, playing, walking around, rubbing up against the visitors and their cat carrier.  Since Callie didn't know she wasn't their first choice, she was being as social and cute as possible and completely won them over!  Unfortunately, I couldn't convince them to adopt all 4 kittens but that's okay, Matisse and Cherie will get their turn eventually.

Belle Matisse

Belle Cherie

In the meantime, I hope Belle Simone and Calliope will be very happy in their new home, I'm sure they will be. 

Paper Clips and Playing Cards

I had no idea how many paper clips I had until the kittens knocked over the spinning carousel holding my collection yesterday morning at 5:55 a.m.

There were paper clips everywhere - on the desk, on the floor.  I didn't count them but there sure were a lot!  Will have to remember to take most of them into the office, surely I don't need that many?! 

Oh well, things happen when you're a teenage kitten and full of beans.  Later that night, we played Freecell and the paper clips were forgotten.

Calliope and Belle Matisse

Playing With Dad

If he were still alive, my dad would be 77 years old today.  Of course I'm thinking about him today, so I thought I'd make some art using this photo I have of him as a kid, playing hockey on an ice rink in the backyard of the house where he grew up.

I had painted the background of this page yesterday.  I cut out the body shape from a photocopy of the photo and used the leftover bit as a mask to paint in the outline on the right, then added some letters with a Dylusions stencil and their black spray ink, making sure the letter "W" was positioned just so, to match the "W" on the hockey sweater.

Then I took the rest of the photo image that I had used to paint the green outline and glued it onto a 2nd journal page and added paint and stenciling to the page.

Niether journal page is completely finished, more playing to come later!

Note to self:  remember to empty the dirty dishes out of the sink before washing the ink off the stencil!

Artober - Week 5

Sadly, the month of Artober has come to an end.  Here's how I spent my (minimum) 15 minutes of art making each day this past week:

Thurs Oct 25 - I worked on this journal page, using a background I had started several months ago and didn't really like.  I like the page a little better now but still not really thrilled with it, I think it's going to need a few more layers.  Going to let it sit for a little longer and see what develops.

Friday Oct 26 - I watched this video of Dina Wakley giving a demonstration and did something similar in my journal:

The stamp I used wasn't bold enough, so I ended up adding a stamped image I had from a class I took back in the summer that was on a thin layer of napkin tissue and gluing it on my page with ModPodge.  I think it made a big difference, as there was no focal point without it.

Sat Oct 27 - decorated my magazine holder, as described in greater detail here.

Sun Oct 28 - took an encaustic wax class at Bizzy B taught by Nancy Donaldson. Here's what I made:

Both pieces are about 5 x 8 inches in size and took longer to make than I expected.  It's also harder than I thought to do encaustic. Nancy makes it look so easy in her demos but there really is more to it than just slapping stuff on with melted wax!

Mon Oct 29 - last night of my 6 week drawing class at Articulations.  Live model drawing.  Most of my sketches were total crap but a few of them, I liked.

Tues Oct 30 and Wed Oct 31 - finished this Hallowe'en themed journal page.

Many thanks to Traci Bunkers for suggesting this challenge.  I have enjoyed making art part of my every day experience.  I am hoping to keep the momentum going in November!