BSM: Best Shot Monday - April 27, 2009

Here is my BSM shot for last week:

This was taken just yesterday, Sunday, at "grand" Trevor's travel ball game. He's on a travel team, the SO CAL AZTECS, and they play in the 13 yr division. Last Sunday, they won both their games in this Wood Bat Tournament; yesterday, they lost both games - by one point each game.

That's baseball. And THIS is my BSM :-) ...

LOOK CLOSELY at the photo - the bat is in mid-air. Cool, huh?

-- Princess Magpie

So many things to catch up on ...

It's been crazy hectic around here, and I know I am woefully behind on BLOG POSTS here --

I'm signed up for a BOOKS WITHIN A BOOK class on Saturday ... if you have an interest in what that's all about, here is a photo that inspired the project -- and I'll be taking the class at SAN CLEMENTE ART SUPPLY -- for details, visit them at: http://www.scartsupply.com/

I've already been to two (yes, 2) MIXED MEDIA WITH PAPER & CLOTH classes with Jane LaFazio and a whole room-full of amazing artistic folks -- and I think I have yet to blog about what we're doing in there. My apologies for that. I'll get caught up -- soon -- I promise.

this is Jane, showing us the difference between a drawing on ARTIST'S TISSUE and UNWAXED SANDWICH PAPER {for applying on top of our background papers when doing collage work}. Week One, Mixed Media with Paper & Cloth {through the La Jolla Athanaeum}.

-- Princess Magpie

BSM: Best Shot Monday - April 20, 2009

Here is this week's post for BSM: Best Shot Monday.

this is our 'Forest Pansy' (aka, cerces) in Spring leaf & bloom (you can barely make out the tiny pink blooms in this photo ...)

And because I noticed that my first three BSM posts were all nature-related, I wanted to also post a more personal image this week ...

this is our amazing Rat Terrier, ROCKY ...

sporting his Woofstock 2009 bandana on Easter morning !!!

Wishing everyone a beautiful Monday and a terrific week .... and sending out a HAPPY BIRTHDAY greeting to our niece, Barbara, too.

-- Princess Magpie

Music works ...

... on so many levels.

if you didn't yet click to see/hear SUSAN BOYLE ... what are you waiting for?

On another music note (pun intended), if you scroll down the right side of this page, you'll see a MIX TAPE from "MixPod" (it's cool, it's easy, it's free) that was part of an assignment for my Read-Along with Dr. Brene Brown. Not only did Brene's mix-tape inspire me, but the songs that other participants posted really got me to thinking.

Take a listen.

-- Princess Magpie

P.S. if anyone's wondering - YES, I will get some posts up soon re: ART in the forms you are used to visiting my Blog for ... :-) !!!

I Dreamed a Dream - Ms. Susan Boyle of Scotland

If you never click on another link, or view another YouTube video clip, TAKE THE TIME TO VIEW THIS ONE.

Do it with your eyes open. Do it with your eyes closed. Just Do It !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Last night at dinner, my friends Gigi and Linda and I were talking about American Idol, when Linda asked if we had seen the clip of the 'stocky little older woman' from Britain that wowed judges Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, and I don't know the gal's name ... it doesn't matter (for these purposes, it doesn't; no disrespect meant to her).

This morning, I saw a bit in the newspaper and then Googled "Susan Boyle" and up it came. It's highly viewed, this clip.

ENJOY. Just enjoy.

And whatever you do, keep on DREAMING your DREAMS, be they artistic, interpersonal, whatever they might be.

-- Princess Magpie

Best Shot Monday, week two

I am posting my BSM image on Sunday evening, because I'll be getting up & out of the house EARLIER THAN USUAL tomorrow, and don't want Monday to slip away w/o my 2nd ever "Best Shot Monday" post.



So here it is ... my BSM from this past week:



it's called "KRISTINA'S BIRTHDAY ROSE", because I shot this on Friday, April 10th -- our oldest daughter's 33rd birthday. :-)

So, what do you think?

The rose is actually known as 'Honey Dijon', and that is a pure white rogue Sweet Pea climbing up through the bush; all that floral loveliness backed by a stormy sky {that failed to drop any rain on us until 13 hours later}.

Thanks for taking a look at my BSM image of the week.

-- Princess Magpie

Mixed Media - Round Two

With very mixed emotions, I embark tomorrow on another six-week class of MIXED MEDIA delights with local artist and amazing teacher & friend, Jane LaFazio.

Maybe it's appropriate to take a MIXED MEDIA class -- or six of them! -- with MIXED emotions.

I found out on Friday night that my friend-since-Junior-High, Sue, who in August would have celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary {my only trip to Las Vegas was to be her Maid of Honor, way back in 1979}, lost her beloved husband Ernie Llanos to cancer. He was just 59.

I found out on Saturday afternoon, from my sweet cousin Kathy, that our aunt Aggie - who is much beloved in our family - has been hospitalized for kidney failure. I have not yet been able to reach our cousin, Charlotte, who is Aggie's daughter, for an update.

And I found out this morning that the most amazing, big-hearted, incredible man in San Diego, my former boss, MICKEY CAFAGNA, lost his battle with cancer yesterday morning. He was just 65.

MIXED EMOTIONS doesn't begin to describe ... how I'm feeling today.

Happy Easter, Happy Pesach, Happy Spring to you all -- and remember to LIVE YOUR LIFE LIKE YOU HAD JUST 37 DAYS LEFT (a la Patti Digh, LIFE IS A VERB) and remember to TELL & SHOW YOUR LOVED ONES you love them and remember to ... just be kind. To one another, and to yourself.

-- Princess Magpie

I apologize for not having a new post all week - not since Monday. I promise, something new and artsy is coming ... really, it is.

For today, all I can leave you with are these photos {taken last year at Woofstock, by me},

and a reminder that if you visit my other blog, www.DH2travelers.blogspot.com, you'll see a cool button to a cool Read-Along that I'm doing -- I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME (but it isn't) -- the Read-Along is led by the author of said book, and her name is Brene Brown. It's challenging work, but it's good work.

And now, I'm off to WOOFSTOCK, a Festival for Dogs and People to benefit CCI {Canine Companions for Independence ... www.cci.org } for a good part of the day.

It's RUFF {hee hee} getting up at 5:30 am with a migraine, but someone's got to do it; right?

-- Princess Magpie

BEST SHOT MONDAY: Poppies

Wow, narrowing down my BEST SHOT from last week is more of a challenge than I'd thought. But here goes ...

This, of the California Poppies blooming in our yard last week, won out. Taken 4-1-09 with my Canon G9, on either "auto" setting, or just maybe, on "foliage". Can't recall.

So this, then, is my inaugural BEST SHOT MONDAY image ...

**************************************************************************

P.S. Of course, last week brought out the PATIENT side of me, and I also took these of birds in our yard - anyone that watches birds, knows ... they can be SO elusive, especially the gorgeous SPOTTED TOWHEE:

And just last evening, as I was snapping pics in our canyon, I heard something unusual and looked up {WAY up} to the phone pole wire overhead ... and there was our first ORIOLE of the season:

Happy Monday, everyone.

-- Davielle

Transparent Delights in San Clemente

TRANSPARENCY: Quality or state of being transparent.

TRANSPARENT: Having the property of transmitting rays of light, so that bodies can be seen through; pervious to light; diaphonous; pellucid. Poetic meaning: Luminous; bright.

{definitions courtesy of my mother's 1956 copy of Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary}

Friday afternoon brought the much-anticipated adventure I may have mentioned in a prior post ... an evening workshop at SAN CLEMENTE ART SUPPLY {in a vintage white Spanish-style building, that looks smaller than it is - once inside, it positively sprawled in different directions - being what seems to have been an old house (?), it has ROOMS, and in each one, treasures are to be found}. You can visit them here: http://www.scartsupply.com/

workshop teacher LINDA BLINN wrote this book ...

As a birthday treat for my friend Cynthia, who has been my cohort on several other artistic journeys {Scrappin' at Dusty's, where CY made the most incredibly beautiful cards; a Watercolor Journal workshop with Jane LaFazio back in 2007; an Artist's Retreat held in January of this year at the California Center for Creative Renewal}, I signed us up for Linda Blinn's {third & last in a Series} FRIDAY NIGHT MIXED MEDIA SALON ... the subject for the evening: "TRANSPARENCY. "

I fixed these little bags for our supplies for class ...

We worked with antique optical lenses {the clever lens' that the doc uses to test your eye-sight, asking you "better?" / "worse?" with each change of a lens - you know the ones!} ... we worked with glass tags ... we worked with glass slides ... we worked with clear transparencies, both smooth-sided and rough-on-1-side ... and we played with FOIL. And ALCOHOL INK. And Sparkling H2O's. Bliss.

here's my sea-green glass tag, with old text behind ...

left is MY foray w/ Alcohol Inks; right is one that I rescued from the trash :-) ... look at the accidental "heart" image on it !!!

First we did an image transfer, taking an ink-jet printed IMAGE that was on a 1-side-rough 3M transparency sheet, and we 'moved' that image onto a piece of white cardstock, using Golden's GEL MEDIUM.

Left, the image transfer

Right, side by side with the colored transparency

Next, we 'colored' the back side of the used transparency with Alcohol Ink &/or the Sparkling H2O's - at our discretion. Linda encouraged the class to EXPERIMENT, to try new things, to take risks. Tonight was not so much about a "finished product" as it was about "exploration". So we did.

Linda provided us with some great old pages out of a book of poetry, so we could overlay our transparency images {or other things} on the text ... more fun.

I'm going to use this sepia-toned image of a woman walking down a tree-lined road over "Action", a poem that's quite lovely:

Some re-printed from their transparencies after they'd colored them -- wish I'd thought of that!

We played with Judikin's DIAMOND GLAZE, 'cause that's what one uses to adhere an acetate transparency to a piece of glass -- it dries clear, it's self-leveling, and it's very strong.

We used a product from Creative Imaginations that was designed by Christine Adolph, called "Sticky2" -- one uses the image like a rub-on, then a clear top layer also peels off, leaving behind the image in blue, and that's a STICKY surface. One then applies FOIL to the top, with the color side facing you {yes, it's counter-intuitive to do it like that, but trust me ... that's how it's done!}, you burnish the foil onto the sticky image, and VOILA - a gorgeous foil design. I loved this! A classmate gave me a page of color images he had photo-copied so I could play around ... I created this (below) using one of those images {an old postcard} and the Sticky2 image of a bird in a heart ...

Below, what's left of the foil

If you live in So Cal, or find yourself visiting here, do yourself a favor and stop in to shop at San Clemente Art Supply -- the people are lovely, and the store has cool things for artists of all kinds.

Coming up soon - Linda Blinn will be teaching her "Books within a Book" all-day workshop. Visit the SCAS website for details and to sign up. We saw the inspiration book for the project, and several of Linda's samples ... WOW. So many possibilities!

Have a beautiful day, and remember: Do Something Creative Every Day {the motto of Paper Source}.

-- Princess Magpie

More weblinks to places & products mentioned herein:

www.ScrappinAtDustys.com {scrapbooking retreats in La Quinta, California}

http://www.artretreats.com/ {California Center for Creative Renewal in Cardiff, CA}

http://www.judikins.com/ {Judikin's DIAMOND GLAZE}

http://www.creativeimaginations.us/store/20786.php {Sticky2 by Christine Adolph, from Creative Imaginations}

http://www.rangerink.com/products/prod_alcoholink_adirondack.htm {alcohol inks by Tim Holtz for Ranger}

http://youratcstore.com/ {Your ATC Store - an online resource for many of the products I talk about on my blog ... including this post - Lisa at Your ATC Store is fabulous to work with}

http://www.stampington.com/html/foil_kits.html {The Shoppe at Somerset, a division of Stampington and Company, is where I found the FOIL KITS ... ordered mine today!}

HAPPY EXPERIMENTING and SHOPPING for ART SUPPLIES !!!