happy hallows

~ KITTEN BANDIT ~

by Emily at The Black Apple on Etsy

~

I had, had, had to get this because she looks exactly like ME when I was little :)

I have it amazingly framed on the wall next to my bed :)

~

All right all right all right, I confess! I got Luna some Halloween beanies!

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Happy Hallows!

I'm an exhibitionist

Happy Monday and Happy November! I have so much to do today and so much going on I can't quite wrap my brain around it all! I hope everyone had a fun and scary Halloween yesterday! I am ready to welcome the next 2 months, as the weather finally cools (well, kind of?), and holiday excitement starts to stir in the air :)

Did my post title get your attention? Hehe :) Sorry for such a late post - I have a really fun announcement that I wanted to share with you early this morning, but couldn't find any links. I would still be looking if my friend Joanne hadn't seen this tweet from our City Hall, recognized my artwork, and posted it on Facebook - thank you Joanne!

My art has never been exhibited before. But 3 of my pieces are part of a special art exhibit at City Hall! I am so excited! Last summer my friend Traci found out the City was taking abstract art submissions, and suggested I send some photos of my artwork. Well, I did just that, and forgot about it. A few weeks ago, I was told that they would like to use 3 of my submissions - 2 large pieces and one small - for their "Why Abstract?" exhibit. Wow! So a big thanks to Traci, and to Jeff at the City! The exhibition has just opened, and you can read about it below. 

(You can see my 2 large pieces of art in the 2ond photo)

Tomorrow night (Tuesday the 2ond) is the official artist's reception which I will be attending from 7-9:00. I'll be viewing the exhibit for the first time myself, and will drag my family with me, since I have told them absolutely NOTHING about this and they have NO IDEA this is even happening - hehehe :) I would love to see you there!!!

*and sorry this post is so doggone WONKY! technical difficulties... !@#$%^&*!

City Hall gets Abstract!
By City of Santa Clarita

City Hall get its walls and halls filled with different type of Abstract Art.  What does Abstract Art mean?  An abstract art piece is about what the artist is feeling or trying to communicate with the viewer.  Looking at the colors and the patterns is meant to give you a chance to create your own vision of what you are seeing or feeling.  Abstract art is about the expression of feelings that can be seen differently by the artist and the viewer.

Abstract art is an act of an artist’s emotion and expression, and do not always present themselves in an obvious “fruit on a table” way.  The color, brush strokes, line, and movement of all abstract art forms is meant to stimulate the observers own feelings, while also expressing that of the artist.  Upon viewing an abstract piece of art, look deep, consider the colors, the sway of the design, and what it makes you feel.  Look deeper yet, and you may see the abstract is not so abstract at all, but perhaps an obscured face or some kind of starlit sky.

Come check out Abstract Art over at City Hall, and ask yourself these questions when you check out the art:

What do you feel?  What do you see?  What do you think?

the gamut

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Ours was packed with just about everything you could think of and more!

Thanks for all your awesome comments here on the blog, via Facebook, through e-mail, and in person, regarding my last blog post :) Sometimes there's just not enough aspirin. You guys de bomb and make everyting iry man.

So this is my new painting - I just finished it. It's called "Spring". I might have to marry it. Not really - it's going into my Etsy store along with a few others. But I definitely lurve it. Speaking of which, I may need to make up some more of my "so little aspirin" frames and sell those in my Etsy store too... opinions? 

So we indeed ran the gamut this weekend. The Mouse and I cleaned out our closets and made donations. Davy's girlfriend Val left for a month of volunteer work in India. John & Daniel helped a family move. We had to do a major grocery store run which nearly required a U-Haul rental. Mouse went to a birthday party, I didn't even count how many movies were watched all weekend, and I reorganized the TV/DVD cupboard. Which leads me to announce that I got my Mother's Day present from John early - an amplifier and speakers that I can 1) plug the record player into, and 2) play my iTunes through! I will no longer have to settle for my tiny laptop speakers as my only form of listening to music - my house can once again be filled with BIG TIME SOUND!!! Way to go John - I am happy, happy, happy :D So John and the Mouse spent some time getting that all hooked up. 

We are still having such fun with Daniel being home. (even if it means he and Davy spend every spare moment watching Avatar cartoons like they're in 6th grade, but you didn't hear that from me) My Luna is his little jogging buddy before he goes running. 

And then Angel and Luna get to walk around the park, which they love. But I have ulterior motives and I bet you already know what they are. That Luna of mine is a naughty little character, and she loves to chase bunnies. She never catches one of course, but just watching her run like a bullet is seriously more fun than you've ever had :)

Tee Hee 

Sunday was an amazing day. My boy Davy was ordained an Elder in our church, which means he now has the Melchizedek Priesthood. Pretty big stuff. Ordained by John, with Daniel in the circle as well, and our Bishop, and High Council representative. Just look at these handsome boys. I'm so proud of them. I'm so proud of my Davy. 

I was also called to work in the Young Women's organization at church, which is so awesome! I am very excited! I love and adore all the other leaders I will be working with, and the girls totally rock. It's gonna be great :D

Last evening John, Davy & I sang at a special missionary meeting at church, and that was really neat. It sounded great too. So as you can see, it was quite a churchy day. Normally I have a hard time with churchy days. I'm a bit of a free spirit. I'm not a very good meetings person. Our usual 3 hours every Sunday is sometimes more than I can handle. Yesterday I was there 6 hours. And it happened to be "Fast Sunday" so we had all been fasting 24 hours. Now, the Walkers are not great fasters. We get really cranky. And shaky. We get headaches. Sometimes Davy surpasses white and turns clear. So it was a really big churchy day, with lots of neat stuff going on, and no food. But we made it through, and I know we have our Father who art in heaven to thank for it all. 

And then we ate. And I partook of much diet Coke. And we played UNO. And I threw nothing. And it was well. 

Walker Family Folk Art

By popular request, I am dedicating this post to a funky piece of artwork we did as a family a few Thanksgivings ago when we were all together. It happens to show up in various photos I take, and I always receive questions about it. One of my readers is planning to do something similar (go Kelly!), so I finally decided it might be fun to share the process with you. It turned out to be a very fun project.

I will say though, that at first my family was not at all enthused with the idea of painting their own self portraits. In fact, if I were completely honest, I would have to say they pitched a fit about it. Babies. I had never done one either - the point was to have *fun* with it and to see what everyone came up with. Perfection was not the goal - in fact, what fun would that have been? So after some cajoling, everyone picked a square and took turns painting over the weekend.

*I've had several requests both on and offline to share more details of what products I used. I used a 24x36 stretched art canvas - no staples in the sides - 3/4" thick. I wanted it thicker - I usually use 1 3/4" thick - but I was out of town and the store was limited. I like the thicker canvases because they look great unframed. I recently noticed even Michael's has started carrying thick canvases (finally!). As for the paints, the are all acrylic, which is by far the easiest medium! Easily cleans up w/ soap & water, and comes in every color possible. You can find acrylic paints almost anywhere, and it's totally up to you what direction you want to go - all brights, all primaries, all pastels, keep everything realistic... endless choices. We used an array of different sized brushes - larger ones to paint the squares, smaller ones for hair and clothes, tiny ones for detail work like eyes and mouthes. For the writing, I used a fine metallic paint pen - those can be really tricky (splat!) so make sure you have a smooth, reliable one before you start! Well... I think that's everything... if you have more questions, don't be shy!

Here is my darling niece Kaylee - one of the first brave souls to try her hand at painting her self portrait. She was awesome :) In fact, it was really fun to see everyone starting to have genuine fun with our project. And the more they painted, the more their personality came out.
Good 'ol Uncle Fred - Kaylee's dad and my husband John's brother. He was a great sport as well, and did a terrific job with his personal addition. One thing I noticed was that Fred's family chose squares all connected, while my family members were all over the place. Hmmm....... ;)
My college boy Danny. I needed to make sure he did his square before he took off again and we didn't see him until Christmas! Another thing I made sure everyone did was add just a little symbol or something special about them (for Danny is was the blue & white stripes from the Argentine flag, as he had spent 2 years in Argentina) - and I had everyone sign their name as well.
You can see that we got about half of it done during Thanksgiving before we left for home. I didn't get a pic of my sis-in-law Dianne painting, but she did an amazing job AND painted their adorable dogs too! She was surprised she could paint like that - we were all totally impressed! But I still had a lot of work yet to do after I returned home, and 2 more boys to beat into submission to get them to paint their portraits............
It came along little by little. I filled in a few squares with things we love, like my red Bug and my husband's guitar, and several squares with mini versions of my colorful spatula paintings. My only regret was that our family wasn't bigger so we could have had more people participate. I think it would have added even more personality to see all the different faces and pets. But our family already has quite a bit of both, so maybe I should just be grateful for what we have :)
It took me a while to decide on what to put in the 2 black squares, so they definitely came last. For the first, I decided on part of the dedicatory prayer for one of our Temples actually. But I took liberties with it, adding some of my own things I wanted our house to have in it. For the second black square, I decided to list the address of every home we have lived in during our married life. I was really happy with how both squares turned out.
Does anyone else think my husband John looks like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine???
Fred and his family in the lower right corner :) And my in-laws did the pumpkin. Long story.

and I didn't even say anything about diet Coke or Ruffles :)

So anyway........ that's the story folks :)

***

Now this piece of art, on the other hand (get it?)... is a whoooooole different story. It's one of my all-time favorite pieces of art on earth. But... I'll save it for another time, of course :)

Happy Monday - let's talk about the "Vignette"

I've been thinking about what constitutes a "vignette". I love looking at photos, and there are so many amazing ones out there that just seem to capture great little moments in time. A grouping of things that look just so - just right, as is. A candid moment that serves as a reflection of our life. See? It's hard to put into words. 

So what exactly IS a vignette? What differentiates a vignette from a regular photo - or just a photo of "stuff"? Technique? Grouping? Lighting? A little magic? I'm not really sure. Probably all those things and several more.

Over the weekend I took a walk around my house and photographed little bits and pieces of life at home. I also added a few photos I had previously taken. Hopefully, you can see a bit about who I am from these photos. But does that mean they are vignettes? I don't know - perhaps some are and some aren't. I'm hoping some of you will *comment* and give me your opinion. I would really enjoy learning more about the art of photographing the vignette.


First up is my favorite funky lamp of all time. And the rest, well, just take a look and tell me what you think. The more I work on this post the more photos I keep losing and can't retrieve! And it's driving me NUTS! So if you want to see more vignette candidates, click on my Flickr sets in the left column. And don't be shy - comment! I'm going to bed! 

                                                                              

Gadzooks I've Been Tagged!

Wacky and Crazy Me ;)

Okay, okay, OKAY. I  know I have the enthusiasm of a puppy but I can't help it. Dana from Charmed Designs TAGGED me! I know! I'm an infant in the blogging world and the Etsy world, and I have no idea what I'm doing. NONE. But bless Dana's heart, she tagged me anyway! So I get to post 7 wacky, crazy things about myself that none of you know. Can you even believe how lucky you are? I know! And then I tag 7 bloggers I admire, who have no idea that I'm breathing let alone following their blogs. So I guess we'll just see how THAT goes.....

Rules:

* 7 random/weird facts about me

* 7 fave blogs and links to them

* contact the 7 so they know they've been tagged

* they tag 7 more and so on 

1. I was on the Art Linkletter show when I was little. Something about getting tattled on when you wet your pants. Which I was always doing (wetting my pants). Wow, now that I think about it..... still doing. 

2. I have the cutest feet EVER. Seriously. You wish you had my feet. My ankles, on the other hand, are awful. Tree trunk ankles. Horrid.

3. I love the weirdest smells. Warm dirt. The rubber tire smell in bicycle stores. Chlorine. A far away skunk smell. Luna's paws. Vinyl. The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. 

4. When I was 18/19 I studied in Israel for 6 months. I did everything from Climb Mount Sinai in Egypt to work at an Arabic orphanage in Bethlehem. It was way cool. I was way tan. 

5. I'm opening my Etsy store wildchildarts! I don't care if this is a shameless plug. Check back often because I not only think I'm a writer, I'm convinced I'm a painter and a photographer too. Find out for yourself here. I'm just sayin'.

6. I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love my three boys.............. even though it's obvious there is something seriously wrong with them.

7. I'm over 40 now so I pretty much don't care what people think ;) 

Okay, now comes the part where I tag 7 bloggers I *adore* even though they have absolutely no idea I am loving their blogs. I could turn out to be crazy famous, or this may turn out to be terribly humiliating - - - - - 

 

* Alicia from Posy Gets Cozy

* Pam from Housemartin

* Tracey from A Cottage Industry

* Erin from Elements of Style

* Christine from Lavender and Limes

* Sabina from Barefoot in the Orchard

* Ree from the Pioneer Woman

A Little Sneak Peek :)

                                           
                                             

                                                                                                                                                                          

I am working tirelessly to set up an Etsy store so I can sell my paintings. To give you a little sneak peek of the type of art I paint, here is a photo of my front room with an original painting centered on the wall. I don't normally like using a flash, but my house gets so little natural light I am forced to... This painting is much larger than the sizes I will sell on Etsy, but the style is the same. I call my style of painting "layered art". 

I have this unquenchable thirst for color. Color upon color upon color! I don't know why I have such a strong need for so much color, but I'm not going to question it. All I know is color makes me really happy :)

I was constantly trying different techniques, using acrylic paint on canvas, but I was never satisfied. I wasn't even having fun. All of the sudden, this layering style came out of the blue. I start with a base of two similar colors - the second usually mottled on top of the first - and then start layering color upon color with a spatula. I add and scrape off until everything feels right and I am happy with the result. 

It's essential to see that as you look closer and closer, you see more and more individual color. And I love how the spatula is so unpredictable. Hopefully this will appeal to others who already embrace color - and even those who might be a tad afraid of color, to enjoy it in small amounts.

Please feel free to leave comments, questions, praise, and commissions - LOL :) But seriously, the more feedback I get, the more successful I can make my store at Etsy. And in the meantime, stay tuned for the opening, and for a gallery at Flikr that you can enjoy also. 

A Small But Meaningful Life - first post

Well, here I am. The first post ever on my blog. My blog? Weird. I can't believe I'm attempting to fake my way through this. I'm not young, hip, or cool. Actually that's not true - I am still cool. But definitely not young or hip. And I don't really know what to say of particular interest. But I love to write. LOVE IT. And I love to do crafty, creative things someone other than myself or my kid's friends might like at some point along the way. My life lately is feeling just a bit on the scattered side. This and that are all over the place. In between kids and friends and chores and errands and definitely hiding behind laundry. Paintings here, poetry there, photography still elsewhere. Dogs, drawings, ideas that keep me up at night. Projects constantly simmering. Mosaics still patiently waiting to be created. An Etsy store that MUST be created! And of course antiques all over the place. So I'm going to try to bring all these loose ends together here on my blog. A tall order, I know. But it might be a great thing - it could be a terrific thing.

I guess I need to introduce myself, considering this is my first post. Most of my friends still don't know what a blog even is, and the ones that do think it's mainly an exercise in narcissism. Fine. Nevertheless, I still need to establish my voice here. So because I have a headache and can't think of anything too creative, I'm going to rip off what I wrote about myself in my Facebook profile:

I'm the mom of 3 boys. There's a husband (of 26 years) in there somewhere too. I'm a bohemian. Color makes me happy. I'm so tie dye I need my own Ben & Jerry's flavor. I have more favorite scents than you would believe. I have a weakness for peace signs. I'm super creative. I will only use McDonald's straws. I don't know what I'd do without music. I love sunshine but I HATE the heat. I love food way too much. I read magazines backwards. I have 2 tattoos. Abused and abandoned animals make me cry. I love decorating but I hate excess. I'll do anything to avoid a public toilet. I am fun loving but I love to be by myself too. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. My speed record in my Bug is 120mph so far.

So that is pretty much me. Let me explain the "small but meaningful life" part of this post. Remember when Meg Ryan said that? In "You've Got Mail"? She was explaining her life to Tom Hanks via the internet. That description really struck me. Because no matter how small a life is, you still affect a lot of people, a lot of things. No matter how small it is, it can still be full of meaning and richness. I definitely have - and am blessed to have - a small but meaningful life.