A Touch of Fancy

Our annual convention in Chicago this year. Eight long days of problems to be solved, catastrophes to be averted, new personalities to mesh with the old. This is the eighteenth convention I've planned and for some odd reason this year I decided to make myself a special box for the odds & ends I keep at my work space. As the crates were unlocked today, there it was. My fancy box all shrink wrapped in blue. It had been several weeks since I'd seen it and as I unwrapped it and put it on the table, I felt so satisfied.

I wonder why it took me 18 years to introduce some art, some fancy into my long week.

Our staff office looks very dismal, waiting to be unpacked.









Here's the box that added some fancy to the room.

Office Environments

I'm in my office. Our new employee is in the office next door to me. She's an editor who whisper-reads everything she edits. She talks to herself in full sentences and this morning, I found out she's a whistler. If I have one more cup of coffee I may just scream at her.

Terrific Turkey

The temperature has dropped for a few days and it’s heaven. I have a hard time remembering what it feels like to be cold. It always surprises me how quickly I can forget heat and cold. I suppose that means I am in the moment. I like to think that anyway. I kicked off the cool weather with a new recipe called Terrific Turkey Chili, except I had to make it with lean beef. Apparently another turkey recall had the butcher asking, “May I interest you in some especially lean beef?” It was either that or buffalo and the price differential was significant. Still, it really is a terrific recipe. I had roasted some fresh Hatch chiles the other day, so those were used in lieu of the canned variety. Big hit! Tiny slices of zucchini sautéed with spices were also included. If chili can taste fresh and light, this is it. Robust with spices, but something about how things worked together made it taste so fresh. Maybe it was the zucchini, maybe the fresh chiles, maybe it was loving the 60 degree evening.

Junk Mail Friday

I haven't cooked dinner all week. I'm waking up at 4 a.m. every morning. So what am I doing with all this extra time that my stressed life gives me? This week I've been concentrating on junk mail, as in a junk mail artist book.

I've been taking junk mail, covering it with gesso, then layers of transparent watercolor and plan to use these pages to make a book. I'm far from finished, but here are a couple of the pages. Not too impressive, I agree, but they look better in person and gathered up in a book form.

One thing for sure, working on this has been much better than dwelling on work!

And it's Only Thursday

This pretty much sums up my week. Work related. Self-inflicted. I've got to get a grip, release it and move on. Oh, I'm so ready to move on.

Faces 101

I'm in Day 1 of Faces 101 with Carla Sonheim.

Way too much fun discovering what a little blob of watercolor and a few pencil marks can get you!

Random Creature

Random watercolor marks will eventually a creature make. So many steps to enhance and define, I won't take you through them one by one.

Just Wa-la! My first creature.

Scribbling

Who knew scribbling could be so much fun? One of the warm-ups in the class this week was scribbling. My immediate thought was, Oh no. It just seemed so silly, so not me. We were supposed to scribble an animal. But when my computer crashed at work and I was sitting, watching, waiting on the tech guy to deal with it, I started scribbling. It's a very freeing type of "art." I can see it could be totally addictive.