Beelieve

Heartfelt

I am so touched by your kind words, thoughts and well wishes in your comments and emails in regards to our loss of our Dallas.  The "use of your heart"  is overflowing to our house and I just want to thank each and everyone of you. Your comments fill me and put me back here, put me back to some art to show you how much your love means to me.  You are as sweet as "honey icing" and with the right ingredients, such as friends, things are getting sweet again around home.  I love the very top of this page where it says "you suppose the plaster walks up to the house of it's own accord and sticks itself to the right places?"  We all know better, as artists...we know a lot better!   As friends... you were the "workman" putting the plaster on my walls.  Thank you again.  In your honor I give you my grandma's recipe for "honey icing", cut straight from a recipe scrapbook she kept.  Something sweet for al you sweeties!

I am also going to go submit this to Leah at Creative Every Day, lots of good words in this!

I am not a plumber...or running around like a crazy chick with my head...

...cut off?  That is sort of gross... so let us just say I am running around and would be lost if I am expected to save my to-do list in my head.

The plumbing story?  Funny you should ask.  This would pretty much bee the reason "bee spotting" will not get posted this week.  I give myself a window of time on Tuesday morning to complete it but that window is all wet from the faucet... ha ha! 

Yesterday there was water under the kitchen sink...as in leaking down into gorgeous cherry cabinets.  We have hard water and this happens from time to time when the "O-ring" needs to be replaced.  (I do know a thing or two about plumbing)  So...I tried to fix it...again!  Well that nasty faucet was so plastered on with hard water crud that when I tried to loosen it...ooops now the whole faucet base moves all over the place and water can get everywhere.  Then my honey tries to fix what I messed up...stick to nuclear power honey!  So it is even worse and he did not fix the stop at the right place to get hot water. 

Fast Forward to this morning.  I grab and dump 3 uniformed kids at "the institute" and hit one of those large building supply places.   I ask for the faucet of choice IN THE 2 HOLE INSTALLATION", the dude looking stupid in his orange apron assures me it does both and showed me on the sign for either.  Get home at 8:30am...great there is time for Bee Spotting yet.  Plumber coming at 9am...oh no he is not because said "stupid in orange apron" needs to learn his job and pick the right box!  He sold me one that has the right picture but not the right faucet...this one IS FOR 4 HOLE INSTALLATION ONLY.  Cancel plumber, back to another large place (15 miles away) with all kinds of stuff I don't need to see when trying to be quick.  The cute happy young guy in blue apron opened a box for me to see that it will work with 2 hole under mount and the bonus is the hose is in the faucet and you get a soap dispensing thingy for where your old sprayer is.  Nifty!  Then back to orange apron place to give a dirty look to anyone willing to catch it.

Now...how to create when I have a day like this.  Easy, I made some journal pages about it.  The pages were ready to decorate and I ultra multi-tasked via this outlet.  I was able to

1. make some journal pages...I miss them
2. make ta-do lists
3. fulfill my tags from bloggers who tagged me...will not bee passing them on
4. practice my "I am not a plumber" mantra
5. say I got an award...will post that soon.
6. get my brain in order
7. created art!

Sometimes I ask...

Words escape me. I deviated from my plans for the day to throw up some emotion in my art.  A dear friend's sister, beautiful, caring, stronger than I, is laying in ICU fighting an insult to injury.  All she wanted was to make this world a better place by creating her own miracle.  She was robbed early at 8 weeks of the pregnancy she longed for. A pillar of strength crumbling as she tries to accept the words "not viable", a husband by her side willing to do whatever it takes to make things right again as she begins to give up.  Skip ahead a few days to today.  The simple routine procedure of elimination went wrong, she is ridden with infection.  As doctors try to control the infection of every maternal organ, sepsis creeps in.  She lays in ICU, fighting to forget, fighting for strength to heal as the doctors fight to preserve at least and at most that which makes her fertile.

I am strong, I am capable of acceptance...but today I need to ask WHY?

Interesting page

Sail-Illustration Friday 8/8/8

I had several ideas for this weeks Illustration Friday's theme of Sail.  One was visualizing the seeds of a dandelion flying away with a little sail on it.  I played around with it in my sketch book....then took it to the altered book.  Got here and decided I like it with the words in the book...no little sail boat.  Was not going to submit, just use it as sort of a blueprint for the future.  Then I saw the theme of "sail" was suggested by the American Cancer Society.  So I had to post.  Wouldn't it bee wonderful someday, sooner than later, for anyone with cancer to SAIL through their treatment and anchor themselves with a cure!

Poof!-Illustration Friday 8/1/8

...poof!... he was gone...I finally had room to breath.

Accidentally had fun with this week's theme "Poof!" from Illustration Friday.  I finally had a day to myself, sent Lauren to camp for missing Monday-she is back to being the healthiest kid in the world again.  I took the day off from everything to start a fun altered book/journal.  This is something I have been wanting to do and found that it is a great way to play when you just want bee random without wondering how it will turn out on a canvas.

So here is my first ever altered book pages and Secret #1 from my past, which is quiet funny on how it all came together.  More about that below the picture.

It all started with wanting to do an altered book.  Hmmm, which one.   I looked at several and it was tough  because I usually buy old books for content to use in other art.  So I settled on "How to be Beautiful or Women's Secrets".  Very intriguing to say the least which works with the whole idea of journaling in it. I opened up to a page on proper ventilation for beauty, perfect for the day since I finally had a day to breathe, to not run and run and run to this, that and the other thing.

MY STORY:

The subject matter also worked well with a flashback I was telling somebody about recently.  So that became the subject to journal about.  You might be able to click on to read it on the larger view,  pardon the handwriting.  In a nutshell it is a story from my single days and the ridiculous torture of night clubs we for some reason could not stay away from.  I wonder how many people out there have done what I have?  We used to use "alias" names when we went out to the clubs, my favorite was "Wynnd" (as in Wind) then I would spell it  "W-Y-NN-D". Then give a silent stare.  This was as in "blow away idiot".  My friend John (aka. Johny Rotten) told me not to tell people that, it was spooky, I would scare men away.  To that I told him, "I am not looking for a man HERE, I am just looking for "room to breath".

THE ART:

I have been trying to do more sketching and drawing of people and faces...something I have never put much focus on as it has always intimidated me.  I drew this girl (obviously not me but could be Wynnd) the night before.  I decided to scan her in, enlarge a bit and print a copy for the journal page.

For the rest of the page I wanted maybe "bubbles to blow or poof away" so started cutting circles from pages of an old Botanical Society date book that featured orchids, my all time favorite flower.  The colors were not meshing and "Wynnd" here was too revealed.  She needed a mask, as did I back then.  The page I cut flowers from turned out to be just the thing for her.

I used some petals and leaves we pressed in old books from last fall to decorate the page border with, loved the idea of them blowing in the wind.  Poof! she is done.  Some day I will reveal "Veronica", my other alias.

*A fun tip just occurred to me.  Time to get out those huge old text books, dictionaries, what have you,   take them outside and fill up the pages with wonderful flowers and leaves.  We like to do this to have summer flowers as treasures in the middle of a freezing cold Adirondack winter.