Work In Progress

So, with art, there are times when you can make *huge* mistakes, and yet still fix them with a bit of creativity. And this project is one of those.. :)

A long while back – before we moved here over a year ago – I started a project by painting a canvas pale green. I was intending to stick sequins to it and maybe make a butterfly out of it. Then we were moving, so I packed the canvas away. It was the first thing that jumped out at me when I opened the art box.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it now, but I still had sequins and I also had the stencil from this art project which I gave to my nephew for Christmas a long time ago. And what an absolutely kick butt painting that turned out to be (no, we didn’t add more dots, I just sealed it as you see it there in that post).

So I thought I would try sticking sequins to the Denkyem stencil shape. Unfortunately, glue and sequins do not seem to mix and they turned out not shiny. Oh NOES! What to do?

Use modelling paste to build up the canvas, and then paint over it in black, I think. And then dry brush in some silver or gold over the top.

Denkyem Project One

As you can see I am in the middle of this project, I may layer it up a bit more yet. Because you can still the the sequins at the moment.

Denkyem Project One

It’s been a hellish couple of days for me and I need to seek refuge in the Art. ;) Peace Out!

Snoskred Art

The Art Table

When we lived back in Adelaide some years ago, we bought a couple of ex-office tables from Mr Bankrupt. The tables were $29 each but they would have been worth a lot more originally. They were old and the tops were not perfect but they were solid. The bottoms of the tables were even more solid than the tops..

I’ve been using them for art tables for some time now just with some old material on top of them but when I decided to get serious about art again I wanted to cover at least one of them properly. So when we went shopping the other day I chose some pink cotton which is almost as tough as canvas itself.

Yesterday, The Other Half got out the staplegun and stapled first a layer of table cover material, then the pink stuff. And here is how it looked once he was done.

The Art Table

Yep, it is really pink! ;) And here is how it looks 24 hours later, with quite a few art projects already taking up space. I’ll tell you more about each project in the coming days.
The Art Table

I put down some newspaper and then a clean layer of a4 paper because I never am too sure about newspaper and whether the ink will transfer to something else. However this is not just a4 paper out of a fresh packet, all this has been used, either written on or printed on the other side. This is recycling, and of course once I am done with it all the paper will end up in the recycling bin.

I’ll show you the other table, which resides on the other side of my desk, once I have made it more presentable. At the moment it has a lot of stuff on it.

I’m playing with texture on a few of these projects, using modelling paste to create some different things. That is the big jar you can see on the table there. This is actually the last thing I was doing in the art class I was going to a while back so it kinda feels like a complete circle. I am also doing some stencilling.

I keep my paints on the other table, they are still inside a big container to keep them all neat. I mix up over that side, then once I have it how I want it, I move back to the pink table and paint.

I currently have 7 different works in progress there. I like to do a few at a time because you never know what you’re going to feel like working on that day.

Snoskred Art

Sequin Time!

Yay! I have begun to add the sequins to the Christmas Balls. For the first one, I have chosen a color scheme of Gold and Blue. The gold sequins have a kind of holographic or opalescent effect on them, as you can see from the photos.

Sequins part 1

The blue is a fair bit lighter than it appears in the photos. The flash seems to darken the color a bit.  You can see how the gold has elements of greens, blues, reds and pinks due to the holographic effect. Here is another shot from a bit of a distance.

Sequins part 2

So now it is just a matter of adding more sequins until I’m done. :) These will not be perfect, but that is part of the point. I think I will give this to one of my nephews.. :)

Snoskred Art

Shh.. Art In Progress

So The Other Half took me to a few places today where I could get me some Art supplies, and I have spent the afternoon doing some pre-lim stuff like putting some texture on a canvas and a couple of backgrounds. I don’t have any images for you yet as the light is pretty average right now but there will be pictures in a day or few. ;) I also got a lot of jewellery making supplies. I enjoyed making jewellery and I think it will be a good creative outlet for me..

Those who were in the Aussie Bloggers chat room last Sunday will know what I’m talking about when I say they had some Swarovski Crystal beads and I almost had me a little meltdown in the store. There were some screams of delight and happiness.

I got a beautiful pink cloth to cover my art table with, now I need to use something to cover that with as the Kitties seem to enjoy furring up that table. I almost chose *sparkly* pink cloth but then I decided that was not practical as I would spend too much time looking at it instead of creating art. ;)

I got four round polystyrene balls which I intend to turn into sequin Christmas ball decorations. They turn out a bit like a mirror ball only all sparkly. Today I glued the ribbon to them and here is a picture of them at stage one. I’ll keep showing you photos as the various stages happen. ;) The hard part is choosing a color scheme.Christmas Balls

Snoskred Art

Just the other night..

I was looking for a snack and I ended up with a banana. It made me think of Pixie from Daisy The Curly Cat. I went to see if maybe my kitties would like them a banana, and it turns out that the Little Kitty did, and she ate all the stringy bits I had pulled off the banana..

Then just a few minutes ago I went into my feed reader only to see that Pixie has gone to the rainbow bridge. It is surprising to me how many tears I have just shed for a kitty I was never lucky enough to meet in person.

I will never be able to look at a banana without thinking of Pixie. I am thinking of you Daisy, and Daisy’s Mommy. I’m sorry. I have a sad, too – as you suggest Daisy I will go and hug my kitties now.

kitties, Sad Snoskred

In Other News.. New Mugs!

The Other Half doesn’t like my big Ikea mugs so when we were out the other day we bought some smaller pretty funky mugs. Here’s the first two.. :)

Funky Mugs

Aren’t those beetles pretty? ;) And I’m not sure what kind of birds these are supposed to be but I love the design.

Funky Mugs

Two more to be posted when they are clean, one of which is my current favourite so I can’t stop using it! :) I love that they have something on the inside, and something on the handles too. We got them from Haven And Space, one of the most reasonably priced (other than Ikea) stores ever.. :)

shopping, yay

21 Jumpstreet

Fans of the original 21 Jumpstreet will be interested to hear that a movie version has been announced, set for release sometime in 2010. The movie has not been cast as yet but here’s hoping some of the original cast will be involved with the project. It is doubtful that Johnny Depp will be involved but one can dream, right?

I personally credit 21 Jumpstreet and Degrassi with teaching me to be a sane and decent person – ie no drugs, no teenage pregnancy, no bad behaviour in general. I just got seasons 1-4 of 21 Jumpstreet on DVD this week.

One thing that I adored about this show was how they always took on a character when they went into the schools, so it was basically an actor playing a cop playing a character to arrest people. This allowed them to have a lot of fun with clothes and hair and stuff.

If not for the 80’s outfits and hair, this show could easily be put on tv shows today and still work. The storylines were always excellent.

television shows, yay

Olympics VS Commonwealth Games

An absolutely disgraceful display of nastiness is present over at Fox Sports slash news.com.au re the Beijing Olympics. Some people are having a go at two Aussie swimmers who won silver.

Because Australia gets to compete in the Commonwealth Games every 4 years, there are some people who have very high expectations of Aussie athletes. The last Commonwealth Games were held on Australian soil in Melbourne, and we won a total of 221 medals, 84 of those gold. Previous to that, we won 207 total (82 gold) in Manchester in 2002.

We had the best ever medal tally for Australia at the Olympics when we hosted the games in Sydney, and there we won a total of 58 medals – only 16 of those were gold. In 2004 we came home with only 49 medals, 17 of those were gold which was our best ever gold medal tally for an Olympics..

As far as I am concerned just showing up at an Olympic games is a massive achievement. It represents years of training and hard work. Winning a medal regardless of the colour of that medal is something to be incredibly proud of.

The coverage of the games is terrible this year – so Aussie biased, and when the Aussies don’t qualify or get a medal, they barely get another mention. I suspect this is a large part of the problem – the commentators are giving people the wrong idea about what it means to get to the games.

I have managed to catch one entire competition which was the mens 77kg weightlifting. I don’t know if we had anyone from Australia competing, I never saw anyone from here. Even so, I greatly enjoyed watching the competition because I got to see a lot of what was going on and the commentators seemed intelligent and told me a fair bit of the backstory of the people involved.

This was one highlight of a pretty awful coverage otherwise – usually Channel 7 flick from one sport to another often not even returning to the sport you were just getting into, stuff is cut to pieces, it is just bad form. Oh, and enough swimming already. We don’t need to see every single heat of every single race, and please don’t replay one medal win 20 times a day instead of showing us live goings on.

I also did get to see some of the synchronised diving but unfortunately it wasn’t the full competition. I love diving, gymnastics, the synchronised swimming and diving, things like the hammer and the javelin. I wish they would have synchronised weightlifting across some of the classes, that would be cool to see, don’t you think? Especially seeing the various sizes of the different weight classes on the same stage.

I have to say the Chinese are putting on an impressive show! The water cube is wicked with the changing colour LED’s. The opening ceremony was very impressive even though nobody watches that kind of thing. It is a shame about the pollution – I am hopeful this will start them thinking about what they are doing to their environment and how unhealthy it is for the people who live there let alone anyone who would like to visit.

Sad Snoskred, wrong world