Things I have discovered recently

1.) I am really liking these kind of blog pots. You know, the ones I’ve been doing recently, where I cover several points/areas/events in one blog post.  All of them somewhat more on the short and sweet side!

So often, some of the smaller thoughts and events fall by the wayside because they don’t make up a whole blog post and in my case it often means, that I just don’t post!

They are also much faster to do, which seems to help me to post more regularly too!

I see more of those in my future!

 

2.) My latest finished painting for Lifebook 2014. I had so much fun with the inky, vibrant, splattery goodness!

 

 

3.) Baby wipes are my new best friend in the art studio! I might be the last to catch on, but they are awesome when it comes to cleaning brayers, stamps, stencils, general wiping of spills, drips and such.

 

{Oh, how I love it when even the cleaning rags are pretty!}

 

But not only that, I have recently discovered that they can assist me in the kind of blending I love.

When you use acrylics a lot, which I do, they become a little “plastic-y” when they dry. Meaning they create a slightly slick surface. Especially when you use extenders, then that can happen even more! Sometimes that’s a good thing, but often it just means that the consequent layers of paint can slide around a bit.

I also like to use colored graphite pencils for much of my “pull it all together” shading on a face. They are subtle, smudge able and allow me to build up nice layers. For the most part I use my trusty paper stumps for softening it all out, or just my fingers.

But, every so often, the above mentioned plasticy thing, that the acrylics do, gets in the way and the graphite settles unevenly and instead of looking subtle, it ends up looking streaky and just weird.

Enter the baby wipe! I discovered a few days ago, that a gentle, feather light smudging with a baby wipe on my finger tip gives me back that evening out power! It has to be really gentle, or you’ll take the whole layer off!  I love it!

 

4.) Gelli Plate Printing. I’ve been itching to try it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I like the idea, I’m just not sure that I will end up using it all that much. The other day I was reading something and “hectographs” were mentioned. So, that set off an aha moment for me and I did a search for homemade hectographs/gelli plates and low and behold, there are lots of clever people out there who have this figured out!

Here are some recipes, if you want to try it for yourself:

Shaz in Oz’s original recipe

The Frugal Crafter’s recipe (permanent gelli plate)

Cat Sadowski’s recipe  (for a stickier gelli plate)

I’ll be posting my little experiments at some point. I got a little side-tracked with some ladies that want to be painted!

 

5.) The current state of my work surface paper.

 

 

What you can’t see is all the glimmering  from the various mists that settled on the paper too. Intuitive collage paintings in the making, every time I work on there and wipe something, smear something, scribble with a pen to get it going, drip, overspray, test the opacity of a particular paint, roll the excess off my brayer ... it all goes on here and becomes it’s own component for future pieces of art! I love it!

Not to mention that hardly anything every goes to waste that way!

 

What have you discovered lately?

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The Long Lost Blogger

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted here!

It has been BUSY around here! Not that that’s new or different!

Catching you up will be a long and picture rich post, but here we go!

 

On top of the regular scheduled “programming” around our house, I’ve been busy with this:

 

 

My “babies” turned eight years old! (Seriously?! When did that happen?!) And we had a party! And it was an awesome party! And of course there were the cakes!

 

Anna wanted a Lalaloopsy cake, with figures she could keep! So, that was an easy one! Making all the buttons, butterflies and flowers was fun and quite easy - and then I just topped it off with some mini Lalaloopsies!

 

 

 

Max, of course, wanted an Angry Birds cake again, this time with the star wars theme! He wanted to be able to eat everything, so I made everything edible!

 

We also had a bouncy castle, and Daddy was manning the cotton candy machine and lots of friends came and everyone had a lot of fun!

 

 

 

 

And then there is also a lot of this!

 

 

Bumper crops, canning, freezing, prepping, freezing, jam making, drying, freezing,  pie filling making, apple sauce making, jam making, fermenting, you name it and I’ve done a LOT of it this year!

 

And of course, now there is also a whole lot of this

 

 

 

Unfortunately, our latest hard frost took out most of the zucchinis, tomatoes, peppers and egg plants. But a lot of the more cold hardy things have sprung up and are doing great! And since we have generally very mild winters, it’s prime gardening season around here even now!

 

And then there was the purging, because all of that wasn’t quite enough! I got some kind of bug which I like to call “no room left behind”, which basically includes every room, every cupboard, every box/basket, etc sorted through, organized, purged (if applicable) and cleaned out.

I am mostly through the house now (except for my husband’s office - I’m calling that one a lost cause ...) with only a couple more areas left to do!

It’s an ongoing thing really, but it is amazing how much accumulates in a family of hoarders  organizationally challenged people, even when I try to stay on top of it on a regular basis! And it always seems to be such a big deal with the husband and the kids, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth and all that!
Even though, once we are through it, all of them are quite clear that they feel much better without all their rooms/lives in a hot mess and all cluttered up! Go figure!

 

Anyway, then Thanksgiving happened, with family staying in town for a while and we were in the rather more unique position of also incorporating a little of Hannukah into our Thanksgiving celebration, making it a once in a lifetime Thanksgivukkah! With a variety of allergies running high in the extended family, it was an interesting experience, making all the familiar, expected and traditional goodies, while keeping everyone happy and healthy!

We had gluten-free Rugalach (nuts and honey as well as poppy seed filling,) gluten-free corn casserole, the turkey of course, dairy and gluten-free gravy, dairy-free and regular mashed potatoes, potato cakes with apple sauce, lingon berry and cranberry sauce and speaghetti squash! For dessert with had gluten-free dutch apple pie, marshmallow dreidels, gluten-free chocolate and cookie acorns. Wondering what our dietary restrictions are when we all get together? No dairy, no gluten, no coconut or derivatives, no soy or derivatives, no garlic, no fish, no artificial sweeteners and no red peppers and no beans. Those are the bigger ones, not including the “dislikes” that everyone brings along too!
Anyway, as you can see, we had a feast and everyone was safe and happy!

I have taken a bunch of Thanksgiving photos, but I can’t find them right now, so this will serve as a place holder for me to add them later! It’s not like I don’t have a lot of other photos for you to look at in this post!

 

And now of course we’re racing full steam toward Christmas! It will be the first time that our little family will be just us for Christmas! We have never had that and even though it is unfamiliar, I am really looking forward to a laid-back, nowhere-to-go, nothing-much-to-do, keep-your-pajamas-on-all-day kind of a Christmas!

 

The other thing that’s been taking up my time and passion again, has been art journaling/painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been doing two art courses (online) in the last few weeks. And I have loved, loved, loved them!
The first one was Tam Laporte’s (aka Willowing) Fabulous Faces class which is just plain awesome! Rarely have I enjoyed a course quite that much, I have to say!

 

 

The second one is a portrait class by Gabrielle DeCesaris on skillshare and it has helped me tremendously in the technical areas and I have had quite a few “AHA” moments in terms of proportions and realistic feature composition!

{In progress}

 

And I think I have left my “can’t do faces right” persona behind now and things are looking up - and a lot more like actual faces now! I still need a lot of practice, but this kind of practice is so much fun, so I’m looking forward to that!

And in that spirit I have also signed up for Lifebook 2014 and I am SO excited for it to start - I can hardly wait!

A whole year of artsy, messy, healing, journaling, learning and expanding goodness is waiting to be explored and I will be part of it! YAY!

 

 

So, yes, that’s the last 3 months or so in a nutshell!

What new things have you been tackling in your life?

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Natural, Homemade Goo Remover (that really works!)

I love bottles, and jars and all manners of appealing vessels for lotions and potions and food and, well sometimes just to look at.

I’ve been decanting stuff into pretty bottles ever since I can remember. I have also been known to choose one product over another because one was in a pretty re-usable jar/bottle/vessel. Yes, that’s me!

Somehow my bottle/jar/vessel love took a bit of a back seat while the twins were toddlers. Maybe for obvious reasons, like most of my pretty bottles/jars/vessels are quite fragile. Some more than others, but none of them are exactly toddler proof.

But in the last year or two, it has returned to me and many a plastic containers has once again made way for mason jars, glass bottles and pretty pottery.

Another thing that returned, is my love for “making it myself” all the way. Before I was married and had kids, I would make my soap, lotions, potions, toiletries, etc. myself too. Well, I am going back there!

Not only have I recently switched the family to natural and organic in almost all things food, I am also going organic and homemade on the toiletries and cleaning front again! The benefits, even though it has only been a few months, have been tremendous to me personally already. I can’t wait to see what health benefits we reap in the long term!

 

But I digress! Back to the jars and bottles and things! If you love containers as much as I do and love to reuse them and give them new life in so many different ways, you also know the pain that is the removal of  labels and sticky, won’t-ever-budge adhesive residue!

Be it on glass or plastic, the easier the label comes off, the more impossible it seems to remove the adhesive they use for labels these days!

I seem to remember that you could just soak something and the label would come clean off, or at most you had to give a couple of spots a quick scrub. But not anymore!

These days it seems that there are adhesives that don’t respond to anything much. Especially when you have a clear label. It peels off easy enough, but then your left with the almost invisible sticky residue that won’t respond to heat, soap, scrubbing or anything! And every time you think you got it and your vessel dries, there it is again, sticking to your hand and collecting every particle of dust, fluff or hair in sight! You know the one I mean, right?

 

Yes, that stuff! Ugh!

 

Turns out there is a way to get that stuff off. Easily even!

Which brings me to my recipe of a different kind today! So if you already tried soaking and scrubbing and dish soap and the stuff just won’t come off, try this!

 

 

The natural, and oh-so-effective “Goo-Be-Gone” you can whip up in your kitchen!

 

It only has two ingredients:

Baking Soda

Coconut oil

Yep, oh and you might want a jar, so you can make up a batch and have it handy.

Basically, all you do is to make a paste of some room temperature coconut oil and baking soda. Mix it all up in a jar and keep it handy for when you need it!

 

I can’t even believe how well this stuff works!

To use, you just scoop a little out of your jar, put in on the “goo” you want to remove and scrub it with a damp scouring pad or a magic eraser.

 

Now, back to that impossible-to-remove adhesive!

It takes a couple more steps, but nothing too wild. I did several bottles today and it didn’t take me long at all.

First fill the vessel that has the goo on with hot water. Close the lid, so the hot water stays in.

Spread your coconut oil/baking soda paste on the goo.

 

 

Let it sit there for a couple of minutes.

Then take a scrubbing sponge or scourer and lightly scrub it. I tend to use a Magic eraser on plastic so I don’t make any scratch marks.

Once your done, rinse with a little washing up liquid or pure castile soap (that’s what I use) and voila - you have no more sticky residue!

 

 

If you should have a particularly stubborn adhesive, just get a little more of the coconut goop on and repeat. In 10 something bottles I only encountered one spot that I had to do twice!

As an added bonus your hands smell yummy!

 

Try it sometime! It really works well!

Note: Before you use it on different kind of plastic, acrylics or wood (like removing a kid’s sticker from your wooden floor,) please test in an inconspicuous spot and make sure your scrubber isn’t too abrasive!

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