Friday, February 27, 2015

Documented Life Project - Week 8



February Theme
Layers You Will Love!
February 21
Art Challenge:  Repeating Elements
Journal Prompt:  It's Worth Repeating
I used a round gelli plate repeatedly for my background. I also repeated several elements on the page: the flower image, dictionary definitions, outlines, and writing.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Documented Life Project - Week 5



January Theme
The Blank Page and How to Face It!
January 31
Art Challenge:  Under Paper (paper on your work table that gets all inky while you work)
Journal Prompt:  What Lies Beneath?
I'm still behind - counting today's prompt, I have 2 more page spreads to be caught up.
I started by gluing a number of pieces of under paper to my background. It looked pretty chaotic, so I covered it with a light coat of gesso, hoping to knock back the colors a bit and make it more cohesive.  But it covered more than I intended, so I added some acrylic paints to make my background.  The under paper ended up only providing texture to the background, but at least I liked it.  I searched for quotes using "beneath" as my search term, and this is what I ended up with.  The bird and branches are made from under paper as well.  I had no idea where I was going with it when I started the page, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Colorado Coneflower



This is my quilt that was selected as a finalist in the Quilting Arts Reader's Challenge.  I took the photo of the coneflower in 2009.  I manipulated it in Photoshop Elements, printed it on printer fabric, then thread sketched and quilted it.  It is 10" square.

You can check the June/July 2015 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine and their website (quiltingdaily.com) to see all of the finalists' work.

My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart

I read Mary Stewart's Arthurian Saga (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and The Wicked Day) many years ago and loved them.  She is one of my friend Kathy Johnson's (of Catching Happiness) favorite authors, so I decided to read My Brother Michael for my classic with a person's name in the title.  It is the story of a young woman, Camilla Haven, traveling alone in Greece after the friend who was supposed to join her broke her leg.  Shortly after Camilla writes to her friend, "Nothing ever happens to me," she is plunged into an adventure that mingles suspense and romance.  It was an enjoyable read and I rate it 3 out of 5.

Documented Life Project - Week 4



January Theme
The Blank Page and How to Face It!
January 24
Art Challenge:  Writing
Journal Prompt:  Words with Friends
I'm trying to get caught up. I just have week 5 to do, but week 7's prompt will be issued tomorrow!


Thursday, February 12, 2015

Documented Life Project - Week 6




February Theme - Layers You Will Love!
February 7
Art Challenge: When Not To Stop
Journal Prompt: "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough!" (Ooh)

I am a few weeks behind. This page started out to be my Words with Friends page (week 4), but as I worked on it, I found that I kept adding more and more layers and realized that it would work better for the Don't Stop Til You Get Enough page (I guess that's one of the advantages to being behind!).

Monday, February 02, 2015

Dog and Snow by Paul S. Piper

The dog in this poem sounds so much like my own dog Buddy that I just had to share this.

Introduction by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate:  Dogs are smart enough to get people to take care of them, a skill that a lot of people haven’t learned, but they’re still wild at the heart. Paul S. Piper lives in Washington.

Dog and Snow


Dog sees white. Arctic
light, the bright buzz in the brain

of pure crystal adrenaline. In a flash
he is out the door and across the street

looking for snowshoe hares, caribou, cats.
His wild ancestry ignited, Dog plunges

his nose into snow up to his eyes. He sees
his dreams. Master yells from the front porch

but Dog can’t hear him. Dog hears nothing
except the roar of the wind across the tundra, the ancient

existential cry of wolves, pure, devastating, hungry.
Time for crunchies. Taking many detours, Dog

returns to the porch. Let master think what he
wants. Freedom comes at a price.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Paul S. Piper from his most recent book of poems, Dogs and Other Poems, (Bird Dog Publishing, 2011). Poem reprinted by permission of Paul S. Piper and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.