Busy Day

Not much time to journal today as I bounce between meetings, regular work, and doing some research towards a New Years Eve program I'm helping to put together.

Looking forward to tonight when we pick up our "sweet" reward for this years gingerbread house. The town Christmas festivities are fun... at least when it's not raining. If it's nasty out we may just opt for a celebration of our own at Dairy Queen!

Put the lights on my tree last night when I got home from my meeting. Daniel, of course had to help me!!

WE'RE FOUR FOR FOUR!!

My advance scout just called to say she'd seen our Gingerbread Courthouse in the window downtown with a BLUE RIBBON on it!!

That's four years in a row we've won now!!

We weren't any too sure this year either as relatively fast as we slapped that thing together!

Go Bobs 4 Life!!

And... it's another $50 towards our ACS Relay Team total!!

Do I have the cutest cat or what?

Just couldn't let the day go by without sharing this sweet shot...

Daniel decided it would be fun to try and climb the Christmas tree...

Who knew that when you get a cat, the holidays become a contact sport!!

The hurry-er I go...

Haven't had time yet to get my December pages posted here, so as as stopgap measure, here's the link to my picture trail site where they are located.

Click on the December pages album at:
http://www.picturetrail.com/ethelbertina

I'm working in an altered book journal this month and really focusing on trying to create interesting backgrounds. I still think I would prefer to have backgrounds that relate to the pages subject matter, but with not a lot of time lately, it seems to be working OK to just create spreads that leave me room to write in.

The busy backgrounds are getting annoying... the next ones I'm working on should be much plainer.

Measuring Up

Hadn't done a random collage in a while, so on a break yesterday I came up with the following:

It didn't photograph too well... so many pages, so litttle time...This month I'm working in an altered book journal format, so some of the background pages are showing through which I like. I guess with the end of the year looming there's a certain amount of thinking about how I should be doing more and better things with my life...

You can't catch me...

Wow... it's been a while since I've posted here. With Christmas coming, there's been a bunch of projects to juggle. The most pressing one of late has been my and my friends fourth annual entry in the local gingerbread house contest. We've done local buildings three out of our four years, and this year is a return to that. The judging should be completed by now... but we won't find out our fate until the town ceremony on Friday night. If we should win this year it would be our fourth consecutive win... and we've all agreed that it's time to take next year off!!

Here's a shot of our gingerbread house:



and here's a shot of the original:



and what you can't see from these pictures is that we've also done the inside of the house... a courtroom upstairs and a policeman's office and a jail downstairs...

yep... we're nutso... why do you think we need a year off!! :0)

A phoenix like day...

Yesterday wasn't a bad day exactly... it was a combination of frustration bleeding over from the previous night's gingerbread pattern session (those never go well... we so need an architect), and another day at the dull job. BUT ... it did seem to bring about a fair amount of creativity in response, so it's not all bad. Did two collages... the first one as a response to the frustating part of my day ... and the second one literally created itself -- I looked down at the pile and there it was... and I love it. The scan is a little dark to really see the expression on Zeus's face, which I think makes the piece, but them's the breaks of technology I guess.

And ... I had an idea for terrific christmas cards that I had fun playing with when I got home from work! If they go over well, I might just be able to parlay cards into something year round...

So out of the ashes came good stuff.

This green WAS easy

A lot of my quickie magazine collages fall together by color. This was is no exception. Somehow I found a lot of stuff had floated to the top of the box that was this sort of electric apple green color. I went looking for a few more pictures to round it out and it developed into this blue and green fantasy...I don't know what it is about this piece that I like so much, but somehow it just seems to radiate confidence -- it has flow, and sparkles with foreign and exotic locations... Oh, that my life were more like this piece!! :0)

Bye Bye Trees

I was coming back from a lunchtime errand the other day and there's an area not far from my office building where they're taking down a large chunk of forest (presumably to put in more houses) and as I was stopped at a stop sign looking out over this terrible blank spot, I saw a hawk sitting up in one of the few trees that were left in the middle of the now empty space, just looking around like ... "who took my forest?!"

I'm not so good at drawing things from memory, and this is just a rough sketch, but I just had to capture the poor lonely looking bird. Before I added the tail he looked a lot like a penguin in a tree. He may not look exactly like a hawk, but it's captured my memory, and that's all that's important.

Gingy time --

The time has come, my friends, to begin anew the yearly challenge... to top last year's Gingerbread House/Structure in the annual contest... today was our day to take pictures and start coming up with a pattern. This year we're returning to local structures after our departure last year...so here is a preliminary sketch of the building we're attempting to create out of gingerbread:

This is actually a hurried sketch of a sketch... but it shows what a challenging year this will be.

The Eyes Have It

Another page that sort of created itself... had cut out the Cabaret ad for the performance dates and times, and had ripped some stuff out of an eyeglasses ad... and the elements just sort of combusted themselves into this page...

A Bird in the Road is worth...

So driving home Monday night, what to my wondering eyes should appear, standing in the middle of the road, but a huge pheasant!! Fortunately he was in the other lane... and I didn't get to see how the other drivers shooed him off the road... but he sure was handsome!!

Went home and decided to try and draw him. I struggle with my own artistic skills when it comes to actually drawing stuff. I can slap random bits of paper together like nobody's business, but when it comes to trusting my hand to draw what my eye sees... forget it. But... I keep trying! And I'm not altogether unhappy with Mr. Birdie. I've been playing around with some oil pastels that I picked up at the craft store on a whim. Not a lot of good for details like the feet... but I do rather enjoy smooshing them around and seeing what happens...

Hiatus

Tra La -- the only thing better than a vacation is an enforced one. Maxed out on my vacation days at work and HAD to take Thursday and Friday off. Ended up doing practically NOTHING in four days... which was good and bad.

But, Monday morning came and nose must be applied to grindstone again... so at lunch I did a page out of the junk mail piled up on my desk that was destined for the trash. Seemed to have an affinity for postmarks. The background flyer is for a documentary about a community of neighbors in NYC that put together a trust fund for their developmentally-challenged neighbor. Wonderful stuff that.

The Day After

So Wednesday morning I was a bit of a blue girl (albeit it a blue state)... and I think some of my dissapointment came out in today's page...

The text, from the local college paper, is a quote from Albert Einstein that reads "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Democracy in Action

Ah, the inevitable voting page. I had prepared a background for this using my brick background stamp variously "inked" with red, white, and blue paint. After adding a few bit from campaign flyers and polling site leftovers I have a record of my day. Got a bit creative by skewering the one blue handout to the page with a toothpick -- mostly inspired by the handout being double sided...

A New Leaf

As November starts, so starts the winter indoor walking session sponsored by our local YMCA... so time to get off my rather ample butt and get out there!! More creativity with my background stamps... this time my checkerboard border one...

First page jitters

The first page in a journal is always fraught with a bit of terror... despoiling a pristine, new smelling book... but I lept in with November and just did a page with some bits I had laying around on my coffee table. I sort of like the tension between the text phrases "Be Here Faster" and "Success."

Welcome Newness

Since I started journaling "full-time" back in June, I seem to have gravitated towards having a new journal every month. I don't know if it's a need to compartmentalize, my neatnick side, or most likely my need to feel like I've accomplished something. So... November is here and with it a new journal. I've been using composition books the last couple of months. I'm still debating whether I really need the lines or not! One of the yahoo groups I'm on has been talking lately about showing off our covers -- so here's the cover of November 2004. I may end up adding to it, but it's good for now...

The picture is a page from some magazine that I've been hoarding until November rolled around. The text reads "Change comes naturally to November. From the color of the leaf piles to the smell of the Earth to the feel of a thick wool sweater grown softer with time -- each transition that we take hold of adds another layer of texture to our lives."

Hallow-weeny

Couldn't let trick-or-treating go by without doing a page about it... nor Halloween itself. These aren't terribly complex pages... but I like 'em.

The first page is a piece of paper I've been holding onto since last Halloween (yes, I need help...) and was very glad to find a place to use it... with the addition of the punkin picture and some stamping!

The Halloween page is some free Dover clip-art, a newspaper clipping, some orange construction paper, and some stamping from my home-made background stamps based on the technique from "CompositionArtJournals." The stamp is actually a harlequin diamond pattern, but I like the way it looks a bit like witches hats -- or maybe claws -- since only half the diamonds are visible. Too much fun!!

Falling

One of the Gluebook challenges for October was to do a page representing (in whatever way) Fall Colors. So I've been making a little pile on my work table of things that I thought might fit that category... and the other night I sat down in front of the tee-vee and got glue-ing! I think I like the last one the best... I think it's the cleanest and simplest of the pages.