She has Clothes

Well she is now starting to come alive. I am really enjoying working on this piece. And working with different mediums. It is hard to see in the pics but the copper really adds a nice sparkle when the ligt hits it. i added that to the mix with teh micromarbles and the glitter. Now have to find out what to name her.

New Wip

As part of the retreat this year we have a challenge. We are to create a Fall or Halloween piece. I started this piece a year ago by doing the head and it was sitting in the closet. i came across it when I had to empty the closet for the new bamboo floors and a few other attemps did not really talk to me. Turns out one of them is to be incorporated into this piece. I was hoping to do a small piece since I am flying but so much for doing a Halloween egg. I am having fun doing this piece and working with a new product I have gotten at the salvage place. It is aluminum which i have used for her bodice and sleeves. It really adds texture and comes in copper too! Hope to use that on my retreat piece.

Class at Reno/Iowa Retreat

Once again I am teaching a mini class at the retreat given by two great artists Sherry Goshon and Jean Bernard. It is a 3 day art doll retreat held in Marshalltown Iowa. It is Sept 19021st but we start the day before by going antiquuing and spending tiome shoppping and just having fun. I have designed two eggs this year but can only reveal one since the other is a mystery egg. I will reveal the other after the retreat.

This one is called Swept Away to India. The face is one designed by Jean Bernard as his her Cassie mold. I have used sari fibers and have handmade the jasmine lilies of cold porcelain. You are seeing the front and back of the egg.

Walkway is poured

Well the concrete foundation is poured finally. We decided to do a reality check and look at our lives and realize that with our medical conditions it would be feasable to start planning for our future so we did away with steps and planned a ramp. Since we are investing so much money in beautiful stone it will be a shame to rip it out or put in ugly ramps down the road.

Here is a pic of Richard and I working on the concrete together. He is our contractor.I am the water boy and Bruce is the driver as he is in charge of driving the power wagon after I load the bags on concrete and bringing them over so they can be mixed. It is so nice to feel like we are part of this project. Next week the stone will be laid down. So this week i have to unload the pallets and lay out the stone on the front so we can see what the stones look like. Can't wait to see what it looks like as it will take a couple of days to get this done.

You can also see pics of the new house colors. It is charcoal gray and red which are traditionbal Asian colors.

This weeks happenings

Well this week has been a real busy one! It started off with me digging out the path for the new walkway. This has been a weeks long project as I have only been able to do it a few hours each day when it has been cool. So I get up at 6:30 and get started on it. Then we have made a few trips this week to get some rocks for the backyard. Someone on craigslist advertised them for free and there was a huge pile from small to boulders so we made three trips with the railer to get them. I am going to use them to make a planter box and also maybe a rock garden. I also started painting the house. This will take a while to do. But the house is no longer looking boring.As our neighbor Mike would say he does not want us to get bored,lol. We also picked up this garden bench for the start of our Asian garden in the front yard.

Some beauty pics

Welll after sharing some death pics I thought I would show some pics of life around here. We have loads of irises springing up all over the property. So Bruce decided to take some pics. We have a couple of shades of purple and to our surprise we found this wonderful orange one! Still waiting for the others to pop up. We went to the master gardeners sale and bought a yellow to add to the collection and our other neighbor is going to allow us to take some from their front yard as Bruce just loves yellow!!!

Paul Bunyan Imitation

Ok well this weekend I decided to change gears from renovation to demolition. we had a huge tree in the yard that ufortunately was neglected by the previous owners so it had to come down. We had hoped it would be alive but no such luck. So lucky me who is afraid of heights had to tackle the job. here I am as Bruce snapped the shots some unknowingly.

Now all this wood has to be cut down to small pieces. Some will be used for a fire pit I want to get and other we will take down to teh community composting program. The yard looks bare so we have to try and get teh roots dug up which may take all summer,lol. We want to plant a mulberry tree to take its place. Who knows what role will come next? george Washington??

Stay tuned for the next episode.