What I’ve been doing…
So, I’ve been doing a collage class with the WONDERFULLY talented Nancy B (aka CROWABOUT) and it’s been huge fun! The kitchen table is a mess and the floors are covered with teeny scraps of cut paper but I’ve been enjoying working with actual physical paper again.
[clicky for bad scan, bigger]
Today was pretty hot – around 37.4 at the computers before we shut them down. And Summer’s not even “officially” here yet! I slept through most of the hottest part of the day: I’m finding that on the days I have chiropractic treatment, I just CRASH OUT. Apparently that’s normal – but gosh it’s disconcerting! I’m not complaining, mind you, since it’s the best sleep I get all week.
(again, clicky for biggy, and apologies for the bad scan – this book is so distended that it’s about to BURST!)
This page isn’t finished yet.. needs a lot more pen work/ doodles. It’s a true story though – I won’t name the very senior person in the Uniting Church (at the time) involved in the conversation, but it was the start of the end of my belief.
In other news:
Constance J Woodle continues to improve BUT is still pretty much refusing her Special Food. We figure she’s got a pretty big hump to live on (as do we all, oops!) and so the reduced intake isn’t too much of an issue. (The Vet agrees.)
I have *sob* officially quit the gym. What with swine flu and the thyroid thang, it hasn’t been a good 6 months for exercise, and I have to allocate the gym money to paying off the debt from Connie’s treatment. Gotta do a lot more walking!
Oh, and I am DEFINITELY on thyroid replacement pills for the rest of my life. The thyroid is BUNG. But good news – the dosage is right. Bad news? Any memory loss now is NOT due to thryoid dumbing-down-ness…
Reading:
Oh, I have been awful about not updating my Shelfari list! In fact, haven’t even got it up here yet, have I?! I am reading library books mostly, since I’ve already read everything we own (duh!)
I Blame Duchamp by Edmund Capon: reading this in bed just won’t do – there are too many images referred to that I am unfamilar with, and so I have to read this with an internet connection open and google ready to go. The pictures that ARE in the book are beautifully produced, as is the quality of this book overall. *sigh* I’d own this one if I could! Great writing, opinionated and learned – just the way I like it.
Last night (in sheer desperation at having Nothing To Read) I started to re-read The Hill by Ray Rigby (I didn’t know til I went to look for a link that it had been made into a movie starring Sean Connery – wow!). Brutal, but great writing. Probably not the best thing to be reading on a stinking hot night, though, since it’s set in a punishment camp in the desert (Egypt in the book, Libya in the film) and the mentions of thirst are tormenting.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman: Undecided how to review this one: in some ways it’s a grown up (well, only slightly so, college age) version of Harry Potter – a magical school, yada yada… but could be considered allegorical. Hmmm.
Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon: A favourite author. This is near future dystopia at its most imaginable… all too plausible.
There have been numerous others, of course, but – meh. Mostly forgettable.
Ok, I’m off to see if the house has cooled down enough to let us sleep…
SHE’S HOME!
We got our baby girl back yesterday arvo!!
She’s still not completely well, and because she’s now had such an acute case of pancreatitis she has to be monitored carefully. Back to the vet for more blood work next week; and a very special diet ($3.20 per can OUCH!) which has to be low fat. She can still have broccoli and carrot (which she loves!) but no more corn 
and she gets to eat boiled chicken and rice (not sure we cna afford to ALL eat that well, LOL!
BUT she’s much brighter and back to her smiley self today. (And so is her Daddy – we worked out he’s NEVER been separated from her before for more than about 6 hours at a time – I’ve been away for various trips but he’s stayed here, so he was really lost without his girl.)
It’s been a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG week… and The Austerity Drive has begun. Nearly $1000 of vet bills later, we will be doing without a lot of “luxuries” like biscuits and soft drinks and magazines and going out for coffees for a long time yet.
But she’s worth every penny.
Creative Therapy: Catalyst 85
SO over at Creative Therapy blog, this week’s catalyst is “What’s the most daring or scariest thing you’ve ever done?”
When I left my first husband, I truly believed that if I didn’t get away RIGHT THEN, I would die. He had been drinking and hitting me all afternoon as we drove down the coast from Sydney on our way back to Albury. When he eventually passed out drunk in a caravan park somewhere on the coast I grabbed my bag (no money, lots of cassette tapes, since that was where he insisted they be carried) and ran to the nearest phone box. (This was waaaay back when mobile phones were the size of besser bricks and were rare as hens teeth.)
I remember somehow getting connected via the emergency number to the only local taxi driver – it was a very small town – and he got me to the police station and waited with me until the police came back from patrol (two man station) and left me with them.
Long story short – the police got me to the next biggest town, then their police got me to the next biggest town and bought me a train ticket to Sydney, where my sister rescued me. (She was always the brave one.)
Now you know that back-story – leaving my second husband was scarier. Not because I was afraid of violence (although he did put on quite a show for the police and neighbours) – but because I was so ashamed that I was leaving another marriage. I was hurt, angry, miserable with snot and tears running down my face as I drove away – but I knew that if I stayed I would keep slowly dying, becoming less me every day.
It was absolutely the right thing to do.
This piece took me ALL DAY to make! I really wanted to use the birdcage because it’s such an important symbol to me – but it was from an image I’d torn out of an old magazine, and the cage was hanging over a background of quite blurry leaves and tree limbs:
So it took me AGES to extract just the birdcage from the photo. (For those who care – had to do it ALL with the polygon select tool in small sections, some of it while viewing the image at 200%. Magic wand tool only works when there is a solid colour to select!)
Then I had to learn how to use a torn edge mask over the paper I wanted to use. EASY in photoshop, apparently, but I’m pov and therefore open source and therefore use GIMP. So it took me a while to work that out too (but geesh, I’m getting much faster at doing this stuff!) – and after the second time I mistakenly saved the resulting image as a JPG (low information, doesn’t play well with other layers) instead of a PNG file (saves all the layer information, like saving something as a .PSD in Photoshop) I got even faster!
And so to bed. Ahhhhhh!
Credits:
Background paper: Thao Cosgrove paper from Simple Life Paper Super Mini collection (part of the October Scrap Girls Club package)
Thao Cosgrove paper (used under journaling) from Beautiful Life Paper Biggie collection (part of the October Scrap Girls Club package)
Birdcage extracted from magazine image
Thao Cosgrove leaves from from Beautiful Life Embelishment Biggie collection (part of the October Scrap Girls Club package)
Torn edge from Curled Edges Five kit by Anna Aspnes at Designer Digitals
Header font Angelic War
Journal font Andalus
A DigiDare
So I’m stretching myself, trying to make interesting journal pages etc DIGITALLY.. I used Digidare #151 (they give you a topic, colour to include, etc) to kick start this one.
(I’m still working on how to get this to looks ok online – tell me if it’s unreadable, please?)
Hoping to paint some backgrounds later today – we were woken this morning by the koels (still no sign of rain, dammit, stupid birds!) and the incessant barking of the bad neighbour’s @$!%&^#!! dogs. AGAIN. Grrrr.
The fine print: Background is a scanned section of what Mr Beloved calls my “splat boards” – the paper I keep underneath the current painting project – often these turn out cooler than the page I’m working on! I knocked the colour right back so it wouldn’t intrude. Template was a freebie from Designs by Sine, and the papers were mine except for the pink one (from the freebie mini kit Girl Time by Meredith at Elemental Scraps) and the green graph paper from Katie Pertiet’s Notebook Pages #2, available at Designer Digitals. Butterfly brushes (stamps) from Blah Blah Blahg (*mwah!* Love that blog!)
OMG! Caity made…
… a digital scrapbook page!!
I AM SO DAMN PROUD OF MYSELF!!
Obviously I’d like to thank the Academy Mr Beloved for his patience as I swore and muttered… and more importantly, I’d like to HUG AND KISS AND SQUEEZE (ok, was that too creepy?) the wonderful Liz of Paislee Press, without whom this layout would not have happened. Not only did she write a comprehensive and clear tutorial on getting started (Layered Templates 101) she also made the “press plate” (the digital template you slot your bits and pieces into) available – all for free.
How cool is that?
Now, I know the protocol: I have to acknowledge all the things I used here, this is not all my own work, obviously! (But it’s a wonderful way to get started.) Usually people seem to do it like this:
Press Plate No. 13 by Paislee Press from Oscraps.com; Background paper from NatashaNaSt Designs Fantasy Minikit (another freebie from Oscraps.com, go buy stuff from them, ok?) and the font is “Euphorigenic” from fontstock.net.
I know I’m not the word’s best photographer – in fact, I may be among the worst - but I’m trying to get better. I have nowhere near enough photos to play with. I am itching to get my hands on family photos but that will have to wait til poor Mum and Dad get time!
Also I have nowhere enough bandwidth – sheesh, some of those digital downloads are GINORMOUS. (Don’t Americans pay for the amount they download or something? Maaaan, they’d FREAK on our 20 gig per month quota!) I don’t think I’ll be getting any more (even if they are free ones) until I see how much quota we have left at the end of the month…
Tomorrow I’m going to a “social scrap” at the local scrapbooking shop, if I’m up to it. I’ll be taking my digital page printed out onto a transparency and playing around with real life stuff to enhance it. (This is called “Hybrid” scrapbooking and I think that it’s very cool. I like to be able to touch stuff, and nice as purely digital designs are, I need to be able to feeeeeeel them.)
Depression – meh. I have managed to keep busy today and get myself tired. I’m hoping when I wake up tomorrow things will look brighter – this morning was Not Good.
Oh I LOVE this…
Today’s Story of the Day from Story People
I used to be pretty clear on what was real & what I made up, but with everything going on in the world, none of that seems to matter, so I just decided to talk less & smile to myself more, so as not to add to the general confusion.
I could just about have that TATTOOED on me. Yep. Talk less and smile to myself more, that’s the ticket.
I’m starting to feel better about my memory – today I remembered an author’s name to recommend a book to someone! (Kay Redfield Jamison’s “Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and The Artistic Temperament”, an interesting and useful read.) So I’m thinking that MAYBE the thyroxine is starting to work…. because this was one of things that I was finding quite distressing, not being able to call up names and book titles (and I can usually see the cover and where I saw it last on my bookshelves if it’s a book I own.) Fingers crossed, eh?
So far though, I am still exhausted and don’t have the energy of a slug. Spent most of the day in bed.
In between sleeping, I have been reading. You might remember that back here I raved about two books by Barbara Cleverly. Well, I’ve been reading her other series, featuring Detective Joe Sandilands, and they’re even BETTER!! Set in India and the North West Frontier (what we know now as the area around Afghanistan/Pakistan, so very topical) in the dying days of the Raj, beautifully plotted, with great characters. If you enjoy those, do check out an old favourite of mine – Peter Hopkirk’s “The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia” (I think it had a different subtitle for the American market). All very Kipling but without Kipling’s – ummmmmm – tendency to be tedious?!
Also just read “The Monsters of Templeton” by Lauren Groff. (I can’t remember who recommended this one (it was one someone’s blog …) – well worth the read.
And I’m enjoying reading *gasp* scrap booking magazines and blogs! (If you have favourites, please let me know.) Seriously, my admiration grows daily for the clever design work some of these women do. I don’t understand why the 12″ square is the default page size, especially since SQUARES ARE HARD in design, but wow – there are a lot of really well though out, funny, clever pages being made out there.
It’s really making me think. I mean, my art journal pages tend to be rather – instinctual. Thrown together. Serendipitous. And while I really value the spontaneity of working so freely, I think there is room for me to be more thoughtful about the design of pages. (Have just dug up an oft recommended book on this:”Design! A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists and Craftspeople” – such eye candy, this time I must read it instead of just looking at the pretty pictures.)
Also, I’m being nudged shoved towards learning how to do more digital stuff – of course, Because We Are Pov I don’t use a closed source, commercial (ie big BUCK$$) program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I use an open source program (GIMP) which does all the same stuff (as far as I can see) and is FREE and works on my computer (which is also running a FREE open source operating system, based on Linux.) And you know what? I can still use all the juicy tutorials online which people have written for PS or PSE, I just have to find where the same tools are on my screen. Brilliant!
Only problem with all this is that when I am up and online, I am looking at far more graphic intensive pages than I used to – oops! Time to think about re-working the budget so we can buy more bandwidth… that or stop LOOKING at so much!
