Mountain Love

This is one of the pieces I made inspired by Mary Ann's Stencilry class - she'll be running another in July. And Stencilry 2 sometime in the summer too. I can't wait!

This has been such a fun class - Mary Ann exudes enthusiasm and encourages one to play - keep going, never mind you've made a mistake, it'll probably be fine... you can always paint over it... etc. My only problem was that my computer is so old I had to borrow Jim's laptop to be able to see the videos properly... guess that means I need a computer....

The above uses stencils and masks based on a couple of photos from Jim's mountain adventures in Scotland. I also ad libbed with some torn paper to make more mountains...

Jim's not been to Scotland this year but we did spend a week in Dartmoor and Teasel went up several tors - here's one that I went up too:

Though as I didn't actually go to the very top of the rocky bit Jim doesn't count it as properly bagged by me... I consider having got myself up as far as I did quite sufficient! Teasel clearly had the same urge as Jim to reach the absolute top.

Does the rock they are standing on look like a TORtoise to you?

Wishing Away!

Wishcasting Wednesday's prompt today is: What do you wish to clear out?

Last week in my full moon dreamboard I gave the story of how we tried and failed to sell this house. I mentioned that Jim had "unearthed a whole cache of wonderful things" but didn't say where he'd found them...

When we moved back into this house we were still anticipating putting it back on the housing market so we put some things into a storage unit.

What a mistake!

Its cost us a bomb.

And depressed me.

And, it turns out, hidden quite a few of the things that I've been missing, presumed lost in the moves.

Don't ask why I didn't think to look there - I think I was blanking out on it because the prospect of clearing it seemed so enormous...

So my wish this week is:

To clear out the storage container and to find all the lost treasures hidden in there!

All non-treasures to either find new homes easily or to be disposed of at long last.

To enable this wish to come true I need to maintain my resolve and the energy and bodily strength necessary to enable me to play my part. And the same for Jim too!

Hands

Here is a two-page spread of spread hands from my altered book - Shamanic Marks - Inspiration!

Hands were one of the most obvious things to work with in this book - for these two I've included a variation of spiral and line symbol found near rock art hands. I've included both wet and dry sgraffito.

I was planning on just using the dry sgraffito and I started off with oil pastels on a piece of cartridge paper then used black poster paint (thanks for the suggestion Tinker - my "gouache" turned out to have acrylic in its formulation) over them.

I used sgraffito to chip out a hand shape which worked rather well and the spiral symbol. I then rolled the paper and the black poster paint flaked off so much that the sgraffito became much too subtle amongst the rather bright contrast of yellow, orange and black. So I cut the hand out instead and realised I could use both the positive and the negative like this.

I used wet sgraffito for the spiral symbol on the left hand page.

I've also been experimenting with blowing paint around a hand:

I made the black background by monoprinting from the overwet posterpaint used above.


When I came to use the mouth diffuser (atomiser/atomizer) I found it quite difficult to get it to work at all - the angle of the two components is all important - having got it working with water I moved onto dilute poster paint and found I had to blow extremely hard to get a good spray. I've done three variations and am wondering what else to do with them before they too find their way into the book. I might make a lino cut of the spiral symbol.

I also discovered why the hands are generally done with the fingers splayed - if you don't it doesn't look much like a hand...

First Day of Stencilling...

Mary Ann's (Dispatch from LA) on-line Stencil course has begun! And this is what I've done so far. I'm not sure that they are finished but the light is failing and I'm stopping for now.

This first week is working with "found" stencils - so that means not having to cut one's own yet.

I'd gathered quite a stash to play with but constrained myself to a few to begin with. Though just choosing to use the big jigsaw pieces added in rather more complexity than I'd been expecting. They are gigantic pieces from a child's floor puzzle - it was one that had pieces that had been mended and was reduced in a charity shop. It was quite easy to do when the picture was visible. This is what it looks like now:

I used one of the big plastic "lace" things and it picked up the jigsaw pattern rather well:

Though having used it like this for both these pieces I feel its a bit too static and would move a smaller piece around instead if I was using it for a background like this again.

So far its been lots of fun!

Chocolate Full Moon Dreamboard

Careful What You Wish For... Even When You Don't Realise That You Are...

Today Jim unearthed a whole cache of wonderful things... like the A3 paper for my printer that I've looked EVERYWHERE for, well except I hadn't, obviously... and some art materials that I've been missing... and this cutting from a magazine.

Jim had cut it out because it has a tortoise on it.

When he was a child he wanted a pet but his parents weren't keen. Then a stray tortoise turned up and, even though they found its owners, Jim got to keep him.

Scroll forward to Valentine's Day 2004.

At that time the Guardian newspaper's Saturday magazine had a column called "That's My Pet!" - it featured three people, sometimes celebrities and others too, and their pets. The idea was to match up the person with their pet(s). Jim was good at guessing whose pet was whose.

In this cutting, not especially carefully saved, but saved nonetheless, were a tortoise, a cat and two dogs. But not any old dogs, though in those days neither of us would have recognised them without the useful caption:


It took a few years but I think the seed was sown without our realising it then... Here is Teasel, the Miniature Schnauzer, that's my pet now:

And the cat? Well it was called Luna.

At the time of that column, early 2004, we were just about to move out to a rented house in Minchinhampton. Whilst we were there we got this house done up and on the market but it didn't sell... there were lots of strange things going on... for instance:

• The only people we managed to attract through private advertising turned up on a day when there was a thick bank of fog... which almost never happens... and it most definitely detracted from the views we enjoy:
  
  
  
  
  
• The first set of estate agents proved strangely incompetent - given that they are still in business, even now during the huge downturn in the housing market, I suspect they are normally much more efficient. Things that happened included: the brochure having mislabelled photos, inaccurate descriptions, no photos of the views (our major selling point), price reductions failing to be advertised in their own window, etc.
  
  After three months we tried some other agents.
  
  
• The second set of agents were better but also unlucky. Their brochure was accurate though they also failed to show the views. And during our time on with them our house, which we visited frequently, slept in occasionally, but were mostly away from, was burgled twice. Very little was taken... we'd left the house looking furnished but no TV or computers or expensive Hi-Fi. One mini-hi-fi was taken but as it was broken we didn't mind - it had simply been "dressing" the house! Not enough was taken to make an insurance claim on... and both thieves were caught.
  
  
• Just before we moved back to Bristol there were some people who seemed really keen. On the last day we were on the market, they left us a message via the agents that they'd have loved to have put an offer in but their own house sale had just fallen through...
  

The burglaries were 2 moons apart... (2-3 days before new moons)...

I've been cautious about wishing again for the house in the Cotswolds that I still yearn for... but now I'm daring to once more... right now its just the seed of an idea, a dream, a reflection lapping in the mirror of my mind and my cocoa:


Join me in a full moon cocoa with a dream of a house in the Cotswolds.

For more full moon dreamings and to add your own in too visit Jamie's blog.