Had a great time this past weekend camping with my sister. We left on Friday morning and I came back on Sunday afternoon and as I write this, she is still there with her husband and they are due to come back tomorrow. Lucky Duck! We managed to have a great time even in the short time I was there. One of the reasons is that we had this cute little girl with us! My daughters dog Chorizo! In this picture she's stressing out because my sister had gotten out of the car. Chorizo has to have all "her people" with her at all times! She's a character!
But she made it so much fun for us and kept us active because we had to walk her so much. She loves her walks! She also loved how beautiful the grass was there. Anytime she had a chance she would sit or roll around in it! She was in paradise!
When we were at the campsite she even commandeered this chair as her very own, just napping and barking at any other dogs that dared to walk in front of our space!
She always scopes out the best places and makes them her own. Here was her spot inside the RV. She could look outside and see what was going on and still see everything that we were doing inside the RV.
But her favorites place to be had to be at the edge of the ocean or anywhere that she could smell the ocean and everything that came with it...seagull poop being one of her favorites smells!
She had the best time and we had a great time. Always a pleasure to hang out with my sister, she's the greatest! Here's our campsite. It was super safe and comfortable and I wish I were there right now! Hey, I just realized Chorizo was in her chair looking back at me when I took this picture. Sorry to wake you Chorizo!
I even had a chance to get some artwork done. Just a simple page with doodles of flowers and a random little bee. I found the "Enjoy the Moment" sticker in a beach magazine and it was perfect for this weekend. I did enjoy every single moment!
Til we meet again sweet ocean Paradise...we will always have the memory!
I am a lover of thrift stores! There's just something about hunting for hidden treasure that I love. I get this from my mother who has always loved thrift stores. She and I can spend hours on a Saturday morning on the hunt for something special. About a year ago, I found one of those treasures, canvases for 99 cents each! There were probably 50 of them, I bought 10. The canvas was covered with a piece of faux brown suede. People tell me that they were probably used in a sound studio to muffle noise. It is a 16 x 20 inch canvas which is a nice size.
I took the fake suede cover off and found that underneath was some thin green foam, about 1/4 inch in thickness. Here's the foam after I removed it.
Unfortunately they had glued down the foam in certain places and the foam did not want to come off!
I tried everything, a knife, a razor blade, acetone, sanding paper. I was able to get almost all the foam off but that glue must have been made from the stuff they glued the Apollo 13 with, because nothing I did even made a dent. I had several big blobs of glue! I was taking an acrylic art class at the time, so I took it to class to get some advice from my art teacher, Alex. Alex said, "Well, if you can't remove it, make it part of your painting. Try some mixed media. Paint the glue blobs to be 3-D rocks." Brilliant Alex....just brilliant! Why didn't I think of that. I happened upon a YouTube video on how to use tissue paper to create art. The video below is from Amy Pearce at Her Art from the Attic. It's amazing and now that I've watched it again I think I am going to try this one today.
I figured that the tissue paper would give the canvas enough texture that you wouldn't notice the lumps where the glue was so I added the tissue paper and again showed it to Alex who said that it looked like waves in the ocean and I should try doing an ocean painting! Brilliant! So I painted it like this to start with.
If you look closely you can see the lumps where the glue was.
I set this aside for several weeks and one day I happened upon another YouTube video done by Angela Anderson at Angela Anderson Fine Art. It was a tutorial on how to paint an Ocean Coral Reef and lo and behold, I already had the basics of it done!
Following along with Angela, I was able to come up with the painting below. I knew I wanted to add a mermaid but because of the ridges in the texture the tissue paper, I was scared to try it. I usually draw my subject inwith white kids chalk and the ridges didn't allow for smooth drawing. By now the art class was over so I didn't even have Alex for ideas! One night I held a paint night for myself, my sister Lisa and our friend Lupe. We try to get together every few months to paint, de-stress and just spend time together. Lupe had found a picture online that she wanted to try to paint and when she saw the ocean reef painting she insisted that I take the mermaid picture and use it. I loved it, it was perfect. Thank you Lupe! The great thing is that the mermaid is not facing me, so I didn't have to deal with trying to draw a face with all those ridges. So instead of doing a drawing first I just went for it and painted her in. So here she is, my finished painting which I am gifting to my sister Lisa because she is a true mermaid, a lover of the sea, the ocean, the beaches and anything oceany! I give you The Lisa Mermaid!
Here's a close up of the mermaid herself. I used some glitter paint in silver and white for her tail. You can't really see it here but her tail glistens with glitter. I also used a glitter paint that dries clearly on her skin, so her skin glistens. She's absolutely beautiful.
Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with the other 9 canvases that are covered with suede! Yikes! Any ideas?
