Mandalas and other things

I had lunch yesterday with my aunt and some cousins - mine and my father's - to celebrate my aunt's birthday (number 88). I had my great grandmother's photo album with me and we were able to add some names to faces, which means that I will be able to add photos to Dad's side of the family tree on Ancestry. I haven't done much work on my trees for a while - maybe I'll get motivated if my Dale cousins organise this family get-together they keep talking about.

Since the last time I posted, I have done a free online course on making mandalas - drawing them and colouring them. It was really interesting and I enjoyed the short lessons and was quite pleased with what I achieved. I posted some on Facebook and I think I got my niece interested - I know she spends lots of time with her partner's daughter doing colouring in and is really interested in art in general. You can see other courses at Julie Gibbon's website (http://www.juliegibbons.com/).

As well as learning about mandalas, I have completed a couple more mixed media challenges.

Lotus Mandala

The finished mandala followed by the coloured in version. I found my brush markers too dark for this, but you can see the flower structure clearly.

Concentric Circle Mandala

This was fun to do and would work well with Zentangle patterns. I'm going to try more of these, but I need a better compass first!

Hamsa

Julie showed us a really good way to draw this symbol of the hand. I think an eye in the palm is usual and after that you can put whatever patterns you like. I tried to keep it simple. This was coloured with a new set of markers - a better range of colours, but the tips were not as nice.

Colour Me Positive Week 47 - Enthusiasm

I love this one, especially the image which I found in a BBC History magazine - the article was about nudists in Germany!! I started with Distress stain over a mask and then glued on the b & w image. Using one of my favourite techniques, I painted in the scenery surrounding the girl and extending out from the photo. I did some outlining in pen to highlight the boat & the girl before writing the words on the opposite page.

Journal 52 Week 47 - #ARTISTSFORLOVE

I also love this page and am very pleased with it. The base is yellow oxide with phthalo blue, some magenta and a little phthalo green on top. I used one of Julie Balzer's stencils (a 6x6 TCW with 4 faces on it) and wiped off paint with a baby wipe. I did the same using a heart stencil and then used gold paint to stencil some butterflies on the page.

In my enthusiasm, I forgot to gesso the page so tore a bit of the page off when I was wiping away paint. To cover this I just cut a heart shape from a magazine picture & glued it in place. Then I just had to write out the manifesto with a white paint pen.

I've had a great week or so - done some good (I think!) pages, learned about a new art type and had a nice visit with some cousins. The cleaning lady came today so the house is clean - all I need to do now is tidy up. Getting the house into shape has been a long process and is still continuing - but I'm hoping to have everything shipshape by new year.

Keep well and ciao for now.

Lots to catch up on

Well, since my last post I've been in hospital for an operation, had six weeks off work, gone back to work for three days a week instead of four, had my garden tidied up and found a cleaning lady. I've also completed lots of my mixed media challenges and signed up to "Let's Face It 2017".

I attended another cousin's funeral in September - very sudden heart attack, but on a brighter note, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I went to another cousin's 75th birthday celebration.

Fabulous day had by all. She is quite blind so another cousin organized a petting zoo where she could hold the baby animals, and a didgeridoo player who demonstrated various didjeridoos and explained about how they were made and how that made them sound. A very unusual birthday indeed!

So first of all, hospital - I had a cyst on one of my ovaries, or so they thought. Turns out it was attached to my uterus, so I ended up having a partial hysterectomy. That meant at least six weeks off work, particularly as my job involves some medium to heavy lifting. It also involves no heavy work around the house - no lifting, carrying or reaching up! As I live on my own that was hard because you can't do very much without lifting, carrying or reaching for things.

Luckily I have a very nice sister-in-law who took me grocery shopping each week and the hospital social worker organised a cleaner and bed-maker for me (mattresses are heavy). I got to sit or lie around for most of the day reading, watching telly or snoozing.

While I was off work, the other cataloguers split my work between them and E who I replaced, came back two days a week to do one library. This was good because it meant that I could ease my way back into work for three days a week, which I am still doing as I cannot decide if I want to go back to four days or stay on three (if I can manage money-wise).

The garden was done by one my co-worker's sons - he is a landscape gardener but makes "pocket money" doing weeding and trimming for family and friends. Luckily, I qualify as a friend and he put in a good days work clearing the weeds, the overgrown shrubbery and hauling away the mess. Next project, the little bit of garden next to my garage - body corporate property but I want a say in what gets planted!!

This last week, I have completed five pages for various challenges which I will post here. Anything else I will catch-up on in a separate post.

Colour Me Positive Week 44 - Laughter

I decided on a collage for this one because I have not done one since I finished the A-Z collages. I downloaded some images from the internet and found more in magazines. One page had some spray ink on the edge, so I decided to paint both of them first. That just meant I had to wait for the pages to dry!

Colour Me Positive Week 45 - Attitude

The base for this page is some leftover paint applied with a brayer. As one of the colours was Burnt Umber, it was a bit dark and too brown. I lightened it up with some stencils and then because it was still a bit brown, decided to use the technique where you paint over most of the page - a favourite of mine as it hides a multitude of sins.

I spent part of my recuperation re-reading J.D. Robb's "... in Death" series which I just love. I have them all and every few years, I start at number one and work my way through all the titles to date. The main character, Lt Eve Dallas has a favourite saying that I think expresses attitude with a capital A - Bite me!

Journal 52 Week 46 - Dear Leonard

The challenge posted this week was to honour Leonard Cohen who had passed away the previous week, but I am not such a huge fan. However, last week Leon Russell also passed way and being a big fan and a contrarian, I changed my challenge to Dear Leon. I listed to a CD in the car and chose the song "If It Wasn't For Bad", because I knew I had some really gothic images in a fashion magazine I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

Colour Collages - Green

Lastly, I finally completed the first of my colour collages which I first decided to do back in July when I researched names for various different colours. The palm leaf kicked off the green theme, then I just found images in my Royal Auto magazines - they just keep giving and giving.

It has been a very productive week - just as well, because I need to make up for the lack of productivity in the past couple of months.

Another post soon with the rest of the challenges done since my last blog posting.

Hope you are all happy and well - all the best for now.