In This Moment

Art in Your Pocket

I love making Artist Trading Cards and I am excited about an exhibition that our Art Society is holding at our local Gallery. Eight of us are each showing 12 of our Trading Cards and mine include some that I have swapped at Digital Art Quirks and also some with the Art Society members. One of my cards is included on the brochure and you can pick it out easily as it is upside down :( Well it was one of my Quirky swaps so I'm not too worried LOL. The opening will be fun as it is being held in conjunction with the annual `Biggest Morning Tea', raising money for cancer research. Everyone will be wearing decorated hats with a prize for the best and quirkiest and lots of yummy treats to eat. So it will be fun and a buzz to have some of my Art actually `hung' in a Gallery :) Probably for the first and last time.

Family

Last week Alan and I travelled interstate to attend my mother Doreen's funeral, She was 81 and it was her time to go; she had been living in a nursing care facility for some years, battling Dementia and none of us wanted to keep her here in this life which she could no longer enjoy. We hope now that she is with our Dad as they were so much in love all their married life. It was a beautiful service attended by friends and family and we all felt she would have fully approved of it - in fact maybe she did have a hand in it. Afterwards we had morning tea and later we all went out for lunch at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the sea at Terrigal. One of the best things was getting together with my family - my brother and sisters, nieces and nephews and uncles and aunts, I hope its not too long until I see them all again as they are just `the best'.


This is one of my favourite photos of Doreen, taken when she was 19, in Germany with the Navy and just loving life. In the Eulogy my family described her as being `passionate, creative and intelligent' and she certainly was all of those things.

As always at a gathering of our family we took the `group photo'. I love this one which really seems to show all our different personalities. If we all look pretty mellow, well we had just had a glass of wine or 2 with lunch and I think we all had that feeling that we had passed Mum's `final test' with flying colours.

Where did March Go??

March has flown but it was a lot of fun. We spent the first 2 weeks in Caloundra with Louise, Jeff, Tate and Abbey and we walked to the beach, went swimming, went to the markets, went out for breakfast one Sunday and just had fun being with family.

One morning Alan and I took Tate down to Moffat Beach for morning tea and a play in the park. Here you can see Alan and Tate watching the surf and having a deep and meaningful conversation.

On another morning we went out for Breakfast to a great restaurant called `Bucket and Spade'.

This is me cuddling Abbey, I think both of us had just woken up.

We were back home mid March but then our computer died - or the Graphics card did so we were off line for another week. Now we are kind of back to routine and we are enjoying the cooler weather. Wednesday this week we have to go back to Caloundra for Alan to see an eye specialist and I feel sure we will just have to call in and see Louise, Tate and Abbey on our way home :)

Being Creative

Most of the Art I make is done digitally but I also love making `mixed media' art and playing with collage, crayons and glue and a whole heap of other stuff. This is fun and really takes me back to being a kid again. Our Art Group always has a monthly Trading Card Swap and this year we have added an `altered book' Round Robin. To do this we all foraged around for an old book to `alter'. I found a book about dreams at an Op Shop for a couple of dollars. We will all start in our own book and then pass it on and receive another, create a double page spread and pass it on again. My theme is `Voyage of Discovery'. Altering books is so much fun. You can keep some of the text to create a new story, add your own artwork, cut out, paste, draw............ the possibilities are endless. I don't have a dedicated space to do this so I drag it all out onto the dining room table and set to.


I need music for inspiration so my iPod is part of the action. Here it looks like I am listening to Herman's Hermits - `There's a Kind of Hush'

On this day I was also assembling my Trading Cards, I made them digitally but they then have to be cut and glued.

Then I had to clean it all up and put it away :( I can't wait now to start on the book that's coming my way in March. At the end of the year at our `break up' we will have the big reveal and be able to peruse all the books together.

We have a new Granddaughter

Welcome to the world Abbey Fay. We arrived at the hospital about an hour before she was born and in this photo she is about 1 hour old. As you can see she is beautiful and she already has an adoring fan club. Abbey Fay weighed in at 6lbs exactly and was born at 4.00 pm. exactly on February 10. We are so proud of her beautiful Mum who was sitting up having a cup of tea and eating toast when we came in to meet Abbey. Her Dad assisted with the delivery and he is over the moon. Now we are all looking forward to more cuddles :)

A tour of my Creative Space

I have been interested reading in my sister Patti's Blog (`Welcome to my Universe' see my sidebar,) about how she finally decided to move her creative space to a more central position. I pretty much do only Digital Art and about a year ago I decided that I no longer wanted to hide away in a stuffy little spare room. So we bought a nice new desk with lots of drawer space and set the whole shebang up in our second living area right in the middle of the house. This area also houses my library of 5 bookshelves all along one wall and a huge squashy couch with lots of cushions for reading. The Television is in another room not too far away so I can hear it and pop my head around the corner if I want to. What I love as a confirmed neatnik is the total lack of mess. You can see that my desk holds 2 monitors, a scanner and a printer. My Wacom tablet which I use all the time is on a slide out tray underneath the keyboard. The chair has no arms so it tucks away neatly. Above the desk is a print of one of my favourite Artworks by Matisse. (This is the one Picasso bought, he loved it too and having seen the original I can understand why.) Alan turns the computer on at around 5.30 am when he gets up, he has a cup of tea and checks his Email. From then on we just leave it on all day even if we go out. From the chair we have a view of our garden out of 3 windows in different directions and we also get the benefit of the breezes. So its all good and inspiring.