damn it and other doodles

i've been a doodling fool this month! i was sick of having these words crawling around in my notebook and just wanted them out. some are vintage artsyville pieces with new lettering jobs, some gestated (and others festered) for a few months until the right words fell into order, and others are fresh from the noggin. more are coming, and they will all be in the shop when it reopens (probably next week). will catch up on return visits soon -- i know i've been rotten about it lately and i'm sorry about that. wishing you all a great week!

six giraffes and a peep

on saturday my artsy pal bobbi clued me in to a giraffe parade over at funkytown (a little trading environment set up by one of our neighbors), so i high tailed it over there with the birdie girl before they disappeared. i couldn't bring myself to take one, so instead we filched a unicorn and a ball, and left behind one of my plumed pencils, part of our abstract adventure, and a something calling magnet in their places. then i walked downtown and found this lovely peep glued on the side of a building, and coincidentally, when i went to bobbi's blog this morning to get her link, i found that she had discovered some surprisingly similar ones lurking in an alley -- from which i can only guess that there were more. the thought that someone peeped the city this weekend gives me a kinda warm and fuzzy feeling on a cold and soggy monday morning.

eavesdropping again

i've been listening to others' conversations on the sly again. what can i say? it's addictive. here is a fresh round of eavesdroppings, flanked by another abstract adventure in progress and my little pencil friend from thereza. happy middle of the week to you!

branching out

yesterday morning i was looking for a crafty way out of yard work. when my kids walked by with their arms full of branches, i had my excuse! i took the sticks, slapped on some liquitex, let them dry, bound them with a piece of scrap paper from my abstract adventure, and now i am very happy with my artsy sticks. at first i thought i'd use them as wall hangers or curtain rods, but now i think i'll just prop them up in a corner to give the room a splash of color. quick, easy, and (mostly) free weekend fun!

abstract adventure

four posts in one week? i must be insane. this is because i took connie's 21 secrets abstract adventures workshop yesterday and had the urge to paint something huge right then with her fearless painting process; it could wait no longer. the storms were coming and the winds were feisty so i knew there wasn't much time. i rushed to fetch the kids and didn't even stop to look at a huge blowup sumo wrestler doll that was straddling two sides of 8th street downtown, much as i wanted to know what that was all about. we did not have time to get big watercolor pads, so i chopped up grocery bags, pieced them together quilt-style with masking tape into one huge sheet, and then, since we didn't have an easel that big, i taped the sucker to our deck, for otherwise it would have sailed away. i had a bunch of liquitex at hand so we grabbed some brushes and outdoors we went.

now kids are already fearless in wielding a paintbrush, and i had two of them working either end of this, so i had to split myself in two for this project -- one half to let loose on the paper, and the other to stand firm guard to make sure our house and garage did not become embattled in paint. sure enough i lost myself in one corner of the painting for long enough for our white garage door to get a bath in forest green, so i spent a half hour scrubbing it clean, finishing just before the storm arrived. we had the time of their lives painting this, but selfishly i cannot wait to get a few moments to do this project all alone, where i can get lost in my head and follow my intuition without consequence! thank you, connie -- i needed this!

over the river and through my mood

earlier this week i was in an unbreakably pissy mood, so i strapped on the walking shoes and went over the bra bridge to north lawrence (where we went on the tavern tour) and zigzagged up and down locust street. (is there any town in america that doesn't have a locust street?) parts dicey, parts industrial, and parts raw coolness, it is a quiet little stretch that is easy to fly past in a car, but it has much to offer and many mysteries to decipher for those who travel it by foot.



















i found fruit trucks, junkyards, trains, graffiti, funky metal sculptures, weeds, antiques, little stores both thriving and abandoned, and two restaurants -- both mexican -- right next door to each other. the enchilada platter at la tropicana ('the trop' to locals) did away with the rest of my angst, and i spent the trek back over the river thinking about the potential uses for this empty storefront (i think it's the old BoMo building): an art gallery? cafe? jewelry store? bookstore? if you could open any kind of shop, how would you use it?

just a mess

greetings from clutterville! in the corner of this all-out mess is a peep of a wedding menu i just finished lettering (a yummy process though i'm pretty sure i gained ten pounds from it), and i am desperately hoping to wrangle something else out of this desky disaster today, if only to clean it. i always feel better when my surroundings are neat and shipshape, but if i let my guard down for even a nanosecond, disorder naturally claims victory. even when i'm totally on top of my game, some sort of disarray arrives to balance out the order. desk clean? dirty clothes will explode out of the laundry room if i open the door. finances sharpened and bills paid? something rotten lurks in the fridge. art stuff organized? the car must be in a state of squalor. then there's the chaos unfolding around me. in the last few days i've found a calculator in my shoe, a stuffed animal on the roof, a one-pounder of pretzels on my jewelry dresser, and dying seedlings in the kitchen (4 year old fed them No More Tangles.) it all appears to be a wreck at the moment so the hell with it. i'm going out to lunch and i'll deal with it later. for now i will have to be just a mess.

jailbreak

it's been green for long enough i think i can dare to declare that spring has sprung! finally i am free to wander the streets, peep through shop windows, crawl through alleys, follow the trails of the sidewalk zombie and trespass in people's seedy and weedy yards in warmth and comfort. i missed the UFO summit last month, so i am sorry that i have nothing to report on that ;) but i am back to exploring the rest of little lawrence with zest and zeal. even funkytown is showing promising signs of revival. we are planning to head over there later this afternoon with an infusion of trinkets and maybe a doodle or two. viva spring!

like it or not

good morning and happy monday! i'm giving the artsyville facebook page another try and i plan to stick around for a while this time. i'm corralling my doodles into photo albums over there and will keep it refreshed with new goodies, links to my posts here and little giveaways now and then. i'd love it if you'd like it!