ALtErNaTiVe eggs.....AND IT'S MY 2ND BLOGIVERSARY!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEW! It's pastel HELL time again!!!! I shant go into another Easter Rant again this year.....I promise. This weekend is our Spring celebration here in Still Under 2 Feet of Snow, Alaska. Always a weird thing trying to honor Spring when the world outside is covered in cold white and MUD.....bare trees and grey skies. We're in that yearly bummer of a phase where the snow is both melty and icy hard, depending on the time of day, so you can't really ski, snowshoe or sled anymore (as evidenced in this video of me trying to ski on hard icy snow):

.....but you can't hike on the trails and enjoy the ridges yet, either. For the past few weeks I have perused blogs teaming with burgeoning spring! Sunny photos of kids, sans coat and hat, outside soaking up the freshness! Things have been quiet here in that respect....still, but with a stirring below that will eventually enfold in all it's fecund GLORY!!!! Oh, YEAH it will!!! But it will be awhile...~sigh....

In the meantime we've engaged in our usual Bring IN the Spring activities.....forcing willow branches inside, starting some seeds for the butterfly garden, making a gourd birdhouse, etc. And now, we are on to the eggs. Lo will be playing hooky from school today so we can do our eggs and other Springy things. I've tried to keep Lo out of the Easter Schmunsky isles at the grocery store so that she won't catch a glimpse off all those cheesy PAAS coloring kits! Glitter, Disney characters....and that nasty "tie-dye" one. Ever notice how STICKY the PAAS "tie-dye" eggs come out?! INSTANT pet fur and lint magnets....

Since my head has been in such a PAINTING space lately-I've been gettin' CRUNK on canvas for 2 months now!!!!- I thought it would be fun to incorporate a little of that in this year's Just Say NO to PAAS egg decorating.

This year, we decided to decorate eggs that would last for future Spring decor and celebration. We created our own mini egg canvases......on which to embellish in many ways. I bought some cheap fake decorative eggs from Micheal's (you can also use plastic Easter basket eggs), and gessoed them white just like you would prime a canvas for painting. From here we experimented with both acrylic paint and fibers- silk, wool and cheese cloth.

Here's what you'll need:

plastic eggs

sand paper

white gesso

paintbrush

various types of fibers

glossy Mod Podge

Here is our process:

1. Use sandpaper to lightly sand the surface of your egg-just enough to cover the egg in sandpaper scratches. This will provide "tooth" for your gesso to adhere to.

2. Apply 2 coats of gesso to your egg. Let the first coat dry before adding the next.

3. Take your wool or silk fibers(for mine I used wool roving and silk pulled from hand spun silk yarn) and gently pull the fibers away from each other.

4. Cover you egg with a coat of Mod Podge and place pulled fibers on the egg.

5. Gently paint on more Mod Podge and use your brush to manipulate the fibers where you would like them to be placed.

6. You can also keep your egg canvas white and paint it in what ever style you like with acrylic or watercolor paint.

7. Let dry...and display!!!

And what's THIS?!?!? A poor lost dinosaur egg! HOW did it get there with the other Spring eggs?!??!

A quick and easy tutorial on how to make Dino eggs will have to wait until next week! Plus, I have a bit to say about this 2 yr blogiversary....

MERRY SPRING!!!!

The Making of COSMIC JERRY

It was Huz's Birthday last week and I painted him a groovy portrait of Jerry Garcia. He doesn't often get to see my painting in action so I made a video of the whole process...

Artist Trading Cards with kids

So I've joined 2 fun NING art sites. NING = a place where one can build or join a particular social network. Artists Gary Reef and Jared Knight each a run a fun and engaging site. You can find links to these sites on the top of my sidebar. These 2 artist's networks are a great place for displaying, viewing and discussing artwork, watching videos and tutorials, and socializing with other like-mindeds. I suggested At JaredKnight.ning.com that we do an Artist Trading Card swap which is now underway. On Wednesday Jared proposed we also start a swap for the kids. Lo was thrilled at the prospect of not only making these fun little cards but also sending them off and receiving some back from kids around the world. She has enjoyed some of the guy's crazy videos as well and thought it would be fun to make our own. So I stuck the camera on the tripod and we went to work. Here's the goofiness that ensued....and my lame attempt at editing. Dea joined in the fun as well and made a few cool cards of her own. Head on over to Jared's NING site to get your kiddos involved in this ATC trade! Adult kids can participate, too!

Works In Progress

rEVOLUTION within

rEVOL(ve)UTION

I'm on fire folks. An awakening on some etheric level. As I said in my last post, I have sudden surge of ideas flowing in....a million tiny seeds of creation germinating...taking root, infiltrating my mind... I'm seeing, feeling, experiencing everything via a pallet and paints and an open canvas...through the viewfinder of my camera, and how my inner world will display on my laptop's screen. I want to take these pieces of....life....and synthesize, deconstruct, reassemble and express. I have my own paradigms and schematics of the soul that I want to articulate through these mediums-a longing that has always been a constant in my life. I'm bathing in and evolving from the works I see from so many talented creators through both the cyber and the real.

With my birthday-and Santa-came new photog equipment: New camera, new laptop, photo editing software to get acquainted with, awesome photo books to devour....as well as a suddenly rekindled desire to paint after a 2 year hiatus. Winning a $100 gift card to Blaine's Art Supply at the NYL Auction Dinner really helped-new colors and fun mediums! Oh, and then there's all those websites and blogs devoted to art, photography, and journaling that have really gotten my juices flowing. Sites that challenge one to a daily , weekly, monthly artistic PROMPT. Here are some I'd like to take on and share here: A Year In The Life, Inspire Me Thursday, Your Life Spelled Out..... so many more.

I need that type of discipline/commitment to hold me in the now. I don't want to loose this new sight, this new drive and passion. I desperately do not want this to slip through my fingers back into the routine. But how to keep hold of this, to compartmentalize it into my life of mommy, wife, massage therapist and keeper of the home? How to tighten up and improve on what I already do in order to allow more creating in? ...How I'm longing for some space. Physical space, to be exact. Enough to hold all my stuff of creation, with room to move, to trash, to explore, to not care where the paint flies...the floor...the ceiling... It's a challenge to keep all this in check while painting in my kitchen! Maybe, someday, a used yurt connected to the house. With an old woodstove and access to the hose. More ROOM where my canvases, as well as my imagination, can become larger, expand farther........ journeying the astral.....