Making up for Lost Time

Hello all, just back from that crazy "real world" that everyone's talking about. Here are some of the pictures from the doggie playgroup that I have been taking Kai and Luca to. The regulars are a pair of Bernese Mountain Dogs , a pair of Great Danes and a few Lab mixes. There are new visitors each week, though...we had a dalmatian this week. She was the best behaved Dalmation I have ever met, bar NONE. My oldest and youngest son are in some of these pictures







Bonnie, the Blue Harlequin Great Dane, with Kai in the foreground and Luca in the background

















The youngest pets Gracie the Bernese Mountain Dog, while Daisy the mix sniffs him and Kai inserts herself into yet ANOTHER picture.












Max, the Bernese Mountain dog, attempting to show Kai who is boss (she had other ideas for him), Gracie and Luca in the back.












The oldest with Bonnie and Max













Clyde the black Great Dane, Bonnie and Max to the right.










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We have had an off again/on again empty house this summer. The youngest is in South Carolina visiting his Grandmother until August, the stepkids are going back and forth and my daughter has lots more important things to do than hang around here with the lot of us...so, of COURSE I'm getting loads and loads done with the empty house, right? Yeah, right. Actually, I have worked on trying out new multimedia and collage techniques, and I have 2 different altered books going, but sloooowly. I mean, glue pages one day, gesso the page the next day, paint the background the next day, paint another color the next day and so on...really drawing it out. Here is one of the altered books (a kid's boardbook I got in the dollar bin) with just backgrounds finished.





This is the cover background. It is covered with tissue paper and embellished with rub on transfers and fibers.

















For this background, I painted green leaves and painted clear resist over them, then when it was dry, I covered a handcarved stamp with gold resist and stamped the swirlies, then painted over the whole thing with purple lumiere. Basically testing whether the resist would..uh..resist.
















This background was primed with gesso, which I stamped into with a rubber stamp for texture. I painted with liquid acrylics, overpainted, then sprayed with alcohol. The faint design in the center is actually a clear packing tape transfer of an inkjet print. The design itself is some wacky Celtic/Mayan mandala thing. Only the black ink will transfer when you use an inkjet image.





Here is the Youngest visiting Folley Beach in SC with his Cousin, Nina. This is his first exposure to the ocean...after being born on the eastern seaboard, moving to the western and back to the eastern. Yeah, we make it out of our house a lot.

So that's it...I'm so proud to have "Outdoor" pictures for a change!