I’ve just finished reserving a room in the west Portland area for the next meetup on June 4, 2008.

This is a working meetup. I’ve rented a room at the Conestoga Recreation & Aquatic Center in Beaverton, Oregon. I have room for 20 people. You must RSVP in order to attend the meetup.  I’m charging a small fee to cover the costs of the room rental, but the meetup is not for profit. I’m just trying to cover my costs of the rental.

View looking out from a platform in my yard

Most people know it rains a lot in Oregon.  It does.  I’ve lived in the Northwest for so long that it doesn’t bother me much.   I do remember coming to Oregon in the spring as a child.  I was amazed at how green everything looked.  Spring in Oregon is very beautiful.  May is a great time to get out and take photos.  If you paint or do any kind of art using photographs, now is a great time to get your camera out.

We have a large personal garden and orchard.  We do have quite a few apple trees that are in bloom right now. 

When we remodeled our house, all the soil along with a lot of bulbs was scooped up and placed in a pile about 20 feet away.  We’ve never sorted through the pile and dug out the bulbs.  It’s hard to mow or weed that area in the spring because something is always in bloom.  Right now we have hyacinth mixed with grass.

I don’t know much about mushrooms, but I have noticed a few things about the fungus around here.  Mushrooms seem to have a season.  We do get some mushrooms in the grass later on.  I found a big clump of mushrooms this morning growing at the base of a Poplar tree.

 Our front yard is full of nursery stock.  We didn’t plant them.  Nor do we maintain the trees.  In the spring, the company that owns the trees comes in to pull the ones they need.  Earlier this year they dug up a lot of the tall Deodora Cedar trees and few other cedars.  Many of trees are still pretty short.  The company’s contract ends in December.  I keep wondering if they’ll be able to pull all the trees by then.  I’ve been taking photos of them because it’s a great opportunity to get photos of a variety of evergreens.

If you’d like to see more nature photographs from around my house, click here.  They are on flickr.

I’m just getting ready to leave to visit my mother. She lives with my stepfather about an hour’s drive from us. As close as she lives, we still only see one another about 4 times per year.  It is her choice.  She is getting older and in the early stages of dementia.  She wants to make sure she retains her independence.  Having watched my grandmother go through the same thing, I want to make sure every time I see my mom that we have quality time. 

 It’s just me and my mom today.  I’m leaving my kids at home.  My stepfather will be putzing around the house.  When we used to live in the same town, I would fix waffles with strawberries for breakfast.  I think today we’ll go out to lunch and do some thrift store shopping.

It may not seem like much, but for me it’s what Mother’s Day is all about, just spending time with my mom to show her how much I appreciate her.

Have a Happy Mother’s Day.

Barney the Clown is a mixed media collage Artist Trading card (ATC).   He’s one of quite a few pieces I’ve been working on using the Anatomy man I received from one of my co-crafters, Marci.  I decided to turn Anatomy Man into a organ donor…and that’s only part of my story.

Here’s the real story.

Barney the Clown loved being a clown.  He started in the clowning business when he was a young lad of 16.  For 30 years he traveled from town to town with the Fantastico Circus.  The circus was a small family business.  In those 30 years the world changed and the family grew older and the kids left the circus business for high technologies jobs in Silicone Valley.  Barney suddenly found himself with no job, no home and no money.

The circus enterprise was not the only thing that changed in those 30 years.  At 16, Barney had a beautiful head of yellow-gold hair.  At 46, Barney had more nose hair than hair on his head.  Barney tried to get a job in show business, but everyone wanted a clown with a bright beautiful halo of hair.  Barney had a big problem.

That’s when Donor Man stepped in.  Donor Man donated a beautiful set of blue lungs to Barney.  The staff at Donor man quickly and safely transplanted the blue lungs to the sides of Barney’s head in an afternoon outpatient procedure. 

Barney now works 3 nights and one Sunday matinee for the Cirque de Jeunesse.  He now has a job, a fancy trailer in Las Vegas and enough money to play the slots and see the shows at Circus Circus on his days off.

Anyone can do mixed media collage.  Many people can put together a well-balanced piece of art.  No mixed media collage piece is complete until it has story.  Without a story the piece is just a bunch of diverse material attached to the same board.  With a story, your mixed media collage piece becomes a work of art.

Note: Here’s my blog entry that included Anatomy Man and a few other pieces I picked up in swaps, Altered Materials Swaps.

I decided to go ahead and list some lamp making kits in my Pink Paisley Polka Dots etsy shop.  I did start out with a lighting business that I decided to close down when a family member needed some extra attention.  I still make lamps now and then and I do have two youtube videos that briefly show how to construct your own lamp.

I have two kits one for candelabra style lamps and one for standard socket lamp. 

Below is the first video I made about using repurposed materials to make a lamp

Below is my second video showing how to turn a candle holder into a lamp

My mother paints with acrylics.  She’s always looking for reference photos.  She doesn’t have a digital camera or a way to print photos, so she’s always asking her children for reference photos.  My sister sent my mom home with a CD filled with photographs my sister took in Nevada.  My mom handed me the CD and asked me to print some of the photos.  I printed some of them and gave them to her at Christmas. 

With the photos in mind, I remembered that I was just given an index-type folder book (above) to alter.  I took out the book yesterday and began altering the cover with some beautiful red and gold floral fabric and  some yellow lace.

The button on the front cover is actually glued to a washer.  I punched a hole in the book with an awl and slid a washer and rivet on a small diameter bolt to form a shaft for the ribbon to go around.  I pushed the bolt through the book and screwed on the nut.  I glued on the button with E6000 and let the adhesive set up overnight.

I removed the elastic band closure by punching holes around the rivets holding the elastic band in place.  After covering the book in fabric, I glued and set rivets to both sides of the back cover.  I cut a yellow ribbon and threaded it through the grommets and tied it into a knot.

I covered the inside of the back cover with felt (before gluing in the grommet).  I also added some red scrapbook paper and some wallpaper to the front of the index folder.

Now the book is ready to fill with reference photos. 

I think my mom will enjoy getting a few more reference photos.  The presentation is pretty and she can keep her photos in the book until she’s ready to start painting.  I’m hoping this is a present she’ll truly enjoy.

Remember these?  Well after putting them down for a while, I decided to do my best to finish them.  I painted them and attached their wings.  Their wings do move a bit. 

A while ago I bought some wooden boxes/frames from someone I know.  I have no idea how they were supposed to be used, but I thought they would make nice bases for my birds.  For each bird I also made a polymer clay piece and painted it.  Finally, I added some pieces off of a swag I bought at an after Christmas sale.

The beaks on the birds were so large that I thought I would have fun with them.  I decided to make them into 3 different birds known for their vocal talents.

 The Western Meadowlark is the Oregon State bird.   Almost every time I see one of these guys, he has his mouth open singing away.  We have a few photos of the birds sitting on fence posts in the high deserts of Nevada.  I made him a polymer clay fence post top and planted some faux grass at the bottom.

I’ve never seen a Mockingbird in Oregon, but my father-in-law once said to me that he liked hearing Mockingbirds in California.  I decided to give my little bird a polymer clay branch with faux leaves and berries. 

 We have a lot of Scrub Jays that visit our yard daily.  We had a nest a couple years ago and they do visit our feeders.  I gave this Scrub Jay a polymer clay branch with some faux fir branches and pine cones.

I’m waiting for some of the adhesives to dry.  For the most part they are finished.  I’ll probably do a tiny bit of touch-up on them.

This week I received take home items from two swaps. One of the swaps was from a get together of local artists/crafters. The other swap was an online game piece swap I participated in through ZNE.

I went to a local get together with 5 other artist/crafters on Sunday.  One of the women, Marci, brought see-thru humans and little books.  The books have a small accordian file folder inside so you can store notes, photos and other small items.   I took a red one.  I took 2 of the human bodies.  I’ve already taken one of the bodies apart and I’m working on a few things. 

I hope to end up with some examples of found object art.  The items aren’t recycled, but they are found objects.  I will be reusing or repurposing the items to make a few new altered art objects.

The game pieces above are from the game piece swap.    I just received my pieces yesterday.  This will be a challenge for me.  I’m used to doing dimensional pieces.  I ended up with quite a bit of paper, so I may do some flat work.  I found some beautiful images that work well with some of the items above.

Well, I have plenty of new materials.  Today, I need to finish up the cloth folk birds I started a while back.  I’m almost done.  I’ll probably finish early today with the birds and start on some of the dolls.

We decided to get a couple of puppies for our girls.  We want to use one of them as a therapy dog.  I decided that cockapoos were the way to go.  They are smart and tend to be people-oriented.  Above is a picture of the our two new dogs, Honey and Dibbs.  They are 4 months old and sweet as can be.

Dibs is the chocolate and white boy and Honey is the white and buff girl. 

He’s very gentle and calm, but doesn’t like his picture taken.  She’s sweet, a little more active and loves to have her picture taken.  I took several photos, but only had hime actually sit still for one photo.  You can’t see his eyes in that photo.

I thought I would share some photos of our new family members.  I’ve been busy for the last week talking to breeders and sellers.  I finally picked out this male and female from the same breeder.  They are cousins.  They were 2 of 3 puppies left from a batch of 23 puppies.  They are incredibly calm and love to sit in their people’s lap.

I’m trying to get some work done between potty training.  Luckily puppies like to sleep hard after a good playing sessions

Today was beautiful and sunny.  The spring weather around here, northwest Oregon, has been a little cooler than usual.   Since it seemed like a waste to spend our time working around the house, we decided to take a small outing.   

The gas prices are so high that we decided to stick a little closer to home than usual.  We hadn’t spent much time exploring the Molalla area, so we decided to give the Molalla River State Park a look.  The Molalla River State Park is located near Canby, Oregon where the Willamette, Pudding and Molalla River meet.  The park is large and has an off leash area, so the park is a favorite of dog owners around the area. 

The river is high and fast flowing this time of year.  We couldn’t find a good spot in Molalla River State Park for the kids to play, so we headed towards Molalla and Dickie Prairie.  The river was very beautiful.  We saw quite a few people fishing.   The area wasn’t very crowded and there seemed to be plenty of fishing holes available.  We weren’t fishing, but we did spend some time on the beach skipping rocks.

We stopped on our way out to photograph some of the rapids. 

April is a great month for finding flowers.  The Trilliums were in bloom.  Below is some thumbnails of more trilliums.