Art Every Day!

I was reading Robin's Blog today and she was talking about making art every day. (Well, she quoted Teesha Moore saying it and then seconded it.) I had to thank her because I lose sight of that sometimes (like just recently) and I get all antsy and cranky and I don't know why...until I do a little art, and then it's like my whole body relaxes, you know?

I was on the Funky Finds blog today and saw mention of this gal's Etsy Store. Cute, cute, cute stuff!!! This is not a picture of what I bought. I can't show a picture of my purchase because I bought something for someone who's a regular visitor! Still, I'm tempted to go back and buy one of these, they're so adorable! And so is this:

She's also got some clay embellishments for halloween if you're interested!

So, on top of our moth problem (that is, hopefully, fixed now), on Saturday our dryer went out! Of course it goes out at a time when I've been avoiding doing laundry (we were busy!) and so had huge piles of it built up. So, I had to lug it all to the laundrymat. Or is it laundromat? Let's just call it a laundrette like they do in the UK. I love that name and it reminds me of the fab movie, My Beautiful Laundrette. I'll never forget how shocked I was to find that the geeky guy in A Room with a View was the punk in My Beautiful Laundrette. It took me at least half the movie to realize it. But I digress...do you know how much it costs at a coin-op laundry these days??? I guess I hadn't been to one since 1997. Yikes! $2.25 to wash and about 2.40 to dry - it cost me over $20 and I didn't bring the bedding! (I did that last night.) So that load with the Blankey was the last one I did at home, I would have done a lot more if I'd known. We're waiting on a part, hopefully this won't last long.

This is one of my early ATCs. I made it for a swap on the Yahoo Artist Trading Cards group. Its theme was "My Hometown" and the gist of this one is that it's represents a memory of my Great Grandma hanging out the laundry on the back porch and keeping an eye on the neighborhood. The shadowy figure is her and the child is me. The town is my actual hometown - Auburn, Washington - about 30 years before I was born. This is very, very early in my altered art education and I hadn't even heard of transparencies yet! So it's a little rough in spots. Still, I worked really hard on this swap, I made nine, different original cards to swap for 8. I didn't realize that people often made prints for these things. When I was done I loved them so much I wanted to keep them. I'd really put my heart into them. It was the first and last swap I ever did. Of the eight that I received only one was an orginal and no one seemed to have put a lot of thought into theirs. It was my first introduction to the "I've got 19 card albums filled with ATCs!" school of thought. To me, each one was a little work of art and the thought of them stuffed into a card album with 200 others made me cringe. I've loosened up on the cringing part (I think part of that was just shock), but I still feel that each one is special. If you would like to see the whole collection you can see it on the ZNE gallery I made for it here. I was going to put this one, below, on my blog for Illustration Friday's theme "Hero" but I forgot when I was posting and now there's a new topic.

That's my grandfather in his B-17 in England during WWII. You may recognize the picture of my Grandmother, I use it a lot - and that's my mom! He named his plane after my mom.

Right around the time I was finishing up the My Hometown swap is when I discovered ZNE. I was thrilled! I still am. What a great group of artists. The discussion boards and the Yahoo! Group are unvaryingly filled with kind, supportive, nice people with none of the silly fighting and grousing and mean-spiritedness that you sometimes find online. Every day I'm just happy to be a part of it.

Which brings me to my gratitude journal today. There's just one thing in it:

1. ZNE

Thank you all for being the great people you are. You've made my life richer and my world larger. I hope that I can return the favor in my small way. Thank you.