My creative space

A longer than anticipated visit to Bunnings on the weekend saw me come out with a stack of paint chips. I spray painted the back of them silver and they've been turned into bunting for our tree.

It's been a bit of a crazy week with plenty of pre-christmas cheer already. Wednesday was Japanese with old training buddies, last night was Rockwiz filming and tonight we're off to our second Cafe Vue cocktail night experience. Phew, there's been little time for much else. I have however had time to go nuts with the scalloped edge punch!

Paper planes

I just know the engineer in Mr T will like these paper plane ornaments for our tree. I've used the colours & circle shapes from the advent tags. They're to go with the simple garland and will make up the contents of one of the first advent jars.

Creative Space

It's a snowstorm of floss and round white stickers. This week I've been working on simple paper decorations and ornaments for our tree (read: a bunch of decorative sticks). I know, know, know it's early for Christmas, I'm just trying to get organised, because come December 1 Mr T's advent calendar comes into play. One of the first jars will be filled with decorations to adorn our "tree" so we can get into the festive spirit. I came across the idea last year and was drawn to the simplicity.

Visit Kirsty and a slew of creative spaces.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's a good thing Mr T doesn't pop by here. These are the tags for his advent calendar. I thought about sewing one, but really I wanted to make use of things we already have. The quilted mason jars I ordered for my party as extra drinking glasses will do nicely. I'll fill them with a small gift/trinket/in-joke/activity/or map to bigger present that doesn't fit in a 375mL jar. My Christmas shopping is well underway!

Sketch Saturday

Phew, it's been a busy week. Dinner with the Girls, Tuesday, involving a horrifying incident of meat in a supposed vegetarian dish. Many find this rather amusing!
Wednesday night was all about the Microbrewery showcase at Fed Square. New beers were tasted, we rather enjoyed the Hawthorn Pale Ale. Helped by the fact that the boys behind the stand looked after us.
And Thursday night saw my little theatre group attend When the Rain Stops Falling at the MTC which wasn't a particularly uplifting way to end the week.

All this left no time to attend botanical illustration class. I did however have plenty of time last weekend to work on something. It feels more finished than my tomato, I'm happy with the colour, but I still feel it lacks depth or the correct shading to really define its form. Baby steps. Oh, it's a pear, but hopefully you can tell.

Wrapt

I love the simplicity of brown paper wrapping and dressing it up with a little something. I have a whole lot of circle scraps left over from the paper flags as you can imagine, so I sewed some of them together to create a mini garland. Trialled it on the Golden child's present and now I figure I have my Christmas wrapping sorted.

Fear is a Forest

I got the idea for this little piece as I was driving home from art class a few weeks ago. I heard an interview on the radio where the musician (I thought it was Sarah Blasko, but it might have been Jen Cloher) mentioned 'fear is like a forest', I can't remember the exact context I think she may have seen a painting with that title. Whatever the case, it stuck with me for some reason, probably because I was (still am?) struggling with the fear of a blank canvas.

And I finally I put it in a frame, now I'm just playing with where to put it.

Oh and there's another thing I get to cross off my list of '9 things in 09'. I went to the dentist today, for the first time in years. It wasn't that bad and now my teeth look so much better. And now I'm going to share the keyword of the day. Floss. Your teeth will thank you.

Sketch Saturday

Art class this week involved life drawing. It was liberating from a drawing perspective! We did a series of 1-2 min warm ups and then got into some longer held poses. I'm used to working quite small so it was refreshing to work almost life size. I surprised myself by actually enjoying the use of charcoal.

Sweet Sake

Last night the Rosie family + partners went to Ichi Ni Izakaya to catch up with Dad before he heads OS for business. The place will be packed out come summer, the food is good and there's a lot of outdoor seating where you could watch the sun set over the bay and happily put away a few Asahi's or in my case Mango Shu. Flavoured Japanese sake. Sure it was sweet, but even sweeter was the little glass it comes in! Once the label is off, it'll make a great little vase.

Once we were home I couldn't help but fold some paper cranes. I'm hoping they'll be incorporated into a little art project I'm working on for our walls.

Sketch Saturday

I have no doubt I'm not the only one, putting pen or pencil to paper scares the living daylights out of me. I can't begin to express why. It's time for change. Saturday will become a 'showcase' of lines (straight or otherwise) on paper. As a mini win over the fear, I do like the feel of the Staedtler fine permanent markers on smooth paper.