Four sides of a planter I made for one of my besties a couple of weeks ago. She LOVES plants and she was on vacation so we got to spend a couple of days together. The weather was excellent so we spent most of our time together hiking which is one of our favorite things to do and has been over the years. When we were teens we hiked the woods around our homes. When we were adults we took our daughters hiking with us. Then she moved an hour and a half away when she got married to her current husband in 2007 and our full-time careers and lives got in the way. Now that I'm semi-retired, it makes meeting up with her so much easier when she has some vacation days! So, we had some spider plant babies, and I made this quick planter for her with a recycled juice jug and did a mixed media collage over the top. I tied it off with some green & tan raffia. I love how it turned out and I love recycled crafts in general so will try a few more of these out in the future with different finishes to see what holds out the best so I can maybe sell them down the road. For a first try, I love how this turned out though! It was rather on a whim, so I didn't do all the layers I would have liked to do (I do more layers in my art journal) but I didn't have the luxury of letting all the layers dry, but still, I'm pretty pleased. And my Jenners liked it, so that's all that counts.
I'm also on to my next art project which is a 4.5" x 4/5" handmade art journal which will have short poetry compositions in it--possibly all haiku or tanka, but I've barely gotten layer 1 complete, so I'd like to get more of the art complete to see how much room I'll have for words before I make that decision. It's also mixed media collage, which is where I'm in my happy place right now, so I'm sticking there for the time being. It's also a recycled/repurposed art project and so far I've used old cereal boxes, an old dryer sheet, napkin and I'm about to apply some texture with a frayed kitchen scrubby.
I'm getting kind of wiped out, so art is helping me zen out and recover a little from all the other activity lately. We saw Vanilla Fudge near St. Louis last weekend. They were meh. More washed up 80s band than awesome late 60s band (their songs that I loved were from their late 60s psych era) so I was a bit disappointed in their performance, but they still put on a good show and we had fun in the cute little town they played in. Next weekend we'll see Grand Funk Railroad in St. Louis which WILL be a great show, as we have seen them dozens of times, last time being last year at French Lick, Indiana. We plan to spend a bit of time in St. Louis too, so our neighbor will watch our puppy boys & kittens for us while we're away.
I'm wiped out because we have joined the predictable set of newly semi-retirees in that we discovered pickleball. It's gentler than racquetball by far, and even gentler than tennis because the court is shorter so there is less running around and the ball is slower because it's basically a wiffle ball. We are also taking martial arts lessons together. For me, it's all about self-defense and also some cross training for walking, dance and fitness. For my husband, it's about reliving one of his old passions. He's a 2nd degree black belt from another lifetime ago, so our skillset is vastly different, as I have very little martial arts in my background. What I do have that he doesn't is yoga & gymnastics in my background so a bit more flexibility. We're taking martial arts together twice a week and he's going once a week solo for extra training. On his extra day, it's my art and writing day, so I'm letting him go for some extra combat training that I'm not as interested in.
I will try to get more disciplined about posting. I hope to utilize Wednesdays for stuff like that but my Wednesdays are starting to really fill up now, so I need to figure out a new schedule I can work with!! So, until then, I may try to at least get some filler posts launched once a week on say a Saturday--about something I'm working on and hopefully augment that with a slice of life post on Wednesdays. That is my goal for this week. I'll take it one week at a time.
Happy 4th of July for my American friends. Happy belated Canada Day to my friends up north. To the rest of the world--enjoy the new week!!
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