It's been a wild one...

... in the house and in the studio this week.  Seems like the loosening of restrictions has brought a number of people to town.

With a visit from our daughter and grandson, to a friend from a long drive away, it's been exceptionally busy here.  The friend, Louise Olinger, was in town housesitting for a week, so we managed to play for two mornings in the studio.  Louise is an accomplished watercolourist, and her website is pure delight, with enough eye candy to keep one occupied for hours.   Louise' wish was to play with mixed media, so the glue cave got a great workout

as did the studio tables.  You can likely tell from the photos that she is a bundle of energy and great fun to play with!

We were so engrossed that I mostly forgot to take photos, and only managed this one of the bookmarks she was creating.

I did remember to take a shot of the tags I created - some hours after she left!  

As I was tidying up the studio in the aftermath, I found some suspicious things lurking about - not sure where they came from, but they are obviously in the works.

I do recall working on this, the fifth in the Line Dance series, as I work towards a final design for a larger piece.

And the dryer sheet paper somehow mysteriously collected an array of circles - pretty sure it was after midnight, because they didn't appear until the morning.

All in all, it was a colour-full week, and you know that's my favourite kind of time!  Happy week, my friends, and do catch me up on your doings in the comments!

Can you hear me cackling?

I've been in Mad Mixed Media Scientist mode this week.  For some time I've been wanting to test dryer sheets on wood panels with the same technique I've used for cheesecloth.  Here's one of the results, used on a painting background.  

It's luscious whether used over another colour, or on a white gessoed panel, don't you think?

And I finally managed to find a roll of Typar house wrap.  I've been on the last of my 100', seven-year-old roll, and knew I needed more.  When I scored some, I just had to whitewash it and then throw some alcohol ink at it, followed by stencil work.  While it's not done yet, I think it's looking pretty juicy already.

The closeups are even more fun... the grey house wrap gives a subtle textural look underneath all that colour.

Now there is a reason for the madness, of course.  I want to create a cover for the second Coptic book in process, and I'm all about the subtlety, right?  😄

The stack of signatures awaits the completion of the cover 'fabric', and with some beeswax to wax the thread, I'm definitely going to be in business.  

On another corner of the table, I've got a stack of toppers which have been created through Ruth's studio time.  Every time we had leftover mediums of any sort or unused paint, we threw it at a piece of canvas.  They're going to make fabulous cards for sale at her November show.

There are other projects on the go, of course, and a list as long as the taxman's reach of things I have yet to try.  Here's to experimentation, failures and successes!