Happy Birthday to ME

Yesterday was my birthday. With a party still to look forward to on Friday, this feels like my birthday week :D

Yesterday was fabulous. I have entered the fun forties. I say fun because that's how it feels. It's in contrast to when I turned 30, which seemed more ominous, a mark of no longer being twenty something. I even had the thought yesterday... I'm just 10 years away from being half a century old. How cool is that?? To think that in 10 years I will have been alive for half a century. Seems amazing.

Yesterday at work one of the teachers brought me balloons early in the morning. Black and turquoise and purple. I LOVED the colors, and the large one had all three colors with 40 in sparkly mylar. I dressed up, and wore my gold tiara. Kids all day wished my happy birthday. My class sang to me. Coworkers presented me with a card and collected money like we do for everyone in our grade level. My old kindergarten mentor came for the day, and taught my kids the story of the little red hen. It was just a great great day.

Last night B took me out Fogo de Chao, a brazilian meat / cowboy place. There is something highly decadent about the endless parade of men bringing fire-cooked meat to your table on huge skewers. Add to this 2 glasses of Macallan's 18 year old scotch, and I didn't think the evening could get any better. But it did.

When they brought the dessert menu, B looked through it and commented on how much the Louis Tres had gone up (Louis XIII cognac) in price. Apparently last year it was $109 an ounce, and now it was almost double that. This is a cognac that is over 100 years old, and the ultimate of all cognacs. Smooth and fragrant, light and heady. B said it was too bad it was so expensive, that he'd tried some 8 years earlier and it was amazing. He said he'd been planning on getting me some for my birthday, but now seeing the price he felt like a cheapskate.

This man is one of the most generous, smart, capable friends in my life. I in NO WAY would ever have put the label cheapskate with him, and told him so- noting all the things he was doing for my birthday (which I won't go into here). He's definitely not the frugal Scot that M is.

Then he said, "What the hell" and ordered an ounce. We shared it, and I could not get over how incredibly lucky I was. He said I deserved it, because not only could I appreciate it, I was a good person, spent my time helping others, and other great stuff that made me blush. I truly think he's the only person in my life that would say I deserved to try a cognac that cost $190 an ounce. Of course, I am probably spoiled now for all other cognacs.

The happy benefit of all that wonderful food and drink- I slept like a babe.

Goddess Series

I'm painting a series based on the goddess figure. I have two more "color backgrounds" done, one purple and one in red/black. These are on wood and measure about 15 inches by 13.

heArt Card

My heArt cards for Mother Henna's exchange are in the mail! I thought I'd post a peek at what they look like, and how they were created. The actual size is about 2 inches by 5 inches. My name is on the above for internet purposes only. The card set has my business card, signature, and numbering on back side.

I'd been experimenting with stamping. I couldn't find a "make your own stamp" kit at Michaels, so I started working with foam trays... the kind that meat comes on from the grocery store. I couldn't get the hang of writing letters backwards... they always came out looking awkward. Also, the best colorant used was watercolor markers.

At Michael's I did find craft foam sheets that come in all sizes and colors. I bought one, and decided I could make "stamps" from shapes cut out of the foam.

For the backing I used heavy watercolor type paper, and did a layer of gesso over it to better take the media I'd be using. Then I used Golden gel medium to glue dark blue papers to the backing.

Painting both a foam heart shape I made, and a goddess figure, I painted the papers with the "stamps" in gesso.
I got out my india ink brush pen and colored in the hearts.


Then I got out my acrylics, and colored in the goddess figure, adding white accents.

When everything was dry, I started to experiment with the words and how to decorate the figures.

I decided the best look was to "keep it simple". I glued the text on, then did a line of adhesive below the text. When that was dry, I "poofed" gold glitter onto the line.

Painting Golden Gel medium on the dark blue paper, I poofed purple and turquoise glitters onto it. When that was dry, I used adhesive to "paint" over the heart. Then I poofed red and pink glitters over that. After letting the design "sit" for a couple days, I knew I wanted another red heart in the lower right corner. That was Golden and poof glitter. A day later I used a spray fixative over all of them. A day after that I began cutting them out.

The interesting thing was my thought processes while making these. In one way, it was very soothing, like an artistic mantra done over and over. In another way, it was disconcerting when I heard the gremlins in my head disparaging the work in all sorts of ways.

Regardless of what they said, I like the final outcome.