My day and a new Hands AB page

It's been awhile since I got away from my Christmas tip-ins, but yesterday I just had to work in the yard because today (December 2) we're supposed to get a cold front and the possibility of snow.

As soon as it warmed enough to get outside (yes, Vicki, it had to warm to around 40 degrees F. for me to go outside), I was out raking and mulching and sweeping the driveway of thousands of leaves.


You can see I still have to sweep the leaves in the back of the drive and before I could even take the photo, some leaves from my neighbor's yard had already started to gather.

In fact, as I was getting ready to take this photo, a big gust brought these large leaves flying!! At least I got mine taken care of. Looks like I may have to pick up some of my neighbor's too!

Then it was off to the back yard, where I stacked my patio chairs, then brought my patio table umbrella and chiminea in for the winter.

Next it was on to take a sneak peek of something that you'll see in a few weeks. Enough said, but it was time to photograph it.

My next task was to "dye" some muslin. Not sure how it will turn out, but I totally forgot to photograph it. In fact, I forgot to bring it in. The last I saw it, it was dripping all over my back patio.

Around two, I was ready to do some art, although I was fairly tired. I decided to do a "smoosh and twist" background technique I presented awhile back as a tutorial. Follow the link and you'll see how it's done (and how absolutely easy it is).

Here I've added the first of the colors to one of the pages. I realized after I started smooshing, that I didn't have enough paint, but that didn't stop me. So, there wasn't as much smooshing as I would have liked and I ended up using my credit card to spread the sparce paint.

About that same time, I figured out how to use the camera. Awhile back, my friend Halle explained the little tulip and mountain to me when focusing. I mistakenly thought that anything relatively close used the tulip setting, but that is not the case, thus the photos I took of Patty's matchbox and lovely gifts looked like someone had the DTs when they took the photo. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this camera that Jackie sent me (a gift for teaching the AB class). Now that I can finally use it (one of the few things I can use with this new computer), I'm loving how nice the photos turn out. Click to enlarge them and you'll see what I mean.

Then there's my fabulous new scanner. It doesn't have a bigger scanning surface than the old one, but I tried to position these two pages (below) so I could get them both on one scan.

After I created the background, I cut the excess from the music sheets and tore them to size. I sewed the pieces to the background and made a hand from my tissue paper template I used in another spread. I have to admit, as great as this new scanner is, it doesn't do this spread justice. I used silver and gold paints, as well as some mica powders and metallic paint, so it's hard to see how great this turned out. I was simply tickled with the end result. It felt good to get back into the studio for a good portion of the day without pressures to make something in a few minutes to throw on my blog.

What's so funny is, Patty left a link on her latest blog post about the moon and the quote the blogger quoted was the one I reworded to fit my layout. The original quote was: “The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.” ~Frederic Lawrence Knowles
Now how coincidental is that?