Day 9 of NaNo...

Pretty cool, eh? ;)

36 hours in

and I've written 7,416 words, surprising even myself.

Yay!

2000 words and counting...

and I'm off on my NaNoWriMo adventure!

2002 words so far, to be precise.

Are they deathless prose? Gawd, no. In fact, I'd like to kill off paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6-22, and possibly 23-31.

But I won't. Because that's the point of NaNoWriMo - to write laughably awful prose together with nearly 90,000 others in the spirit of fun, encouragement, and "getting the darned thing down on paper" while pointing and laughing at our Inner Editors and scarfing enormous quantities of cookies.

I'm so excited I am almost giddy. Onward and upward, word count!

Where I've been, and what I've done

Terrifyingly enough, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month (which is actually the International Novel-Writing Month now).

During the month of November, nearly 80,000 participants from around the world, between the ages of 13 and ??, will attempt to write a 50,000 word first-draft novel. We have set quite a challenge for ourselves, but I think it will be GREAT fun - and the pressure to write "perfection" is off, since nobody in their right minds should actually think it will be anything but a working draft of our original idea.

Scary, fun, busy, exhilarating and utterly mad - and at 12:01 am on November 1st, it will all begin....

Watch this space for updates from the land of speed-writing insanity!

Making a house a home

I spent most of last week helping my daughter with a huge school project. She had to come up with "the house of my dreams" and had very definite plans on how that would look.

I used to love miniatures, so we dug up all my old supplies (and purchased a few more, some even on eBay!) and got to work.

Finished at 11:30 pm Sunday night (the poor tired little thing!) but I think it looks awesome!

Then, last night, it was my son's turn with those familiar words: "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM! Can you help me finish a project????"

ARGH! If I don't see duct tape and super glue for a while I will be VERY happy!!

I'm back!

Whew! I had a very busy Thanksgiving weekend, which included:

apple picking with the kids

dinner with my folks (just before their 2 week trip to the US west coast)

my daughter's soccer tryouts

a house visit (my landlady is selling - boo!)

a trip across town to watch an out-of-town friend's hockey game

a visit to the ophthalmologist to get my LAST eye treatment (yay!)

cooking an 11-lb turkey

a telephone job interview

3 visits to the post office for eBay stuff

putting all the documents together for my daughter's upcoming Grade 7 entrance exams

Reading that list, I got tired all over again.

Luckily, this week is a little more relaxed. Hopefully I'll have time to put a few more auctions up and MAKE SOME ART!

For now - was playing around in Museumr (thanks Kat! :)) and made this from our apple-picking afternoon on Friday.

Watch this space!

Finally putting up the rest of the watch parts for sale on eBay - whew! It's been a lot of work sorting through all the boxes, but I now know more about watches than I ever thought I would learn in this lifetime.

I've got one small toolbox and a box left... some nifty parts in little plastic containers, and some lovely "pre-antiqued" (teehee) watch faces in these lots.

Have a look at my auctions, and good luck!!

AFTER!

Here are the "after" pics. Sorry for the quality; I'm still figuring out how to use my new camera. I'm beginning to realize that "Kodak" is actually code for "does whatever the heck it wants and not what I ask".

I probably should have named my kids Kodak and Kodakette.

I used mulberry papers for the cover and a stamp by PSX. I blended the edges of the stamped paper with Pebbles chalks (I did a bit more since I took the pic) and added the bottle (Jolees) and a piece of actual driftwood from a log I dragged home from South Carolina about 10 years ago.

The inside lid has another sticker by Jolees - you can actually shake the frame and the pebbles and starfish cutouts move around - cool! The inside compartments have 2 stickers and a pretty striped rock, more driftwood, some seaglass, a vial with white sand (from a real beach in Aruba), and a shell. The watch face has a tiny spiral seashell in it - hard to see from the pic.

Hope you like it! I know I enjoyed making it very much. Have a great weekend!

Before and after

A few weeks ago, a friend's Dad (a watch collector and local flea market vendor) gave me eight huge boxes of stuff ("garbage", he said) that he had already gone through. They were from the estate of a local watchmaker who had passed away in his early 90s.

My son and I stayed up very late 2 nights in a row sorting through everything. A lot of it was indeed garbage, but I salvaged quite a lot of watch bands, parts, faces and other items that I've slowly been selling off on eBay.

And then... there were these little boxes.

Mostly cardboard and some with plastic inserts, like compartments, to hold all the tiny watchmaker parts. Many had scribbled markings, broken bits and probably 30 years' worth of discoloration on them.

These little boxes attracted me like crazy! I've always loved miniatures and immediately thought they would be so much fun to alter.

To go back a step: I had sent an ATC to a friend in BC as part of a non-art-group swap with a Beach theme. The envelope came back here a few weeks later, torn and sodden from sitting in my mailbox all day, and the ATC was ruined (didn't know bubble mailers could tear, did you? Neither did I.) Sadness ensued.

Well, when I saw these little boxes, I immediately thought: "AHA! I can REPLACE the damp ATC with something in a beach theme!" and the wheels started turning...

Last night I finally put it all together. Pics coming up - I just put a final coat of sealer on it and am waiting for it to dry. :)

What's on your art calendar for today?

It's a stamp! It's a duck! It's the Loch Ness Monster!?!

These are a couple of the oddest little stamps I've ever seen.

I'm not sure what those top ones are supposed to be - the image on the wooden side is gone, so I had to stamp them once just to see what I would get. I think they're meant to be "bonbons" or truffles - personally, I think the one on the right looks like a distant shot of the Loch Ness Monster, but YMMV.

And the half-scrolls on the right in Pic 2 definitely look like ducks. DEFINITELY. With some deft colouring you could have a LOT of fun with these!

Loch Ness bonbons: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230175184914&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Duck scrolls: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230175123583&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Dare to share!

I completed this ATC as my first experiment with Twinkling H2Os - once I saw the lovely shimmer they produce, I just HAD to have some! It really isn't as crooked as the scan makes it look, either. :(

I matted it in lovely deep cinnamon brown handmade paper and mailed it off to a dear friend in Alabama as part of a Secret Pal exchange I belong to (on a non-art board).

Off to try colouring my hair today... hopefully I get some of that "shimmer" myself. ;)

Tag! You're it!

Found this absolutely gorgeous tag-shaped rubber stamp in the discon bin at a small stamping store I visited for the first time today. Isn't it great? Of course, it's up on eBay... :)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230175127617&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

She WON!

My girl's team won their final 2-0 - guess who scored the winning goal? Yep, lil smiley-face with the dark hair... In the second pic is the team captain hoisting the plaque and trophy as League Champions for 2007!

I'm closing out a bunch of my eBay auctions today and expecting a furniture delivery today, so this entry is short and sweet. ;

Boot straps?

No, actually. These are watch straps (or bands, I should say) that I'm currently auctioning off on ebay.

Since my photog skills are still developing (I made a camera joke, hee) I thought I would try to take some 'macro' shots of one of my auctions. Jewelry photography is an art form, as I am quickly coming to realize, and good photographers probably don't get the credit they deserve.

This is the auction: http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230173129363&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=013

Everything in the first 2 pics is in this lot! The remaining 3 pics are some detail shots - you can see the stampings "genuine leather" on a number of these. Grab 'em while you can! ;)

Another gorgeous fall day, sunny, bright, and warm.

Today I drove my son to school along a stretch of lovely suburban road lined with tall, gnarled, old-growth maples. With the early-morning sun glinting off the top leaves (stained a fiery red with the recent cold snap) it's one of the prettiest sights in my neighbourhood. I'll have to get a pic of it when I'm not driving.

Today I need to start on a Halloween swap I'm in... I want to alter a little sectioned cardboard box I've set aside. The swap is for a family with a 3 year old girl, so I thought of putting in some shiny cute stickers in each of the sections... it's all percolating right now.

For today, here's my first little "shrine" or altered art matchbox.

My daughter is playing in her soccer final early tomorrow morning. Go Blizzards!!

Might help if I added in the auction link ... *grumble grumble*.... ;)

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZmomsie564

Good GAWD. ME, bloggin'. Will wonders never cease!

Single mommy, 2 of the world's best kidlets, and an irresistible feeling that life is one big ripe adventure for the picking... the rest is to be discovered. ;)

I've recently started selling on eBay - altered art stuff (mostly watch parts right now) so check it out!