Last week I went to Pickwick Society Tearoom with a friend and had a lovely lunch. We had a little table for two on a tiny porch, decorated with antiques. It's in Frankfort, IL (south-west suburbs of Chicago) and well worth a trip.
Last night I went with World Embroideries to dinner at Svago Cafe in Dyer, IN. Good food, good friends--can't get better than that!
Today a boss took several of us to lunch at Coco Pazo. Yum!
I'm gonna be rolling into next week!
Yesterday I got a treat in the mail. A while back I made these cards with ribbon (star, tree). I began with a kit and then got some cut-out blanks and thought, I'll find my own ribbons. Well, hmmm, it wasn't that easy.
I finally found the ribbons on Adele Scirotino's wonderful website and got some to finish making these cards (plus some extras, of course). Here they are. Check out Adele's costuming newsletters.
The only thing I've been working on in the evenings is the journal. I've put a new batch of pages up on Flickr. Here's one spread that I think is more or less finished.
It was an interesting exercise because I wrote my thoughts all over the two pages and then covered the writing with tape and paint (with some sanding, scraping and painting). It was a challenge to make myself bury and hide the journaling. Very much a process of letting go.
The silhouettes are from a photo of me that I used to make a stencil. It's used throughout the book. The one on the left is cut from duct tape. On the right it's a candy-bar wrapper. (definitely appropriate) I love the backgrounds. I'm not as sure of the overall designs.
The tapes I used were a bright blue tape made for covering edges while painting, silver duct tape, and inexpensive masking tape. Sometimes I used the whole width and sometimes I ripped it vertically for a rough edge. My paint palette is a burgundy, pine green, gunmetal metallic grey, and a golden yellow. The first three are very cheap discount store paints. The last is the good stuff (Golden Fluid Acrylic Quinacridone Azo Gold). I have similar colors in Sharpie pens, crayons, and stencil paints and use them all.
On the whole, I liked the torn masking tape the best and have used it in other places. The edges pick up the paints nicely and the tape doesn't quite cover the background so it adds depth where you can see what's underneath. The blue tape, however, develops some interesting textures as paints are layered on.
More on Flickr.
