Curiosities&Reveries

Summer of Color: Green

2011-06-26T19:24:00.003-04:00

Green is one of my friends favorite colors, and I had yet to do a piece for her. On top of that, she went away for business so I was super missing her. Inspiration came pretty easy for this one.

She loves owls. But I didn't just want to make cute owls. So I made owls that represent her and her hubby. It's hard to see in the picture, but the girl owl, has a little gem on her nose. My friends nose is pierced. Her husband has this crazy hair and wears glasses. So, it's not too over the top that it's not half person/owl. Just little touches of each of them.

The second picture is intended to be a close up of the actual owls, I'm not sure how well I actually achieved that, haha.

She's back in town so I'm going to be giving this to them tonight, I hope they love it as much as I have loved creating it.

Xo,

Michelle

p.s. Since I went with Nipples as the unofficial title for my last piece, I think it's only appropriate that I call this Hooters : )

Lightning Strike

2011-06-24T03:18:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, mother nature decided to send us a storm, and more directly a lightning strike directly to our apartment which took out both the electric and the internet.

Our electric company resolved the issue within a couple of hours. Somehow though, the lightning managed to go through our surge protectors and kill our modem. Which was fine, since we tend to have to replace our modems regularly since they are really Motorola doorstops dressed up as modems (something that the internet provider will even admit to, and to which I say “seriously?! Then why not just give people the other modem you keep in stock!?).

And to this point, we were given a brand new Motorola “modem” since we didn’t want to wait for 2 days to get some guy to come over to hand us a modem, we went directly to the store. The brand new modem was… yep… broken.

Which meant a 2 hour phone call with tier 1,2, and 3 customer care to determine that the modem was broken. Now, let me back up here. My dad did networking for years. I know my way around computers. So, the conversation essentially went something like this:

“Hello, I’d like to know why I was given a brand new broken modem?”

“Have you tried plugging it in? We’re not getting a signal from the modem”

“That’s because it’s broken”

Rinse and repeat.

So, the next day my husband went back to the store to get another modem and refused any attempt to be given the Motorola. And, as predicted, the modem worked. However…

When we finally got a connection, we realized that the surge protector had not only failed to save the modem, but also fried our onboard network adapters. (I should mention that this is two different surge protectors on two different pc’s)

We managed to scrounge up a wireless adapter and borrow an old network card, which has gotten us back online. But, seriously?!

Xo,

Michelle

Summer of Color: Blue

2011-06-18T15:33:00.003-04:00

Last night I admitted temporary defeat on my original piece and just did a blue page in one of my journals. Neither one feels like a success, but my canvas piece is fighting me every step of the way, and we’ll be done with this whole thing before I get it looking right.

I've come to the conclusion that art journals are hard for me to use. Since they are a lot more delicate than canvas or wood, and I don't have a gentle touch, I always worry that the page will be pulp by the time I'm done. And also, to add anything 3d embellishment wise, how the heck do you close the book? Perhaps some of you art journalers can give me some advice on this. (I will say that my art journal is a watercolor journal and has pretty heavy paper, and I gesso it)

This is my canvas piece, it's much bluer then it looks. For now, she is lovingly referred to as nipples. When I do a piece it will usually come from a thought or idea, and then I play around to express that. I had started this piece when I unintentionally fell across the song "Creep" by Radiohead which I fell in love with all over again, as it was one of my favorite songs that got buried in the years of weird pop music.

These lyrics in particular:
"I don't care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul "

I'll re-post her when she's done.

Xo,
Michelle

Life 101.

2011-06-17T02:02:00.000-04:00

I had started around 10 blog posts between now and the last time I posted. And before I could finish one, something would inevitably happen that would prevent me from completing the post and when I would come back to my computer, everything I had written seemed so irrelevant.

So since my last post:

I have completely cut ties from my parents and as posted previously dropped out of school. The school thing was going to happen regardless, but being completely cut off from my family has never. ever. ever. happened before. No calls, no e-mails, nothing. As you can imagine, there is a certain amount of pain going on with this whole situation. Though, I find it mostly peculiar.

Which brought me to an even more peculiar situation which involved me talking to my mother in law for an extended period of time, and then being mostly convinced to move to the UK. It is now something that is under serious consideration. While it wouldn’t be anything we could do within the next 6 months, and more likely a year, it has become something that was never a possibility (rain, weird accents, rain,) to a rather dreamy possibility.

My husband found a job, a few actually. One he’s currently working. We talked to our landlord and things are just fine. So, we’re not going to be homeless and our finical situation while not completely sorted out is so much better. In a couple months, everything will be fixed and that is a huge relief.

I am looking into working part time where my husband is working. They need some help on a couple days and the manager is pretty amazing. So, hopefully on those days I can grab the hours and help out.

I haven’t officially looked into finical aide to continue my education, but plan to look into that for the fall. I really want to finish my degree. Even if we decide to move across the pond, I love what I am learning.

In terms of my day to day life, it’s been ups and downs. So, I’ve spent days trying to do art (for the summer of color event) and having the worst time. Creativity isn’t happening for me very easily right now. I’ve gotten my ears pierced (this was while my parents and I were still talking and based on a bet that I wouldn’t be able to pass my spring math class) and got feathers put in my hair. They are adorable and I’ll put pictures up as soon as I can. It’s just been so indescribably crazy, but I am blessed in many ways.

I have the most amazing, creative, passionate, supportive kind husband.

We have the most loveable and charming fur babies.

My friends are beyond words, my angels.

I have a home.

I have food.

I have laughter despite the tears.

Xo,

Michelle

The Summer of Color (Oh, Kristin)

2011-06-07T00:58:00.001-04:00

Kristin over at Twinkle, Twinkle officially launched her summer of color event! And our first non mandatory task is to talk about what we plan to do during the event.

I’ve decided to paint my entire body blue and then to express myself in interpretive dance to the classic tune “Blue River” by Sophie Tucker.

I kid. I can barely come up with a definitive plan for an hour from now. I’m a woman, Kristin!

So, I have no idea what will sneak out of my noodle.

Xo,

Michelle

I art for serenity.

2011-06-05T22:13:00.003-04:00

So I was beginning to look like Mr. Dimartino from Daria.

(I even have the whole one bloodshot eye thing going)

I realized that I have avoiding art for lack of inspiration. Something that is generally not difficult for me to find, and decided to tackle Tam’s challenge for May. I’ve been eagerly awaiting Kristin to kick off the Summer of Color event, but since that’s not till tomorrow (click the link on my sidebar, cause it’s going to be awesome!) The theme for May was friendship.

Now, I am not sure, in retrospect, if doing a painting of my cats is actually some kind of sign that I’ve actually crossed the threshold of enjoying the company of my feline companions more than humans. Or perhaps the concept of friendship itself has just become too broad (or something) for me to be able to assign it to a particular individual.

However, I really enjoyed getting lost in making something.

What do you get lost in?

Xo,

Michelle

I might be homeless, but at least I like my blog design.

2011-06-04T04:39:00.001-04:00

So part of my master plan was to create a fantastic blog to restart my creative self. I didn’t realize that I could just re-title my old blog, revamp it and you know… be fantastic.

This might have been lost on me while spending my fair share of the past 6 months working on math (which I believe was invented by the devil) and worrying about my future. Being a victim of the economy, married to man who cannot get a job, and receiving daily phone calls from my parents serving daily reminders that as of June 1^st we are officially cut off.

So the past couple of weeks, I’ve either been catatonic or angry. I’m pretty much counting on getting an ulcer. My husband, my dear sweet husband, is on the warpath with submitting applications. Though, I’ve come to the conclusion that, being educated, certified and a hard worker is like a black curse if you happen to be non-American (Yes, he does have a green card). But he’s from England. It’s not like he’s from –insert non speaking English country here-. And I get it, we live in Ohio. But he’s not from –insert country which local racist rednecks believe is the source of all terrorism-.

Our rent is due in two days, which we don’t have. Our Nazi landlord (who repairs everything with duck tape) is going to make the decision to renew our lease or not this month. I am assuming not, since we’ll be late paying rent (if only by a couple days) and is considered a deadly sin (though to be fair, he does have to worry about his duct tape budget).

School will officially be over in a week, and there is almost a comedic value to the fact that I’ve spent so much time learning material that I will never use, considering we can’t afford college and my college fund has suddenly become a vacation package. Which is totally acceptable, it would have just been nice to be aware of this more than 2 weeks before the next quarter begins and after 9 months of effort.

But my blog looks good, no?

Xo,

Michelle