Author: Clare at CatsEatDogs

Weekly Photos 41/52

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1. I painted some loose flowers in my atlas sketchbook. 2. This scarf was an estate sale find and it is a beauty. 3. This frilly funghi appeared one morning this week. 4. Some leaves are turning into their autumnal colours. 5. We spotted a few turtles in the woods this weekend. 6. Many tickets for the Middle School annual chill cook off. 7. These plants appeared on the trail this weekend, they are not there now, so I hope they all went to good homes and that the bucket was left! 8. My youngest has been searching for bottles in the woods all weekend and he has found some very cool bottles from yesteryear. Isn’t it amazing how they are still sitting around 40 and 50 years later?  So now we are researching our finds using the interwebs. Have a great week!  Happy Monday x  

Paint and Ink in my Art Journal.

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It is week two in the Season of Dreams from the Get Messy Art Journal community and as well as prompt ideas, we have some great tutorials. I often mix ink and paint, but these pages use two different ideas which I interpreted using  acrylic with ink pen and watercolor with a Micron Pigma pen. The first page was a deliberate attempt to finger paint flower shaped images with acrylic paints and when it dried I went into nearly every ‘flower’ with a nib pen and ink to add lots of flowery detail. I approached the second page quite differently, the base layer is a very loose array of watercolour blobs in a minimal colour choice.  Once the colour dried I looked into the images in front of me and pulled out any creatures I could imagine.  I used the colour and the negative space to find lots of imaginary dream-like beings. When I was splashing colour around the page, I was not at all sure what I would find to draw, if anything at …

What do I want to do when I grow up…

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My teen has a field trip to a career fair this month and it is not the first he has been to, they are very keen on careers and knowing what you want to do when you grow up in this country. Blimey, I am not sure I know what I want to do when I grow up even now, maybe I need to go to a career fair! I do remember talking to the career advisor at school and getting a print out (on green striped paper with holes down either side) of possible vocations. Milliner was top of my list along with lots of other options I can’t remember. Pretty specific, milliner.  I am not a hat maker, but I am fully submerged in the art, making and creative aspect of my world. What about a money making choice though? I would like to follow a path into the world of art and illustrating, maybe stationary, postcards and colouring sheets.  I like to write about all kinds of creativity, doing it, finding it …

Weekly Photos 40/52

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1. There was a gaggle of these mushrooms along the trail this week, they were hidden away in the bushes, but I spotted the bright orange and reached in for a snap. 2. Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken on route 66. 3. A Hardware store with the painted sign on the wall. 4. Pizza night was a success!  Bread dough is like magic! 5-7. Halloween decorations came out this past weekend. Have a lovely week, happy Monday x

Get Messy Art Journal Pages. Season of Dreams. Week 1.

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Do you remember your dreams? Do you write them down? How about dreaming in colour? I sometimes remember them but only very vaguely, unless I write them down (often at ridiculous times in the morning). When I write them down I tend to remember more as I write and end up with a garbled page or two of a dream. Then I go back to sleep and try and make sense of my sleep writing when I get up in the morning when more often than not, I have written more than I would have remembered had I not snatched up my notebook at 2am. The Season of Dreams started this week in the Get Messy Art Journal community. Getting creative in my art journal was not an easy task, the blank page and the blank mind almost stopped me from making any pages at all.  So I decided to look at my dream notes and grab some paints as one of my dreams was full of colours which I had written down. I usually …

Art Supplies from Estate Sales.

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  Oftentimes I will get books from sales to draw in or print on the pages. I like to use old books or their pages in my journals or as a sketchbook. The giant,out of date ‘Britannica Atlas’ is going to be a big art journal. The map pages have such beautiful colours and even the print pages are great, full of columns of text. The blue book is a ’20th Century Typewriting Complete Course’ which I may use as a sketchbook or I might use the individual pages to print on or draw on and add to my art journal. The previous owner has added lots of their own notes to the pages, so that is pretty cool. I don’t often see specific supplies at yard or estate sales, so I was very pleased to spot the canvases and the masonite board at an estate sale less than a mile from my house.  I have to say that I have no clue what to do with masonite, but I heard Ali Cavanagh talk about …

Weekly Photos 39/52

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1. The acorns are dropping all over the woodland floor and the squirrels are gathering them for their winter larders. 2. I wonder what all these tags mean on the telegraph poles? 3. I made a chicken pie this week and I had to snap a photo of the nicely risen pastry before it flopped! 4. I played with ink and flowers this week, working on some coloring sheets. 5. Letters in a local antique store. 6. These amazing eyes were in the same shop.  They were huge and super cool! 7. It looked like it was going to rain all day but it didn’t, we got some great clouds though! 8. We found a couple of chestnut trees, but not many chestnuts for the gathering. Autumn is with us at last and I have no complaints! Happy Monday x  

‘I like’ Friday.

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The weather has cooled at last and it looks like Fall is centre stage! This week I have been liking: The bag in the photo I found at an estate sale and I love it so much.  It is a souvenir beach bag from Mexico, I think from the 1970’s.  It is housing my new knitting project…. This fantastic scarf at Creative Bug.  I have started it in red wool and I love it, the pattern looks complicated but it is so well explained on the videos, it is very doable.  I can’t wait to wear it. ‘The Girls’ by Emma Cline is a great book so far, I am fully engrossed and intrigued by the story and the characters. I love to read and I always have to have a book on the go, I am an impatient reader though, so if the book doesn’t grab me, I will cast it aside and move on. This one has grabbed me and is hanging onto my attention. Another book I am reading (I know, I …

I am socially awkward. Things I have learnt.

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I didn’t learn that I am socially awkward, I already am acutely aware of that. I am no good in a social situation, I either hide in the corner, talk too much or both which is a strange combination but one I managed just this past week. I was asked, in fact, no, I volunteered to take some photos for a friend’s event to launch their non profit organization. I thought I would be great, I like taking photos, I take ok photos.  I’ve got this. I’ve not got this. I knew there were other people taking photos, so none of us were the sole recorders of the event.  When I arrived the first person I saw was a huge man with a huge beard and a huge camera and a huge flash, working the room like he was there to take pictures and only there to take pictures.  Like I was supposed to be. Except I didn’t, I just froze, the room was pretty small, the turn out was amazing and all I could …

Weekly Photos 38/52

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1. Blue skies and a lovely silver birch tree as I walked the dog this week. 2. The mornings are starting to become dewy and cool and the cobwebs are stunning when covered in droplets. 3. We went to an estate sale on the next street on Saturday and there were lots and lots of paperback romance novels! 4. This old very cool cash register was at the same sale, I didn’t buy the register and no romance novels came home with me either! 5. I spotted this wilting daisy in a fence. 6. Found lots of mushrooms and acorns as we wandered in the woods. 7. This bottle is a mystery from the past!  I immediately thought it may have contained soda once upon a time because of the cartoon dwarf like face on it, but at least a couple of people have said they it might well have contained alcohol.  I have looked on the Google machine but can’t find any like it. A week of sunshine, mysteries and mushrooms in the woods! …