Women's Wilderness Weekend

This past weekend, my mother and I went to URI's Alton Jones campus in West Greenwich, RI for a Women's Wilderness Weekend. It was a great experience and I cannot recommend it enough. It was $165 for two nights lodging in a heated cabin (shared with several other people), 6 (very yummy) meals, and a bunch of different workshop-type things, like hiking, canoeing, rubber stamping, dreamcatcher making, etc. The supplies for each class are even included in the cost. They do a book swap and everyone donated Crayola supplies to make arts & crafts kits for Hasbro Children's Hospital.

The beauty of the weekend is that you can do whatever you want. Even if you sign up for the 9am hike, you can decide to sleep in or sit by the fire in the main building and just read all day. There is no pressure to do anything you don't feel like doing. And we met some really interesting women.

They had a Halloween party Saturday night, but my Mom and I weren't in the mood for costumes, so I brought my facepaints and painted some of the women there. Heather, a totally awesome person, was kind enough to take this photo of my Mom and me.

These sketches are what I decided to do Saturday afternoon instead of the rubber stamping class. I picked up the acorn on that morning's hike in the rain, the wooden sign was on our cabin, and another really great woman I met named Peggy found the cool "whale rock" in the woods. It really did look like a whale in profile coming up out of the ground.

I have to thank my friend Roma for telling me about WWW. I'm so glad we went!

Stitched Surprise

For the Embellished Circus group, one of this month's trades I signed up for is a "stitched surprise." I decided to swallow my fear and break out the sewing machine. Naturally, I have misplaced the instruction booklet, so it took me about 3 hours to get the darn thing threaded. However, once I had that done, it was easy to use and this guy is what I ended up with. He's a Wish Bear. The recipient can write their wish on a little piece of paper, stick it in his belly pocket and come morning, hopefully the wish will come true! Well, it's a nice idea, anyway.

He's made out of felt. I hand embroidered the words and his facial features. I think he's kinda cute...even though one leg is a bit longer than the other.

Art Show

Today I participated in my very first art show at our public library. The show goes for the entire month of October, but today was the reception, complete with wine and hors d'oeuvres. I was pretty nervous about it this morning, but so many of my coworkers showed up to support me that it put me much more at ease. This is a photo of me and my 5 paintings (taken with my new digi camera my husband bought me). Seven other watercolor artists participated as well, all members of the Portsmouth Arts Guild. It was a good day.

Birthday Card

This is an extremely belated birthday card for my s.i.l. Jane. She likes faeries, so I drew one on white cardstock, colored her with pencils and cut her out. I used my handy dandy paper scorer to make the card out of blue cardstock and glued on some neato fabric-like paper I have with gold flakes in it. I bought those tags at Staples and just love them. I've been trying to think of different things to do with them. The faerie is offering Jane a piece of Rhode Island sea glass. Now, if I can just remember to mail this off on Monday...

Handcarved Stamp

This is for an Embellished Circus handcarved stamp exchange. It will be going to Nici. I broke out an old box of carving supplies my parents bought me years and years ago. I was delighted to find that I still have everything but the lino-blocks, which I used up. But I had quite a few of these large Mars Staedler erasers left and made a Buddha, which I happen to know Nici likes. It's pretty basic looking, compared to the carving talents of some of my fellow ECers (ahem, Kelli), but I'm happy with it. I hope Nici is as well.

Pet Portrait

I just finished this watercolor portrait of Baci, a toy Fox Terrier. I hope his owner likes it! This was done for someone who purchased my gift certificate through the Rhode Island PBS Auction. This is the second year I've donated a gift certificate and each year I forget to watch PBS to see my sample painting on the air. I always think it will be exciting to see it and then it totally slips my mind. Oh well.

Boxanotions ATC #2

The last color for the September Boxanotions swap was Zebra or Zucchini. Clearly, I chose Zebra and made an ATC out of it. I used a reduced scan of a painting I did last year and a handcarved stamp in a zebra pattern on red paper. I put the stickers on to spell zebra and added some metallic paint.