Broad Strokes!

Prime Time!

Due to my art sidelining, I've decided to catch up on a bunch of my DIY projects. Seriously, some of these have been in the works for like a year. Time to clean the plate.

I'm calling them my Broad Stroke projects, because they don't require me to concentrate on fine detail. All I have to do is cover the surface with color, no staying in the lines required!

Remy and the bench.

This morning, I finished my tree-log porch bench. I painted three logs, cut from trees felled at a friend's family farm by a tornado (yeah, what?!) a nice indigo color. I picked a semi-gloss because I wanted them to look kind of plastic-like and fake, but that would make the bark look all the more interesting. I inherited a circular saw from my grandfather's garage last year, and have been slowly mastering it.

Close-up of the logs.

This time I was able to cut the 2 x 4's to the right length (trust me, a year ago, I couldn't do this) and painted them a nice, glossy yellow. The green and blue circle in the photo--that was from a paint spill last year, while painting a cabinet for my Art Bank space. I made the spill into a circle, added a spiral and made it look like a rug! And my landlord wasn't mad that the 'oops' had happened! He said he could just power-spray it off, if I ever got tired of it. I had better plans in mind!

Cup-inspired murals.

I had a section of wall on the back of my house that was just screaming for something to be done. I didn't want to mess around with the structure of the wall, so I opted for some plywood murals. My mom got me a cool plastic glass with a cute design on it at Hobby Lobby this spring, so I basically stole the design from that (except I changed the flower middles from pink to blue on the one mural--matched my scheme better). I'll be straight up about it.

The entire back corner.

Much like the fence/barn-board murals I did last year, I kept these loose and brush-strokey, and, as they are on plywood, I made sure to seal them with lacquer so they would weather better. I haven't messed around with outdoor applications of plywood much, but I've been told the plys become unglued over time. I don't want to find out the hard way. Lacquer it is! Next summer, I'm going to plant black-eyed susans all around the front of the murals, so I think that will make a nice little space. There's also a small boulder in the foreground that crashed through my basement wall a few years ago (non-structural, just surprising!) so it's part of the nice little space too!

Toad-stool seats--COMFY!

The toad stool tree-log seats were a swipe from a Pinterest photo, except the photo used red with white circles. I went with orange and blue with gold swirls (you can see them better in person). The logs came from the same tree as the bench, but I got most of the bark off for a smoother look. I also lacquered them to seal them and it made their color very rich and warm! A few screws, some cut plywood circles, and some staples and there you go!

Pallet Fort, sans doors.

All summer I've been working on my "pallet fort." The city gave us these ugly grey trash cans that we have to use for trash pick up. (I spray painted my house numbers on ours so our less-than-scrupulous neighbors don't steal them).  They just sat in this muddy spot in the back yard. So I've built the pallet fort to shield them. I poured concrete and set fence posts, attached pallets to the sides and painted the entire thing bright blue. Now I just have to build doors for the sucker. I was going to use straight pallets for the doors, but they're too heavy and the swinging would destroy the rest of the structure.

Key wind-chime.

So I've been trying to disassemble a pallet, make a frame for each door, and use the pallet boards as panels to fill it in. Problem is, I'm not strong enough to get the boards off, or if I get them off, they usually get destroyed in the process! So, I'm still working on that one. Painting all that blue was truly an exercise in monotony, so it took me a while. The doors will be many colors and awesome.

Hanging off the side of the pallet fort is my key wind chime. It's another Pinterest steal, sort of, but I just used the things I had around: A slice of the logs from the bench and toad stools, and a bunch of retired live truck keys. I want to add more strands of keys, so I'm collecting them as I go...so, you know, if you have any old metal keys around that don't go to anything any more...I'll take them!

My sweet lime-green coffee table.

Now for the indoors: This sweet green-topped table was a back porch find at my grandparents. My grandpa used to go to the Sale Barn in Kewanee, a place where you can buy all kinds of things, and buy, well an entire lot of stuff just to get one thing. I'm going to assume that's where this table came from. The rest of the stuff that he didn't want, but now owned due to what he really wanted to buy, was usually just left around the house or garage. The top of this table was all weathered from rain, but the legs were really nice. So I sanded down the top, painted it glossy lime, cleaned off the legs, painted the caps with some Rustoleum and there you go! It cleans up pretty nice!

My First Stain!

This table was hand-sanded by my great-grandfather last summer. He sat in his garage and just sanded that sucker down. I don't know here he got it, I think at some kind of sale. It had leaves at one point, but now it's just a square. He offered it to my cousin, it just needed a stain and seal, but she didn't want it. So I took it. I'd never stained anything before, so I was intimidated, and I'll admit, procrastinated once the weather got nice enough to stain outdoors. I was worried I'd mess it up! I figured I only got one real shot at it. Finally I just went for it. I picked out a stain that matched the wood trim in my house pretty well and just knocked it out. Then I sealed it with the same lacquer I've been using so far (that can went pretty far!).

This table is HOT.

I'm seriously crazy-pleased with this. That table looks SHARP. I am so thrilled with how it turned out and I can't wait to show Grampa Woody a picture of it! And staining was deceptively easy too! (just don't get it on your hands, they call it stain for a reason). Yeah. I'm proud.

So now my project list is cleared off, so I've been the bullet, signed up on Pinterest (I'd just browse anonymously before, but a recent upgrade made that more difficult). I don't know how much of a 'pinner' I'll be, but I'm on the look out for more projects. I have one more nearly complete, but I need to find two more components to complete it, then I'll post a pic. I also have this little step ladder I want to do an orange wash on. I guess that will be for the next post!

AWOL and Ramsay-Hunt

Wow. My previous post got quite a bit of buzz...well more than I normally get. I'm glad for this and glad for all the people that got a head's up out of it. We artists have to stick together, right? Right?! haha. Right. So yeah, keep spreading the word and I'll keep posting anything I happen to come across.

In the meantime, I'm kind of on a fine-detail hiatus. It's a strange story really. I've had sinus issue my entire life, and finally had some corrective surgery done in July. Yay! Great! And really, THAT part has all worked out wonderfully (...well...except for the bill I got today, even AFTER insurance... *gulp*). I can breathe, I can smell stuff I haven't been able to smell for a long time (which is a mixed blessing sometimes!) and all that part is all healed up.

And then? AND THEN...And then I had August's First Friday. I had kicked my own butt to get myself healthy and ready to go for it. It takes a lot of energy to do First Friday right, even when you're not featured! Part of art is the business side of things, and without sounding too retail, that means good customer service, a good attitude, and just having fun! So, mucho energy involved there. Even on the day before, things were picking up! I got to stop into the Space Camp micro gallery in Fountain Square to help with a show load-in (very cool place) and then got a call to be a last-minute fill-in at the Mass Ave Wine Shoppe, near the Art Bank, as their featured artist (great place, go there--there's wine!).   But I started to drag and my left ear started to hurt.

I had seen my ENT (Ear-Nose-Throat specialist--the lady that did my surgery) earlier on Thursday and she just thought it was a little boo-boo but gave me a z-pack just in case. Then on Friday my ear had swollen up so bad it was incredibly painful. I trucked through First Friday, got to see a lot of friends and supporters and even ran into some old friends I literally hadn't seen since my college graduation. Really, very much good times. But by the time I woke up on Saturday, I was in serious pain and something was seriously wrong. I checked into an Immediate Care center and they thought, since the z-pack was obviously doing nothing, that I had MRSA, a drug resistant staph infection. Yipes! I went home with enough antibiotics in me to make me impervious to all problems and rested.

The next day... At work, I'm doing my thing, working with the videos, and my eye starts to blur. My eyebrow goes numb and the lack of feeling spreads up my forehead and down the left side of my face. WHAT. So I scurry back to the Immediate Care. They still think it's MRSA but that the lymph nodes under my swollen ear have compressed the cranial facial motor nerve, which controls half my face and runs along my jaw, and that's causing me to, you know, not be able to move my face. Just keep taking the antibiotics, as the swelling goes down, the pressure will subside. Oh yeah, and tell your doc what's up.

I call the ENT during the week and she orders me in immediately. She takes one look at me and declares it NOT MRSA (Yay!). It's called Ramsay-Hunt Syndrome (What?) Basically, much like shingles is a reawakening of the Chicken Pox virus I've carried in my system since I was 4, Ramsay-Hunt is a Chicken Pox sleeper cell that hung out in my facial nerve and waited for my immune system to be weakened just enough to strike. Opportunistic bastard. My sinus surgery was all the distraction it needed.  And if we hadn't caught it in time (within about 7 days) my face would have a way less chance of regaining its control. Swell.

The open-eye side is immobile!

So now, I'm about 3 weeks into all this and I'm trying to keep my spirits up. I've finished my antiviral medication. I've made faces and stuff (even though, most times, people can't see the movements on the outside and I'm moving the muscles as hard as I can on the inside) and I have be careful of my left eye, because I can't blink well or shield it from the sun. I was supposed to speak at a local high school art class, but had to postpone that for a few weeks, because, you know, partial facial paralysis and a room full of high school kids usually doesn't mix well. I also don't eat in public as that's not to pretty either.

Murals and Toad-Stool DIYs

As far as my ART blog side of this: I can't do fine detailed artwork. Oh, sure I can do 'broad stroke' type projects, which so far has been DYI things I've been putting aside, but projects where I have to sit and concentrate and stare for long times to make sure my drawings are accurate...are just not happening. It's that left eye that just won't let me do it. I see spots. *sigh*

"Broad-stroke" project: Table Restoration

So this is like my suffering for art moment, right? Like, my stuff is now more worth it from before, since I can't create now, right? It's more rare now!

Or...I just have some forced down-time to catch up on the broad stoke stuff, (computer stuff is even a tiring thing--looking at the screen and such--this is tough to write) and I get to load up on ideas for when I can, you know, blink.

So that's it. I'm AWOL, painting-wise, until my face heals. Or at least my eye blinks. Ramsay-Hunt WHAT???