just for the sake of painting

Just playing the fool with no rhyme or reason. For some reason birthdays are in my head, hence the pic I guess. Started the Jane Davenports Supplies me course after seeing some wonderful results of bloggy friends and hoping I will benefit too. Well off to blow my nose.
Cheers and hugs.

Kitty cat on Sunday

Ahh down with a cold still. It has been a week and life, kids and Christmas plays do not give leave to those of us who are sick :( This week I dragged myself about infecting as many of the good citizens who were not already infected ( not many mind you) and got what I need to put together for darling daughter's costume. There is no real rhyme or reason to costumes at pre-school here, it seems to be whatever the parent wish will do, and this year DD decided she wanted to be a cat and an orange cat at that. Well looking around the orange got axed and she has finally accepted she will be a brown cat. Here is a sketch of how I hope our final creation will look. It should not be very complicated as I found a second hand adult brown shirt and now I need to just added the bowa like multibrown yarnie thing, some pink felt and then make the bando, and whala it is  done. Ahh if the cold will just let up now.  Hoping you have a snot free Sunday and see the sun, and pop on by  Sunday Sketches.
Cheers.

Upon waking

Some time this last week I deleted a whole set of files to a now defunk website of mine and this morning when popping by my blog I discovered " Ack!!- I deleted my background!!" Well I guess it was a time for a change :) Not sure how I will like the new font. A bit difficult to read, it is okay in common letters but rather illegible with capitalized words. Two things that mess up my senses, lack of sleep and pregnancy. No not pregnant (thank the Lord) but I still shudder and smile when I remember what I bought in the throws of hormones :). Off to do some work.
Cheers
p.s the reason I was up late last night - the little needle felted doll. I decided to just finish her.
p.p.s. I had to change the text in the body back. As much as I like the script in the post headers, it was near impossible to read in the side menues :)
And you know what it is Saturday and I am posting - yeah! - so it is time for Sweet Saturday. So pop by Diana's Sweet Saturday and see what everyone's cooked up  today.
PPPS.  You know it is Sunday and not Saturday .. so my head is really out of it - ahh lack of sleep :)
PPPPS - art every day 19 :)

Sheep - overnighter.

Maa - taken by Gab in summer

Speckles taken by Gab in Summer

Things come in 3 they say. Usually they say that for bad things and not good things. Well yesterday I hope we covered all 3. To start with which might not be related was the clocks went back an hour. For some reason the going back and forth of the time really bothers me. Maybe because I grew up with 12hours day and night all the time, and the result is that winter - summer time takes me about a week to adjust to.  Well I seem not to be the only one effect, our flock of 24 sheep also seemed to have had a mix up with the time yesterday.  Our wool babies roam on about 15 hectares and the usually come home just after dark wagging there tails behind them.  But last night at 6pm there were no sheep at the fence. So I went out to look for them. Let me tell you something about sheep, they do not come when they have been called, they do not answer, they do not move, they stay mum the whole time.  Looking for non-cooperative animals in tall grass with a torch light ... well let just say after an hour I came home, and hubby dear went out to have a search. By 9.30 he too came home with no sheep. On the up side the temp was 10C (warmer than it had been for a while.).  An hour before we noticed the sheep being awol the water pump stopped working!  And he was not able to fix it, thankfully we have a "Jack and Jill type" well so I was able to get water even though the well bucket has a whole lol.
Well today is Monday and so far it has been much better. I found the *@$* sheep this morning (and in the area they are meant to be) and hubby seems to have fixed the pump, I can't do or say  much about the time except that we all woke up early and everyone got to school on time . So I guess "tomorrow will always be a brighter day" - even though it is really overcast today- is true and I did not have to think of "every cloud has a silver lining"  :) In the meanwhile I need to get the little bow-peep nursery rhymne out of my head :)
Hope you have a great day ♥

A little gift from the hub :)

When on holiday my hubby either missed me or wanted me to get off his pc/ printer as my new improved win 7 did not speak to my old hp all in one - MS and HP decided I had my printer too long and needed to upgrade.
I think I had an HP printed from university but the price of ink has been rather inhibiting. So when we went printer shopping ink cost's was a major factor as well as potentiality scanning resolution and printing capability.  In the end what we decided was best for me was an all in one Epson  Stylus SX218. This is not an expensive printer, it cost about 30-50 lats here depending on the store ( i.e 60-100USD), so  I was not expecting much.  However after Heather asked about printers I actually took out the manual and started to investigate and read, and found it has some really cool options.
What I have found in the week that I have had it, is that if I scan and print using the epson control screen (not photoshop or any other program), I get a really good quality scan and print ( the above pic). In their own (epson) program there are a lot of options you can use to adjust the scan in preview mode to get it to almost the original. Also in their print mode you can get a very good likeness too. I am sure if I really knew what I was doing it would be identical. Click pic to enlarge.
However, I have found so far, that if I import the scanned image via photoshop I have to do a lot of manipulation and the result is not really that good when compared to the original (yesterday's post was adjusting via photoshop). Also when I have printed via photoshop or illustrator the colours have been either too red or blue. Now I have to say you can adjust the print and ink and there is an adobe profile option but I have not figured it out as yet.
So overall if you are looking for a reliable inexpensive printer ( I'm sure it is cheaper in the states), this is a good one one to try.
Cheers

another form of art :)

Be-jeezes. What a month it has been and one more week to go. The last couple of weeks have been rather busy with 2 kids, 2 schools, 2PTA meetings, mother's day concerts, dance concerts, school outing and various other things. I don't know how people with more kids cope. Needless to say I have not really done any painting per-say or really any sketches. My brain is resembling my hair - frizzled! Ahh enough complaining :). This week I went to Riga and got some art supplies i.e some watercolour paper and a couple of 00 and 0 paintbrushes (thank you Marlene for the info); I have a house full of unadorned walls and now I wait for inspiration - yikes!! :) In the meantime I will share with you a you-tube taken of the last weekend's concert in which my darling daughter performed in. She is the smallest girl of the group. Today she has been promoted to darling daughter, for the moment, since she washed up most the ware for me last night :)
A little info on the video - They are wearing a folk costume, there hair is in the traditional style, the music is Latvian folk music. Cheers

spring cleaning

Just changing somethings with my blogs - eg such as my blog address lol. Not sure what it will effect or not :) 
It must be the coming of spring.
For some reason I got Creative Tuesdays date for messed up in my head, so I missed it :(
Cheers

Tux Paint - paint program for kids.

I got a faster pc last week and have and am spending all my time moving my files programs etc from the old pc to the "new" one. The old pc will become the kids. Since I spend most my time doing some form of drawing at the pc they too wish to draw but I have found that for a 5-6 year old and a 8yr old (turned this week :)  ) photoshop is too complicated  and paint is too basic and boaring. So I searched the net and found Tux Paint. It is realatively easy to use and if you download the stamp version there are tons of things for the kid to do. The program is a GNU program ( free and done for hte public - bless their hearts) and can be found here
http://www.tuxpaint.org/
It should also be noted that there is sound to this program - basic noises as well as educational ones such as when you stamp a particular bird it states what type of bird eg lark.

Cheers
p.s 
The pic is not mine but one I found on the net but is a very good image.

Merry Christmas

Just popping in to say "Merry Christmas, Seasons Greeting, Feliz Navidad, and of course from my adopted country (if I ever learn the language) Priecīgus Ziemsvētkus un Laimīgu Jauno Gadu."

Drawing lab.

FinALLY it has arrived. It was super long in getting here as it had to by pass obstacles such as the local post office being closed, mail being direct to us through another town, snowstorms, blizzards,  and snow blocked road. Yesterday,  I dejectedly walked out to the mailbox, after the bulldozer finally managed to clear the gap to our area, and peeped in I was thrilled to see a flat square parcel from the Book Depository :) Upon opening the parcel it was confirmed - Drawing Lab by Carla Sunheim has arrived :) 
It looks like rather a good book. I  read the intro (nice and short) and skipped through it and it seemes interesting. Nutty at Facets and Fractals is hosting a drawing lab challenge, if you got the book check it out.
Cheers
p.s  yup my desk is a mess :( Sometimes I am amazed at what sketches I find  and presents from the kids :)

Catch-up Saturday :)

well all I can say is "Thank God tomorrow is Sunday Sketches!" :) My, what a week it has been and here we have had a 4 day weekend which means the kids are home and concentration time is low.
For art today I worked on the website to match this blog. Basically it was just changing some colours, background and pics, and then newsletter and I am happy that I  have done it. I have wanted to change the sites for a while for after a couple years its sort of grows stale - if you know what I mean.  Anyway below is a screen shot of the site. The birds got to be a little christmassed up :)
Hope you are having a productive Saturday.
Remember to Pop by Art Every Day to see some funky day 20 art.
Day 19 was a rather art less day as I did some boring site things.
Cheers 

the home page
















the shop page

Thursday Blogger

My art for today is meant to be saving the patterns I worked on early this week in various formats, but I got side tracked as one of them caught my eye and inspired me to change my blog (I hope for the better) ( yes I am not a procrastinator but a side-trackers :)). So my art for today is my blog. Not sure if it is too much but I guess time will tell. Hope you like it lol

Pop by Art Every Day to see some funky day 18 art

Cheers
p.s the pattern I liked in the "ribbon" flowers and my son says that birds do not have long legs :)

p.p.s the left hand side seems a bit bare but not sure what to put there as yet.

Knobby Friday

One of the things about Art Every Day is that it is motivating me to do something artsy everyday and not put it off for another day i.e it will get done tomorrow.
This afternoon I took out some cupboard door knobs and painted them to match the wall paper I hope to sew onto some roller blinds this weekend for my daughter's room ( yes that will be my art that day and I hope a successful project).

First I got the knob and lightly sanded it to (I hope) remove the varnish.
Then I got some acrylic paints and tried to match the cupboard door colour more than the wall paper.


Here are the knobs with the base coat. Then I decided which flowers to paint and painted them on using acrylic paint and a hair dryer (it was taking forever to dry in this temp we have here hence the hair dryer:D)




A section of the wall paper and the knobs.

To see some really cool Day 12 art pop by the Creative Every Day blog :)


Cheers
Jehanne

A beady Sunday

Art every day month.. I hope this counts:) My daughter wanted to do something to give her friends, so after a bit of thought I came up with us using white clay to make some simple beaded bracelets. To do this she pinched off some clay rolled it into balls, then I used a thin stick to make a hole and then we let balls(beads) dry.Once dried she painted them - well she did the detailed work while I got to do the grub base colour paint :). When this was finished we strung the beads together and got a bracelet.

Pro- this is a rather nice project to do with your kid(s), and is simple enough that they can take part in almost all stages.
Con - a 5 year old has a limited attention span, so best to do the project over the weekend in parts.
Cheers

while away from the desk

I decided to try and take a photo of a digi stamp (i.ea drawing) I coloured in the vain hope that it will come out fantastic ...yeah right! As I was downloaded my card I discovered that my little photographer had been at work. She snapped the penguins while they were in the process of being coloured for the clipart set.
And here she is with her favourite photo subject :) (sorry for the back view:) )

Digital Stamps

After many weeks (months actually) of toying with the idea, I have finally decided to separate my digital stamps from designs I create for embroiders, i.e I will have a separate websites. This has resulted in 4 days of absolute fustration and eye ache as I try to copy the outline ( of the nice thing-a-me-bobs eg points reward system etc) of one site to another, and as fate would have it, it has almost worked but for one little thing - my catalogues of product list are not reading where the products are located on the site ince they are click one :(- all else so far see to work but that!!! urgg!
Anyway I am way over my allowed number of script manipulations or something ( I was playing blindly with databases for 20 mins) and now have to wait a day before I can go in and attempt to solve my problem - or I may get a nasty bill - I am not sure if I will still not see it.
So in the mean time I drew a little digital stamp with christmas in mind and then used some not very good watercolour pencils.But I really can't blame the pencils to much as they are from the supermarket and are sold for kids for school, so I should not have been to surprized when the blue, purple and green colours did not want to "blend" or move when I gently applied the paintbrush to them as instructed. In the end I took one of my harder bristle brushes and scrubbed it about lol. The pic is the digital stamp coloured and photoshoped to try to get the colour to match what I did on paper.
Does anyone know why when I scan I get much lighter colours?

A day at the doc

Well it wasn't a real day, it just felt like it. I arrived just in time for my appointment and had a lovely 2 hour wait till my turn to get a spot checked out. While I was sitting in the cancer polyclinic my eye filled as I spotted the most good natured looking 4 year old with his dad waiting for their turn to see a doc. I hope I jumped to the wrong conclusion as the kid is a kid and bad things like cancer should not happen to kids.
Anyway a day or so ago a request for some angle kids clipart came up and I decided to take my sketchbook and try to sketch while there, and the little boy's hair style was so cute it featured in my sketch, Actually I feel rather skittish about drawing children as angels..sort of silly I know.
Yeah the left wing is kind of not right :)
Cheers

Not too sweet

Don't you just hate when you sort of know about something and then there is a problem and because you don't know ALL about it, you can't figure out the problem and if you think what you think is the problem in order to correct it, it means a whole lot of blasted work!
This a little cupcake image I did this weekend and then applied an embroidery filter. It came out fine, BUT when I apply it to other images I get parts where there is no embroidery. My thought is that is that the filter program is not acknowledging the crossing of the lines in those images and I am having a coreldraw vs illustrator conflict. Cool I can live with that, but what makes me want to bang my head is that I do not know if it would truly effect the end result in an automatic digitzing program. Below is the little set where bears the cupcake.
Cheers

ahhhh ..sigh...

Just sighing and drooling like a teenage boy looking at this dream car or .... God this product looks good, I want! Want Want!!! Oh well back to life, bills and my Intuos.

Has it come yet!?

I'm soo excited today. I started to ink out anansi and I ordered Dreamscapes: Creating Magical Angel Faery and Mermaid Worlds with Watercolor (Paperback) By (author) Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. I have no idea why I am so thrilled about getting this book as I am planning on using black pen outlines in anansi with strong watercolours and while it is fantasy it is not this type of thing. ahh well anyway it looks like a real cool book I just love the cover :).
Cheers