Here Comes Halloween!

It's been another week already?!  How does that happen so fast sometimes? 
Thanks for being a lovely reason to resurface from my busyness to take a breather :)

Well, the new happenings around these parts is an impending move.  Y'see, we've been in the market for a house for over a year now....knowing that if we didn't purchase something now, we might not have another opportunity down the road...  We missed the chance last time housing prices were low by just not being able to pull it off financially.  Well, it looks like we will be calling ourselves proud Homeowners in the very near future :)  Probably be moving in the 2nd week of November... sooooooo, it's safe to say that things are going to start to get hectic with packing, purging, preparing for the Holidays, etc....

So when my daughter asked if we could decorate for Halloween now...I thought it was a great idea!
I want her to be able to really enjoy herself before all the changes start to come...

It'll be our last time to go all out before we get used to a new neighborhood and new nooks and crannies to dress up in a new house....

So, I've begun my magic...hooooohoooohooohaaahaaaa!!

I'm hosting a Coffee and Candle (PartyLite) Party this Sunday, so I wanted to keep the decor a little less cutesy, but with a definate vibe of Halloween fun :)

I'll show you more when we finish getting the outside decorated....plus, I have a Halloween Swap in the works to reveal to you, as well....

Happy Haunting Everyone.....Heeeheeeheee!

Altered for a Perfect Fit

I stayed up late last nite....my first time in over a week that I got to work on something artsy.....long overdue, and sooooooo satisfying! I finished one project and loved it so much, I started and finished another! I never am able to do that! Mainly, it's cuz I usually work on 9x12 inch or larger pieces, that end up requiring large chunks of time, layer upon layer of washes and detail and the proper mood to sit down and work on the same thing I've been painting for sometimes, months! I mentioned and displayed some altered pages on a former post.....which I thoroughly enjoyed and wanted to explore further, thanks to Sheree at Raven Moon Magic. She was not only kind enough to give me the idea, but to give me helpful hints and feedback! So armed with a new larger paperback with thicker pages and hidden messages to reveal, I began the journey of uncovering Secret Truths!

Well, my obsession with coffee could definately be called a Truth.....but it's certainly no Secret!

So, it just started as a simple message about the ritual of coffee drinking. The circled words read, "Morning constant, next day the same, survivalism" I can see by your nodding head, that you understand and appreciate this statement. :)

But as I continued exploring the aspects of the page and finding random bits of info on coffee drinking on my hunt through magazine pages..... I found something interesting...something that makes my multiple cup habit good...even HEALTHY for me! Imagine that! There were articles about it reducing risks of endometrial cancer, making your muscles feel less sore when you drink some Joe before exercising....but my favorite....and the point that drives the whole page home is featured above. It says..and I quote *clearing throat* "people who reported drinking 3 to 5 cups of coffee daily were 65% less likely to develop dementia compared with those who drank 2 cups or less."

It's not even saying drink some coffee....it saying drink lots of coffee! Now that's my kind of study...I feel vindicated...haha. So happens this torn out page was the start of Chapter Five and I added 5 "coffee" rings. The image in the center is a hand-carved stamp I made years ago. Hope this tickles your craziness for the brew as much as it did mine....I celebrated it's completion with a cup!

Then I matted it and started a new page.

Within this page's text, I saw something serene....something universal. The circled words read, "Gentle whispering, shady green, it was everything." The first thing I imagined was a tree....but more than that, I wanted to convey how this tree...this spot in time is everything...right now. How our experiences, while uniquely ours, are not the only ones occuring at any given moment....how one second, one thought , one tree, one word, one glance...can be everything to lots of different someones at one time.

We are so lucky to be able to revisit those "Everything" times whenever we want...in our minds and in our hearts.

I've found that adhereing the page to a sheet of watercolor paper allows me to flow over the edges and helps keep the integrity of the soft page. I used black and white ink to highlight details of the animals and such...

I also used some of my irridescent watercolors in the tree and grass to give it some shimmer....

I'm looking forward to doing more of these fun pages. I get to relax a bit and not be so hung up on details. They're also so much quicker, and therefore, I'm able to get something done in one sitting for once!

Please have a wonderful weekend! I hope to be back on Monday with pics from Artwalk!

Off to have another cup of coffee!