Studio Friday & Birthday Report

First, the Studio Friday topic this week was "Aged/Antique". I could have spent hours finding all the things in my studio that were aged or antique, but I didn't have hours, so I chose the first thing I happened upon!

This is a really cute little doll bed-shelf-box sort of thingie I recently found. I searched around to find a good use for it, and turns out it's the perfect size to hold these two aged/antique books. One is an old dictionary and the other is an old school primer. I get 99% of the words that I use in my artwork from these two books (the majority from the primer). I don't know about others, but I rarely print out words to use- I'd prefer to find them in an old book. I will flip through a book for 15 minutes, waiting for the perfect word or phrase to jump out at me, when it really would only take 2 minutes to go to my computer and print it. But I think the serendipity of the right word revealing itself adds to the piece of art. In fact, I use the primer so much that I recently purchased a duplicate of the same book so that I'll have another when this one has exhausted itself!

Now onto the birthday report. It was a nice day, although birthdays sure aren't what they used to be! Every time I went to do a chore, I'd think, "It's my birthday! I shouldn't have to do this on my birthday!", but if I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done... I guess that's what being an adult's all about, right?

But it did have its perks! We went out to dinner and to the Cirque du Soleil show. The show was amazing, of course, and a couple different acts got my mind going with some ideas for pieces of art. And Jason gave me my lone birthday gift (what ever happened to having a table full of gifts?? Ah, it's that adult thing again...), which was a scanner! I can't seem to take decent photos of my artwork for the life of me, so I hope this will help. However, in playing around with it this morning, I'm having problems with scanning things that are pixelated (like printed photos, etc.). The pixelation seems to be almost magnified with the scan. Is this something I can't get around? If anyone with a scanner has any advice, I'd appreciate it!

And, as I planned, I was able to do a piece of art yesterday. Before I show that though, I'll show what the pieces from the two previous years looked like.

The first one was really just a piece that had a birthday theme. I like it, but it doesn't have a lot of meaning behind it other than the fact that it was done on my birthday.

For the second one, I decided to showcase some things that were part of my life in the previous year. We had been through a year of trying to conceive a baby, actually conceiving, and also purchasing our first house. I'm really not too crazy about the piece, but at least it's meaningful.

So yesterday, I did something similar- showing what my year's been about. I showed a photo of a house (for our new house), a piece of a card that Jason wrote me (for my wonderful husband), and a photo of Riley and me in a photobooth (for my adorable baby). The piece came very easily to me, and I really love it! I'm becoming more and more intent on using my own image in my art. When I do a piece that doesn't have a personal image in it, I almost feel like it has no meaning... If you want to see a larger image, go to my Picturetrail site-for some reason, Blogger's not allowing it to be enlarged.

So anyway, there you have it. Aged/antique and aged/antique- the first is my Studio Friday submission and the second is how I feel because of how old I'm getting!