Nickelbacks and other artsy stuff

It is snowing like there is no tomorrow. Its been snowing since yesterday morning. There has to be at least 3 inches of snow to shovel. I am too warm and cosy to go out. Luckily I resisted the temptation to put away the shovel. And the sand. So I have been busy inside.... been playing with my inks and stamps. My friend Kim has got me making nickelbacks. What the heck are they, you ask? She named them in honour of us Canadians- 5 cm x 5cm squares- that a nickel so she called them nickelbacks. Going from 1 inch to 2 inches is harder than you think. I guess it reframing of how you look at things. Kimmie had sent me a wonderful asian inspired nickelback and so in return I have to send her one. All week, I had been agonizing over this as Kim is very talented and I wanted to impress her. I had picked the theme of frogs, thinking I was going to get back frogs... but it turns out I was supposed to make something with frogs. So.... two weeks ago, Telus sent out some glossy advertising for their digital media campaign- using frogs.


How perfect!! So, this is what I came up with.


The background was done on watercolour paper using the salt resist technique. I knew it existed before - seen this usually done on silk.. I inked up the paper with Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Fired Brick) , then spritzed the paper to get the ink mixing and swirling. Dropped on coarse salt and let dry. Brushed off the salt, spritzed on some burnt red Glimmer Mist (Tattered Angels) and stamped background with words. The crowns are gold embossed and blinged with rhinestones. I will not be keeping either of them (sooo sad!!). They will be travelling to Dena and Kim this week.




I was also challenged to create something witht he theme "Spring into Green". I am not an ATC person but somehow, this one spoke to me. Again, I am so loving the salt resist technique. I tried it with Stampin'Up!'s Old Olive, reusing the salt crystals. I really like how it turned out. The old salt crystals had picked up some dye and deposited it on the paper. I also used some Stampin'Up! Rub Ons for the first time. they aren't bad at all....

I think I shall turn it into a card for Mother's Day, with green paper, some luscious chocolate chip ribbon that I've been hoarding. Thanks for the idea, Susie!



I cannot avoid going outside so off I go to shovel snow :)

Cuban rhythms

Last weekend, I attended a lovely Pena(pronounced Penya, but I can't get the squiggly over the n) at the Blue Chair Cafe . It was a show for a Latin Jazz band called Bomba. Their members live in Calgary and Edmonton and when they get a chance to get together, they do in either city and have these little music sessions.

I cannot believe this is the same group Bomba I had heard about when I was living in Calgary all those years ago. I used to occasionally take drum lessons from Luis. I just went to the Bomba site and I recognized one of their guest players- Toto. Toto used to be (and I presume still is) good friends with Luis. This was at least 10 years ago. And as I was looking at the pictures, it suddenly dawned on me that the singer that was also playing the gourd and guitar was Luis that I learned to drum with. He taught us how to drum djembe, but had from time to time brought in the congas for us too. My most cherished memory of my time drumming was this sultry, hot summer evening. This was in One World's old studio, above the hydroponics shop on Centre Street , in Calgary . It was hot and stuffy there. The windows were open yet it was stifling since there was about eight of us and the room was very much akin to an oven. Luis was showing us how to play several lines. He wasn't happy with what he heard, so again and again, he showed us what we had to play and listened. This went on for what seemed like endless hours. By this time, beads of sweat were wending its way down my shoulder blades and between my breasts. The music was pounding. And hypnotic. We could barely hear the traffic outside, though as we drowned out the sounds or cars and honking trucks. At some point in time, Luis turned off the lights in the place in hopes of keeping the heat down. So, there we were, in the evening's half light, beating away our own individual drum lines as he made us repeat again and again till it became part of our selves. Or hands and our hearts took over and collectively, we sighed. The the music started tightening up and for that small window in time, we were transported to Cuba, with the gentle and hypnotic beat of the congas,the clave, his melodious singing and the thick viscous heat on that hot summer day. He used to offer conga camps in Cuba- where one could go and live as the Cubans do, and play and eat and dream with them too. I wonder if he still does that. I would go in a heartbeat.

Inchie-palooza

I have been busy inchieing away at things. I was in a 100 inchie swap and finally got back my inchies. Since they aren't mine, I won't post them unless I get permission from the owners.

Meanwhile, I've been working on some Pick a Theme Inchies. So for these, you end up in groups and everyone gets to pick a theme. You make everyone else's themes but yours. In the end, you get everyone else's interpretation of your theme. Its a very exclusive kinda thing.

For this picture, the Themes were: Chillies, Queen Bee, Nancy Drew and Nursery Rhymes

The person on the chillies inchie is whom the inchie is going to. Her name is Phyllis and she is an awesome inchie artist. She has this wonderful knack for collaging and is so very humble about her work. Queen Bee was a bit of work but I am very pleased with how it turned out. I was inspired by an inchie I saw made by someone I traded with named Mrs Noofy. I used a transparency to give the bee's wings some depth. I also took a Stardust clear pen to the wings underneath the transparency. This was all sewn down with beads. There is a crown beneath the bee and it is embossed in platinum embossing powder and decorated with 3mm pearls. I tried to create the bookcover for Nancy Drew (The Whispering Statue) and with the Queen of Hearts- she was very fiddly as there were so many bitty bits to her- the tarts, and the hearts. there is Dimensional Magic/Crystal Effects/Diamond Glaze/Glossy Accents on the little hearts in the tarts. The queen was also coloured in with gel pens and she has a small bit of german scrap foil for a crown.


The next set of inchies are:


Halloween, Winter, Teapots and Cowboys.


I cut the skull freehand, stuck on googly eyes, and sponged around the skull lightly to create contrast. The orange strips have orange peel stickles on it for some bling. The winter Inchie is fairly simple. I had picked up some puffy stickers (yeah!! In the Husky store between Morinville and Slave Lake ). There is some glitter edging the snow and the sky on the inchie. the teapot was stamped with pigment ink and then covered with psychedelic embossing powder. the background was made by bleaching the cardstock. The "steam" was created with a Sakura souffle pen. The cowboy is just collaged. There is copper "rope" hanging from his shoulders. I like how he turned out.




The next set's themes are: Paris, Growing Old,


Vintage and Summer.

I really like how Paris turned out. I used a paint chip for the background- isn't that amazing? I can just envision a feature wall in that colour-gorgeous! the Eiffel tower is embossed in metallic brown on a brown background. Growing Old was a little difficult so I lucked out and found a deck of cards from the dollar store with the stopwatch with wings on them. there is crackle effects on the face of the stopwatch. Vintage was easy- found some images of the internet- antiqued it a little with Tea dye ink. the gold strips were purchased white in colour and the gold was rubbed on with acrylic paints. the "Summer" inchie is a BBQ stamp which I carefully coloured and used dimensional magic on. The silver is my Zig Painty pen.

I am really proud of my inchies. I do think my work is getting better all the time. I have been inspired by many new friends I've made, as we share ideas and techniques as we enchange these little bits of art with each other.

The Lost Art....

When I was young, we used to get a TV program called "Big Blue Marble". At the end of the program, they encouraged their viewers to get a penpal from around the world to get to know your neighbour. My first penpal was an American girl called Susie O'Grady. I wonder what happened to her. She was actually the penpal of my best friend, Gina. So I eventually got my very own penpal. A Norweigian girl, called Gro Aaserod. And from then, came Lilyane from France, and Ron from Sweden. According to Wikipedia, this was a gentle form of multiculturalism, encouraging cross cultural communication.

All my life, I had had penpals. The rise of emails have significantly, taken away from the art of letterwriting. Although slow, there is this pleasure one gets from physically holding the letter in one's hand. The stamps used, the cancellation stamp, even the envelope made a difference.
Some people decorated the outside of the envelope as well. It really shouldn't be a surprise that I also collected stamps, no, not the rubberstamping kind, the postage kind. Part of acquiring the penpals was so that I could increase my collecton of foreign stamps. I used to have an Australian penpal that would regularly send me Australian coins so that I could trade it for Malaysian dollars to send to him. After the 11th package, I got tired of being his very one personal moneychanger and stopped sending the cash back to him. I remember getting a very nasty letter in the mail, accusing me of being a thief and being dishonest. I stopped accepting his mail.
My greatest pleasure (after writing the letter) was to carefully select a commemorative stamp to place in the top right corner (right over how much it cost to mail the letter). Also, mustn't forget the ubiquitous blue Air mail/ Mel Udara/ Par Avion sticker to indicate the mail should go posthaste. And last of all, don't forget to say a quick little prayer to St. Anthony to make sure the letter makes it to its destination.

So, I wondered with much sadness if penpals still existed- and much to my surprise, they do. In this instantaneous world, with breakup text messaging being the norm, and instant messenger, emails, Blackberrys and cell phones, people still have penpals. They still write letters, send and exchange bits of memorabilia and decorate envelopes. So, the internet, although has changed much of the landscape of correspondence, has allowed anachronistic white elephants like myself to connect with other like minded people and actually still exchange bits of our culture, and ourselves with people halfway across the world.

I guess I better go finish those inchies I need to get out tomorrow- the mail from Canada to the US is notoriously slow.

Mummy love

My mother never ceases to amaze. I was home last weekend. I badly wanted to pick up the 182 Ringgit parcel my brother had sent me. It was filled with 3 pounds of dried anchovies and one pound of dried shrimp. Precious commodity this far away from Malaysia.

So after the usual chatter, mum lets on that she had been analyzing Moe Amery's signature. Moe Amery is the PC candidate for her riding. Huh? What do you mean, analyzing? My brother had given her a book on handwriting analysis at Christmas. At the time, she looked through the book and set it aside. I didn't think much of it since gifts for mum is a hit and miss kind of thing. One year, my brother got her John Paul II's book for Christmas and she was lukewarm to it. The thing you least expect would become her favourite gift. Apparently, some time between Christmas and last week, mum had become some sort of a handwriting celebrity amongst her friends. She had been busy analyzing her friends signatures and had apparently been quite accurate in her predictions to their personalities.

"Mum, you have to analyze my handwriting,"I said to her as I hastily scribbled a paragraph using a very fine tipped pen and a scrap of paper sitting on the table. She looks at the writing, stops to ponder and say, "you don't live in the past... see how far away from the edge of the page you are?"

"More, more, tell me more," I say to her. She was hesitant. "You can tell me whatever, mum, even the bad bits" I encourage her. I had done some handwriting analysis in my time and knew all about the loops in the o's and about dishonesty, deceit and the like.

"I need to look at it carefully and this will take time. I'll write you a letter instead" said mum and that was the end of the conversation.

The other day, I called my mum because I hadn't spoken to her for ages.

" Mum, " I said, 'You have to tell me how to make that Taucheo beef that you make."
So she proceeds to tell me how its done. But in true mum fashion, she never gives me exact measurements. You have to use stir fry beef. Tenderize the big pieces by chopping it wth the back of a knife. Marinate the beef with dark and light soy sauce. Saute garlic and onions first. Shallots if you have them. Add some taucheo (fermented brown soy beans- Yeo's brand is best) which has been roughly chopped with a knife to macerate the beans . Add beef and sliced up green jalapenos. Lots of it. Balance the flavours with some sugar. The beans are salty so be careful with the salt. Cook till done.

"Mum, what is the origin of this recipe? Is it Nyonya or Eurasian?"

" Naah," she says "It's just my own creation."

I love my mum. I am so afraid of that there where I will never be able to call her up again to ask her for recipes.

Speaking of which... I need to get that Sour Beef recipe from her.... maybe that too, is an experiment. But it was pretty tasty. I reach for the phone and dial- 1-403-293......

Hobble along

Three weeks ago, I hurt myself. I tripped on the stairs as I was taking up a book I had recently bought- the irony is, of course, it was a book on Stretching- and long story short, I had twisted my knee. It was hideously painful and I was convinced I'd never EVER walk straight again. Of course, it never occured to me to stop and do the RICE thing-Rest, Ice, ?? Compress?? and Elevate. Besides, I was going to be travelling that week for work. I had worked really hard to arrange this trip and it involved contacting numerous parties and making travel arrangements to various towns, I was reluctant to cancel the trip. So there was me hobbling along, grimacing in pain at every step. A coworker felt sorry for me and so she loaned me a cane. Of course, it was not any old cane. It had a brass horse head, and had a very celtic look to it.

After getting over its looks, I actually took to the cane. I was really reluctant to use it since there is stigma attached to canes- the whole aging and getting old thing- but it provided the much needed stability that my stretched out knee needed as it healed. After a whole week with the cane, I had grown fond of it- it distingushed me from others and it provided me a crutch with which I could use to emphasize my thoughts and it would have been a fantastic weapon to boot. Alas, my friend needs the cane back so I will be parting with the horse head cane- and now I am on the hunt for another to replace it. Oh, and I've healed up quite nicely and although the knee is a little weak, I am walking as straight as I used to before the tripping incident.

Hoping for Spring

I am so praying for Spring. Yesterday, a seven year old boy told me that spring comes on March 20th and I didn't believe him so he pulled out a calendar to show me. It must have been printed in the USA since we all know that spring is at least six weeks away. Still, one can hope. Everything is fast melting and this past weekend, it was warm. or so I think it was since I was in Calgary, where it was even warmer. 12oC during the day.

In honour of spring, I am posting this card:

I had originally made it for a monthly swap club I am in. But I had since found out I was a little late so I decided to opt out for this month. The challenge was to use punches on your card. I used two circle punches to make the lady bug. The spots were done using black eyelets and the feelers were done with black craft wire. My favourite part of this was the Sakura stardust pen "clear" which I used to draw the glitter line on the blades of grass. I just want to run out to Deserres to buy myself more pens so I never run out. It adds glitter to anything in such a precise way since it is in a pen.

Paper: SU shimmer, SU black, Su red, SU Old Olive

Inks: SU Old Olive and Red

Stamps: SAB-08 Lots of Thoughts

Other: Black eyelets, craft wire