March: A photo a day

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While browsing on Pinterest I came across a challenge to take a photo a day for a month. The creator of the challenge did the same thing in January and February, allocating a theme for each day of the month. I have signed up, as has A15. I think taking the challenge for one month will be quite a stretch for me but it should be fun also. While I would love to take fabulous photos, at the very least I want them to tell you something about my day or my life. I will be posting them here on Sentient (hopefully daily) and also on Pinterest. A15 will be pinning hers on Pinterest also.

B11 has also signed up and his photos have a clever twist. You can see them here.

The theme for March 1st is UP. As it snowed on and off for most of the day I wanted to capture the snow laden branches I see when I look up into the pine in front of our house.

Art Class: Monoprinting

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The final technique in our printing unit was monoprinting, so called because no two prints are ever the same.

We used leaves and grasses which were readily available outside. (It was a while ago, before the snow came). We tried different methods for making a print including applying ink directly to the leaves, rolling ink on glass then lifting it with the leaves and taking a negative print after the ink had been lifted. The detail we were able to achieve in the veins on the leaves was surprising.

The reason I buy my candles at Ikea

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Every Christmas I choose a different colour scheme for the Christmas tree and other decorating. This year A15 put in a bid for lime green so we went with it, hanging new balls and buying some sparkly green candles. The candles were pretty but they made a big mess over the candlesticks and the mantle.

We have a new IKEA in the city and I will head there this week to stock up on candles; it was too scary to go before Christmas only days after it opened.

Glimpses of our Christmas

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We enjoyed some relaxing family time and some fun with friends as well. It was lovely to have Andrew’s mum here with us to celebrate Christmas and experience a bit of Ottawa winter. As always we were spoilt by Andrew’s excellent cooking; the turkey was done with the new Smokenator 1000! 

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A white world

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I am still hoping for a white Christmas but we have less snow now than when I took these photos two weeks ago

If there is no wind the world can stay looking magical for hours. This snowfall was two weeks ago and stayed for a couple of days until the unusually “warm’ temperatures made it disappear.

Art Class: Lino Printing 2

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We continued carving and printing our linocuts and designed a second smaller one each as well. Here  is a squirrel S12 carved .

The lino cut below shows the amount of carving required to create a design with little or no background. As you can see in the card the finished product looked great. L14 printed it in red ink and sponged extra colour  onto the paper after printing. I bought speedball printing ink for our second week and it worked well.

A15 printed her shoe in a few different colours and we are hoping to print it three times in colours which will work in her room then frame them.

My own linoprint is posted on my paintings page

Take a look

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Several blogs I read post links to a selection of interesting posts and sites each weekend. I am not promising anything as regular as that. Any readers visiting here know that there is nothing regular about my blogs at present but I have come across a few posts lately that really appealed to me so I thought I would share.

Take a look if you like:

  • I love wearing scarves so this post was right up my alley:  25 Ways to wear a scarf in 4.5 minutes. I most often wear my scarves in the “The Modern One Loop” but within 48 hours of watching the video I had worn the “Infinity”, the “Bunny Ears” and the “Hidden Knot”! I’ve even taken to  rearranging  my friend’s scarves while they are wearing them.
  • I was quite taken with a post by Layla from The Lettered Cottage. She posted some photos of a very whimsical campsite where she and her mother spent a few days, along with a very personal list of Things I’d tell my 17-Year-Old Self.
  • I came across this dress which is quite lovely.  So…I am going to see if I can make one just like it.
  • Having been introduced to slacklining when we bought one for B11 a few years back, all of us were astounded by the trailer for I Believe I Can Fly. We have now bought the documentary and I can’t wait to watch it.(HT: Cup of Jo)
  • B11 and I were impressed by these paintings by Alexa Reade. They are not quite what they seem or perhaps they are.

(photo:A15)

Busker’s festival

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Ottawa hosts a Busker’s festival every summer. A15, B10 and I went downtown to see what was happening. We have been several times before and I am always amused to see how many Australian acts there are. We stopped and watched four acts this year and two were Australian. I told B10 it was because Math and Science in the Australian schools had been replaced by Circus Studies and Street Performing Arts. He wants to move!

The Juggle Bugs below were great but it was early on the first night and hard to drum up an audience.

Flame Oz came out after dark and they were pretty impressive.