Beautiful Saturday

It's Kentucky Derby time here in Louisville again and there is no lack of activities!  I can hardly keep up. Friday morning I woke up early and turned on the local TV news, there's usually something interesting during the Derby festivities and I learned that the balloon race postponed from Thursday night would take off at 7 AM!  I hopped into some clothes, grabbed my camera and was off. They take off from a small airport not far from our house.  Seeing a balloon aloft just cheers my soul.  I just pulled into a nearby street and shot these photos as the balloons went by.

Friday night was the balloon glow.  I invited Dave and Karen to meet us for dinner at a favorite Ethiopian restaurant and head over to the glow for some more fun with balloons.  They stay tethered but use their burners to light up the balloon on the ground. Periodically they will count down to an "all glow" which is pretty spectacular! The wind kicked up and it was over almost as soon as it started but it was a beautiful night with good friends so more than worth the effort to get there and I got these fun pictures.

An "all glow"

This morning would have been yet another balloon op but the winds kept the balloons on the ground so we headed out to watch the marathon runners.

We used to be able to just sit in our driveway and watch but the route changed last year to accommodate the Cherokee Triangle Art Fair and they take a turn a couple of blocks away. So, this year we trekked to the coffee shop and walked to where they make a turn. We missed the wheel chair marathoners but caught the first male and first female runners to go by.

After that it was market time!

 Peonies! Can you believe it?  And the eucalyptus over wintered and was back!

 Strawberries, weeks early!

 Spinach for Mom

 Salad greens!

And the beautiful bright pink peonies!

Now, on to the art fair where I got to catch up with my favorite textile artist, Jude Stuecker. You'll remember she made a wall quilt for us and our bed quilt and now mostly makes clothes. Amy and I are big fans of her skirts. A loves to take them to Kenya with her. They are a great weight and pack so well.

Jude is mom to baby Sylvia, who I didn't get to see this trip and will be mom to another baby in the fall!

Here's a look at her booth. She dyes and applies pattern to her fabrics.

 Isn't this dress adorable- just my colors

All these skirts make me happy just to look at!

How about this happy rabbit in the booth next door to Jude?

Piano keys for legs.

 This is the same artist's fun cat lamp

And I love these pottery squares of his.  I'm thinking I may be getting one or two for Christmas this year!

This is another artist I like

She transfers photos she takes to wood. Her colors and subjects appeal to me.

After art I was off to book group to discuss The Life of Pi, which I hadn't finished but still wanted to enjoy the discussion of.

By then I was too tired to go to Churchill Downs opening night, but there will be plenty of horse racing this week for us. As it turns out, there was torrential rain and nickel sized hail tonight so I was just as happy not to endure that at the track. But, they did get the full card of racing in so I'm happy for the folks who braved the weather.

This gal was taking in a little TV on the couch!

It was a lovely day.

Have you missed me?

You'd think I have crazy busy but really not so. So here is a little of what I've been up to.
Farmer's Markets

 Isn't Hopper cute? 

 I use this hot pepper butter on everything! The pickles were new- sweet but with a bit of a hot, long finish.

 The radishes have been beautiful. I eat a bunch a week

 Asparagus!

 Still eating kale once or twice a week. Russian mostly but this week I bought some peacock kale. 

 Some herb plants for the garden, thai basil, cinnamon basil

flat leaf parsley

Then there was Easter!  I had my family over the day before.

 I made my first ever homemade mac and cheese! It was good and there was enough to send home with others.

 O and Mom

 I try not to give the kids too much candy since decay is a problem in my family. So I hid a bit of candy but more a few toys. O loves balls so she got three different sizes and textures.

 Who doesn't love a pinwheel?

 Miss O loves candy it seems- comes by that naturally!

 Ez is harder and harder to photograph especially with his long hair!

 How much longer will he sit on Mom's lap? A long time I hope!

 Shades for O from great-grandmother

loves a chocolate marshmallow egg!

Easter at my sweet church who knows how to celebrate a resurrection!

 We've been in the desert and it finally bloomed!

The Easter Bunny made an appearance!

I did some art in round robin journals and to swap with the folks who bring you the Sketchbook Project.

 My 4x6 swap

 For a transformation-themed journal

 Things with Wings journal

My tiny, premature great-niece was born

Tiny Addison Jane

1 lb 8 oz

 How about a strawberry as big as your hand?

 A fun trip with friends to IKEA! I'm organizing right and left! And I love getting into my bathtub with the addition of the green gator!

 Took this sweet boy to Mammoth Cave during spring break.  We also saw The Lorax with a friend of his.

 Cave 

 Boy on a rock

Heading down.

So, I guess I have been busy! 

Leave you one last pic of the cutest bunny bread ever!

And a lovely picture of iris

Hope your day is fabulous!

Day 8-paints

Paint Dabber Resist

This is a sort of faux batik look. I didn't have a white dabber so I used gesso to paint my stamp (immediately clean with water after stamping), stamped on  sticky back canvas and dried with heat tool. Then, applied stains from bottle onto canvas. Dried applied more, dried, spritz a bit dried. The dried gesso acts as a resist to the stain

Nice!

Crackle Paint Resist

For this tag I applied a medium thick layer of crackle paint. I got my paints a while ago but had not taken the plastic off or opened (obviously, if the plastic was still on!) But two of the four had dried out. I have written to Ranger so we will see what comes of that. But, I used the kinda dried out green. It still crackled.

I applied distress inks with blending tool. Tim applied stains. I stamped with distress ink because you want something also water-based for crackle to resist. Then I stamped the vase with Archival Ink, which is permanent.  This is a nice technique though probably one I may not use super often for what I do, but who knows?

Shattered Stains Technique

I applied Rock Candy clear crackle paint to chipboard shapes thickly. Tim often dips his into the medium that he has put on a craft sheet and then scrapes up remaining back into jar.  I let it dry over night and voila clear plastic crackles.

I dabbed the Distress stains on the birds repeatedly and dabbed where I didn't like, then heat set. You can add more and heat set again. This is a nice technique that I think I will use again and again. You could die cut chip board or use grungeboard. I think they look cool!

Tim Day 6 and 7

Day 6 was all about Distress Markers. The first technique was coloring with them.I'm not a big colorer. I usually find if I need to color I can use water colors or watercolor pencils and probably will not use this technique. But, I did like stamping with them and I used to do that a long time ago with some other water-based markers. Though I think I liked the watercolor technique used last week a lot. Stamped image with Archival ink and then 1st applied to dry paper, then wet paper. The advantage to me of Distress Markers is the color palette.

The 2nd technique was applying the pens to a stamp and stamping. One nice thing is that once you color up your stamp with the pens, just give a huff of breath on them and that will give you enough moisture for a stamping. I stamped three images -each lighter, obviously-with the one application of marker.
I did the two flowers on Specialty stamping paper- I'm not sure how much I like this paper but I'll see with other techniques.  The foam blending pad does not move smoothly over the surface to me. I applied Distress ink with the blending tool after stamping the images I had colored with markers. You can also come back to the stamped image much later if you didn't get a chance to stamp it (phone rang), give it a big huff of breath and stamp away!

Day 7 was more interesting to me-Embossing Powders. I don't have any Distress Embossing powder but now that I know more about  it, I think I'd like some.  It has some larger crystals of another material that fall away leaving a distressed look if you rub after heat embossing. I think I will like that. Great, another thing to put on the wish list!

Nostalgic Batik is the 1st technique- I stamped the red image with Distress Ink Fired Brick. Dumped clear embossing powder over it, tapped it off and heat embossed. Next I applied different colors of Distress ink with blending tool. Then I stamped other images with Distress ink not Archival which would have left the image on the embossed part which I didn't want. I wanted a resist. I spritzed my hands with water and flicked it on the tag. I liked the result!

Rusted Enamel

I really like this technique, too. I covered all of the tag with Distress Ink- direct to paper from the ink pad- you want a lot of ink. Covered the tag with a lot of embossing powder, tapped it off and this time flicked the back of the tag instead of tapping only. * Unless doing this technique- you should tap the paper on it's side on the table only to leave plenty of powder on the inked piece. Something new I learned. But because for this  you want some extra removed, flick it and then you can remove a little more with your fingers, too. I removed a bit too much but understood from this practice tag. Heat emboss. The go over with brown shades in Distress Ink with they blending tool.  It does have a cool result I think.

All I had time for- the last technique calls for Distress EP because of that "fall away" it has for the result so couldn't' do that one.

I'm two days behind :(