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The Adventure of Art
April 18, 2010 |
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Tea Time...
| I'm sitting here with a tea in a pretty vine-festooned tea cup accompanied by the most wonderful cakey, chewy, moist lemon cookie ever known to man and yet something is missing. You. How grabbing a tea or coffee in your favorite cup and let's have ourselves a jolly little chat. What could be better on such a lovely day but to spend it with such lovely friends?
 Hello, old friend!
Some exciting news regarding Cherry Trees Tea Room in Matfield. This is a joyful occasion for me and all the folks who lamented the closing of this sweet little tea room over a year ago. The tea room has now reopened as the Cherry Trees Village Cafe! Vanessa and Tim have taken ownership and with a lot of love and elbow grease, they've created a wonderful cozy place to eat, drink, be merry... and savor a lovely cream tea, with real clotted cream.
Since Vanessa hung the "Open for
business" sign, among the most excited and merry of customers are my mummy- and pa-in-law, the irrepressible She and Pete of Bramblings in Matfield. You've met them several times in past newsletters. My entreaty to my MIL and PIL was that they make it their mission to keep Cherry Trees alive and well so Draw and I can enjoy it, too, on our visit next year. I must say, I couldn't have chosen a better team to take this on. There isn't a day that goes by that She and Pete aren't sitting at a table at Cherry Trees having a Rosie Lee with clotted cream-laden scones or some other delectable nibble. Such a staple are they, already, that Vanessa has announced that she is adopting them as her "new recipe taste testers"!
As for the menu, I've heard it on good authority that all is quite scrumptious with a big thumbs up (and finger-point) from Pete for the Plowman's and anything in the pastry cabinet, and She gives nods to the homemade Florentine (see below) and the freshly baked lemon sponge with clotted cream filling. YES!!! Look out freshly baked lemon sponge with clotted cream filling, here I come!
A very warm congratulations to Vanessa and Tim as they embark on their exciting new business venture (you have a very big fan here in America) and a mighty hip hip hooray to She and Pete, the best customers any tea room could ever hope to have.
As for "happenings" the most recent excitement occurred at the Co-op grocery shop where Miss Josephine (my dear SIL) works. The story goes that the whole of the shop was thrown into instant pandemonium when a customer attempted to purchase a chicken and it rang up at £700! The Co-op is a small grocery shop and their merchandise comes in pre-priced fromst wherever a small co-op grocery shop's merchandise comeths.
 The unflappable flame-haired Miss Jo
Happy Sunday!
Gale xox
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Art Snacks
| Today's snack starts with this:
Some while back, I was approached by Tally Oliveau to create a room for a project that she and Julie Molina were hosting. This was way outside my comfort zone but, hey, I'm an excitement junkie. My room was the Tree House Attic. Well, long story short, this wonderful project turned into a book and, lo and behold, the Tree House made the cover.
 My Tree House Attic
In celebration of this book I just had to host a project in our PaperWhimsy Ning group: "My Whimsical & Enchanted Room". The gist of the project is to create a diorama inspired by a favorite children's book, fairy tale or poem. The gauntlet was tossed and 30 intrepid artists came, with bells on, to meet the challenge! I'd like to share a few of the submissions thus far. Our project concludes in May.
Melanie Hall, a scene from Alice in Wonderland *** Christy Laudig, a scene from Thumbelina
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Theresa Martin, a scene from The Secret Garden ***  My prototype for the project, The Little Mermaid ***
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| Art as Adventure
| I had an art date with my buddy Christy Laudig on Saturday and it ended up being nothing short of very cool. We had no real plans, just get together and do some art, but for the 20th time that morning as I sat at my computer watching another car turn around in our cul-de-sac an idea was born. I snatched the phone, rang Christy and yelled, "Grab ten bucks! Our estate is having a neighborhood-wide garage sale!" And thus began our art adventure.
The challenge - spend no more than $10 each and everything we purchase has to
be used in the art we made that day. Armed with cash, Christy and I spent an hour and 45 minutes driving from garage sale to garage sale picking up various and sundry odd bits and bobs ever mindful of the fact that somehow we were going to have to work this stuff into our art. Never mind that we bought 30 pair of 45-year old hosiery between us and I snagged three pairs of garters. We were on top of the world. No bother that we both bought old record albums, and Christy bought a tea cup and a pair of leather gloves. Easy Peasy Lemony Squeezey. No worries that I bought a box of bright red fabric rose petals and a little jelly cupboard with outdated jellies. We were up for the challenge.
 Christy finds a tea cup and some leather gloves Let me tell you - Christy has an eagle eye when it comes to garage sales. That girl knows how to scope out the best junk. While I got sidetracked examining a set of curtain panels (for heaven knows what) she was zeroing in on the old jewelry. Despite my whining that she was getting all the best stuff after stopping at three or four sales, Christy was generous enough to share some of her secret garage sale strategies with me. - Never pay retail
- It's okay to wink at the seller if you want a better deal
- Snoop around the garage for other stuff - what's on the table may not be the only stuff the seller is willing to part with
- Eavesdrop on the seller's conversations with other customers
Rule number one: never pay retail. I found a little jelly cupboard but didn't see a price on it. Christy pulled me to the side and whispered, "Don't go up there and ask how much it is; go up there and say 'will you take $2.00 for it'". Me, all wide-eyed with wonder, "Dang, Christy, you are good". So I wandered around clutching my little jelly cupboard trying to figure out how the heck I was going to stick it on an ATC when the seller walked up to me. Startled, I spit out "$2.00, please" and the seller replied "Well, okaaaaay... but it's only a buck-fifty". ...Or maybe what actually happened was the cupboard was already marked two bucks and because I hemmed and hawed I got it for a buck-fifty. Point is, without Christy I might've paid retail. Or not bought the cupboard at all. Rule number two (and three because they happened at the same house): Winking is good and be nosy. While I was digging through some record albums looking at the covers, Christy was winking at the seller and managing to snap up an antique book for 30 cents. And then snooping out more antique books back behindthe table which the seller then offered to sell at equally ridiculous prices... to her. When Ifinally managed to make my way to the pile of antique books and made my selection the seller had already cooled off from the Christy winks and charged me 75 cents. I was wink-ignorant and it cost me big time. Rule number four: eavesdrop. When I found the garters, the seller asked me if I wanted the hosiery to go with them. I was like "Pffffffft... I've got fishnets" (huh?). Whereas, Christy overheard the seller and was taken to a stack of amazing old hosiery boxes. Without Christy we would never have fallen into such an amazing deal: 30 pairs of old hose in amazing old boxes for 75 cents. An hour and forty-five minutes later we were loaded down with pretty excellent though thoroughly weird finds and still had money in our pockets. But with only three hours remaining of our art date, we headed back to the house to start the creating. A peek at our hauls: Gale's before
You know, sometimes a person can get caught up in the moment and totally lose sight of the goal. Goal: create art. The moment: old garters... hosiery... red fabric rose petals... a jelly cupboard. My stash of stuff sounded like an R-rated movie, while Christy's assemblage of goodies was an amazing pastiche of coordinated trinkets. I was sitting at the art table wondering how in the heck I was going to get a piece of art out of this jumble of weirdness before me when I suddenly realized it was time for lunch. Draw had made his famous mac and cheese for some coworkers, so my dear man, knowing how ravenous we would be after a hard morning's garage saling, put together a separate casserole for Christy and me. Thank you, Draw! It was amazingly tasty and a life saver because somehow, on a full tummy, everything coalesced for me and I had a brain fart. Draw's masterpiece Christy's masterpiece  Gale's masterpiece I used the door of the jelly cupboard for the frame, one of the hosiery boxes for the back of the frame, the shell earrings at the top, two of the book pages in the background, I hid the rose petals under the chair, and saved the record covers for another project. Oh yes, and I glued one of the garters on the back of the artwork for the hanger (thanks, Christy). I have to say it was a pretty darned good day spent with my art bud Christy creating something of wonder (how the heck did we do that???) out of a pile of someone else's junk. And the fun is not over, my friends. Both Christy and I would like to share our adventures by giving away our art adventure pieces. For details regarding Christy's art and how you can enter your name in her drawing please go to Christy's blog, Christine's Chronology, by clicking HERE. For my giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment on the PaperWhimsy Facebook Fan PageHERE (just leave your comment on my post) or, if you don't have a Facebook account, send an email to me with Art Adventure Drawing in the subject line. My winner will be chosen by random drawing next Saturday, April 24.  It takes a whole lot of stuff to create one art project. This is my stuff... Christy was already packed up and gone. Finis, but not really... *** |
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Les Beaux Jeunes (etc.)
| The Les Beaux Jeunes line, downloadable versions of the PaperWhimsy pretty faces, has now grown to 46 sheets, which includes two brand new collage sheets (see below). This line is growing almost daily as I create PDF versions of all the old favorites so please do drop by frequently. I also managed to squeak out a new Digisheet, too: Le Sol and La Luna.
To keep an eye on all the new sheets as they hit the shoppe, or any other NEW items, just click the pretty button below or go to NEW BITS, in the shoppe.
Have a lovely week and happy creating!
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Gale Blair
PaperWhimsy
www.paperwhimsy.com
hello@paperwhimsy.com
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PaperWhimsy was selected as a Constant Contact All Star
because of its high-standards in Email marketing.
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