Mixed Media Paintings

I finally did some painting. I was encouraged by a couple of co-workers who commissioned me to created some art for their offices.  The top image is a large piece of canvas and has a ton of texture but it's really difficult to see from this picture.  I used a ton of different paints, stamps, joint compound, and did some jelly printing. In addition I cut out some different sized butterflies out of paper to create templates and dipped in a plate of white paint. Then I pressed them on the canvas and rubbed them before gently peeling off the paper to real the image.  This was a fun piece to create.  It took a couple of nights to complete about 6 hrs.

This piece didn't take very long at all to make. About 2.5 hours.  I had purchased a canvas at Michaels about a month before because it looked neat and was 60% off. The canvas was pre-printed with the writing on it and cost only about $5 or 6 dollars.  Then I used Alcohol Inks, gauze (new but left over from my surgery), cotton balls, rubbing alcohol,  stamps and permanent markers to create this piece. I was recovering from a painful surgery and was weaning myself off the medication and trying to not be depressed about feeling miserable.  Since I couldn't sleep much during this time I spent time creating.

This piece I created before the other two.  I had been wanting something for my front door for spring/summer time but didn't want to spend a lot of money.  I went to Michaels and found this US wooden plaque and it was reduced to $4 or 5 dollars.  I brought it home and painted this in about an hour and now it's been hanging on my front door. Brightens up my home. 

Xtreme Air 5k and Glo Run 5k

I participated in two fun races recently.  I'm still meeting my goal of participating in one race a month.  In May, I volunteered to participate in the Xtreme Air 5k.  This was perhaps the best race to volunteer for. What I got for volunteering for 2.5 hours was free entry into the first wave of the race, a volunteer t-shirt, a finisher t-shirt, a finisher medal, a bag pack, and a free $10 meal/drink from an awesome food truck.  Totally worth volunteering!  The race was fun. I ran it on my own but not really as there was a lot of runners.  Man were the obstacles challenging. It took about 40 min. to run and complete 12 obstacles. It was very tiring but a good time. Only bad part about being a volunteer was you didn't get a bib # so although they had photographers all around I couldn't find any pictures of me because it wasn't connected to a bib. 

This past weekend my friend visited from Buffalo, NY.  We participated in the Glo 5k race.  This was a blast. It didn't start until 9pm when it was completely dark out.  We decked ourselves in glo sticks and set out at a leisure pace.  There was some fun glo scenes decked out along the race and the last half was on a paved trail and was only list with random glo sticks on the ground. You didn't need a flashlight with all of the runners being decked out but it was definitely helpful. I tripped once (not a surprise) but at least neither of us fell. One recommendation for anyone that does this race in the future...don't wear good clothes or if you do don't get the splatter paint done on you.  They give you the option of getting splatter painted and while we tried to just get our skin other people around us sprayed us all over and got all over our good clothes.  The paint peels easily off your skin but even after soaking and washing twice it still stained all of my running clothes and shoes. I wasn't happy about this.