Works In Progress

Have you heard of Crafty Chica? She does a lot of Mexican and Mexican-American inspired art, with her own twist. I spent a couple of hours skipping around her website and blog and in the end was inspired to start my own calavera project, a painted footstool for the patio. Here's a sneak preview:



That's a crappy cell phone photo moment, right there. I'm not entirely happy with the rounded jaw (I should have made it more square), and the decoration on the skull is definitely going to be more over the top, but I still like it.

Here's another crap cell phone photo of the entire top, still in progress obviously:



When I'm done, there are going to be two calaveras facing opposite directions. Each side of the footstool has a little bone, like a dog bone, painted on it. When it's finished, it'll get a few good coats of varnish for outdoor furniture.

It's been fun, so far. It's been a long time since I painted anything.

My next project is going to be the outdoor altar. I was trying to think of what I was going to use as the base, then I saw an altar on Crafty Chica's site made out of upside down stacked flower pots, painted all gorgeous. My altar is going to have jumping spiders painted on it because I love jumping spiders. The other day while Dave and I were sitting on the patio, a teeny-tiny jumping spider ran up and jumped onto the side of my flip-flop. I took off my flip flop and carried the spider over to the plants and before I could put her on a plant, she reeled out a line and jumped away! I thought, she's so little but she's just fearless about the big, wide world. That was a pretty inspirational little spider, right there. So I'm going to dedicate my altar to her and her ilk.

Here is an updated, non-crappy-cell-phone-photo photo:



The colors are really bright, no? The camera on my cell phone really washed them out. So, it's still in progress, of course. (I need to outline the calavera on the left and add some more zingy-blingy stuff to the whole thing--then I need to paint the underside of the bench, then varnish the whole thing a million times so it survives being outside.)



Here is one side of the footstool. I am going to top that bone with some glitter paint. Glittery bones!



Yeah, those're my paints, right there. A few of them at least.

Giving Up

So I went cold turkey on the caffeine on Saturday. GASP!

I was drinking a lot of coffee, between eight and fifteen cups a day and it was, I'm sure, contributing to the recent ramping up of my anxiety level and triggering anxiety attacks. (Yes, I have anxiety attacks. Don't be jealous; I'm just lucky.) I've had a grand total of five cups of decaf since Saturday. Of course it's been headache city. Yesterday I woke up with a headache, a lovely sharp pounding in the left side of my brain. Today it's a little better. I didn't wake up with a pounding headache, but The Brain does feel sluggish and achy.

I'm also cutting back on the sugary goodies. I had a blood sugar crash yesterday a few hours after I ate a couple of cookies. Ugh. I felt like I had been flattened by a truck.

Good Things

A couple of good things happened yesterday, but, hmmm, I'm not sure how to rank them, so I'll just tell you:

One was that Dave and I saw a bat yesterday flying around in the sky catching insects. At first I thought it was a bird, but then I saw that it was flying very erratically, not birdlike at all. Then Dave said, "Look at the bat," or something like that. I love bats. They're so gorgeous. When I was a kid, I read a great book about bats, and I've just been enthralled by them ever since. There are a lot of bats in New Mexico, some of them pretty famous.

The other thing was that Dave and I ran into this fabulous artist that I haven't seen in a long time. Her name is Sandria and she's one of those people who's a good and positive person without being fake about it. We met her years and years and years ago at the studio, but she's since moved on and works at other places. She's so fabulous. So that was a good thing, too.

Water Aerobics

I went to water aerobics with my aunt and niece and my aunt's coworker tonight. (I didn't go Monday because it was a holiday. They had a class that night, I just didn't go.) It's actually pretty fun. I definitely feel it in my shoulders (which is the part I just about refuse to work out at the gym). After, I ruined all my hard work by having a grilled cheese and french fries for dinner. Well, at least I didn't splurge on a big piece of chocolate cake.