Art & Soul: What Happened in Vegas

You know, I think a lot of the reason I don't blog more is because Blogger has made it so difficult to lay out the pages in a pleasing way. All of these photos are not in the order I'd have liked and the problem is that when I choose the photos and start blogging, I don't necessarily know what photos I want to use or everything I'm going to say in the order I'm going to say it. Blogger, you're a horrible bastard and I don't like you anymore!

OK, now that that's off my chest, on to What Happened in Vegas!

If you saw 'The Hangover' you still don't have a clue what happened to us while we were at Art & Soul in Las Vegas. But you were truly entertained and so were we! I didn't have to get up early and I didn't really go to bed late (for me!) but I sure was wiped out when I left and I still had to drive home!

On the left is the middle of a project, The Love Bird Necklace, designed and taught by Sally Jean Alexander. If you've ever tried to get into one of her classes, you know how difficult it is to find an open spot. I'd already taken a couple of soldering classes so when Cheryl (check out her new blog!) had to sell her class, I was ready to jump right in there. Then I had to gather the materials and tools, surprised to discover that I had them all.

Of course, when Saint Maria (the patron saint of those who shop for art tools and supplies) announced that she'd have Sally Jean's preferred soldering irons and tools at the on-site shop, I HAD to have one since I suspected that my soldering iron was half of my problem. Having used the right tool now, I know that it was 99% of my problem! One cannot emphasize enough the importance of having the right wattage and the right tip for the job.

Oh man, was this class intense! Hardly anyone got done with the necklace then and there, and those who did, did so long after the official end of class. Some of us were still there an hour and a half after class was officially over and many people didn't even take a lunch break, or like we did, brought it back and ate while we collaged and taped. That was after the waterfall started and we had to move classrooms because of a hotel guest allowing their bathtub to overflow. Crazy!

Here I am with Sally Jean. She's got this fabulous smile and a way of giving you confidence. I really liked her a lot. That's why I've signed up for another class of her's in October!

Below is the beginning stage of my project in Stephanie Lee's Selective Seeing "Painting the Mind's Eye View". It's my dad in his MG TD in front of our house, pulling a set of gang mowers he built to cut the 3+ acres of grass we had.

I love that car and this picture of my dad is one of my very favorite photos. Yes, there are three kids in there with him. We always wanted to ride along for a while. I know I'm the kid on the right, and the one on the left next to Daddy is my brother, but the one in the middle is a neighbor kid, I only suspect who it is. The picture is adhered to heavy watercolor paper and is ready for the next steps of Stephanie's process. Once I realized how easily the heavy WC paper breaks with the photo and it's 'glue' on it, I wished I'd opted for 140# paper instead of 300#. I really enjoyed the process of painting it in this unexpectedly untraditional class.

On the left are the new backup signers for Craig Ferguson's Late, Late Show themesong backup singer, me. I gave the job to myself because I love his peppy theme. When I was singing it for the girls as we dined at Mon Ami Gabi in Paris Las Vegas, Keri on the left and Kathy on the right chimed in while Gina snapped our photo. We five had a wonderful time together. Keri tried to assassinate me by driving my mobility scooter off the top of the Eiffel Tower, but all is forgiven and I'm only going to mention it a few thousand more times for the rest of her life! ;-))

Here is the first project I did at A&S Vegas, in Lisa Kaus' class, 'Color My World'. I had a great time and really like my finished piece. Lisa had drawings of her own that you could trace and use but I'm happy that I decided to just wing it and draw. It's so easy to let your drawing skills go by the wayside when you do arts that don't strictly depend on it the way traditional painting media relies on your ability to draft your idea or what you see onto the canvas or other substrate before you can start. This class was an interesting blend of traditional painting, follk art, and mixed media. I'm so pleased with the finished project as well. It is definitely going up on the wall in the kitchen!

So that's what happened in Vegas. Or at least the part I am telling! If you want to know for sure, I guess you'll just have to come to Art & Soul there next year! ;-))

Making Trades for Art & Soul!

I made these a couple of weeks ago. Well, I started them. I just 'finished' them the other day while I was caught up in the fever of making trades for Art & Soul in Las Vegas.The Nest and bird stamps are from Red Lead Paperworks' domino stamps. Lately, I am just addicted to their stamps and email newsletters! I did these as a break from making these bottle cap charms. Flattening the caps wasn't as painful as I'd feared. I've got a couple of repetitive stress injuries from my addiction to FarmVille and Mafia Wars on Facebook, so I thought it would hurt. It took four whacks of a regular-sized builder's hammer on a piece of wood that I put over the cap that had the edges down on a steel bench block a friend made for me. The scary part was trying not to mash my fingers that were holding the piece of wood! Be sure the edges are against the steel if you try this. If they're against the wood, you'll have a blank bottle cap embedded in the wood!

I'd already 'customized' the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign for my page in the Fatbook, so making the centers was just a matter of making them smaller. I can't believe I didn't have a 1" circle punch. I had about 3 when I checked but none that were a 1" diameter. So that meant a trip to Michael's. I can never go to that store, get what I want and leave. No. It took two hours. Five minutes there, five minutes back, and close to two hours in the store! When I got home, I was too tuckered out to work on a project!

I HATE Blogger. It's acting up horribly and I think it just deleted two of my photos. :(

What Happens in Vegas...

We just got back from A Mini Vacation in Vegas. It wasn't our best trip to Vegas ever due to some weather that affected the electricity at my sweetie's office and therefore, his servers. The Minis jamming the Strip on Friday night was sort of anti-climatic because we were toward the front of the group and somehow got separated from the other Minis. That made it more like being stuck in the regular traffic on the Strip than last year when we were in the middle of the pack. Oh well. There's always next year.
For the rest of the event, other than the usual boring dinner where only the White Roof Radio guys who were talking thought they were fascinating (they even laughed at their own jokes), we had a great time. The people we sat with at dinner were from our club (the Dynamic Mini Collective) mostly so we enjoyed them as we always do. I sat next to one of the older members and really enjoyed talking to him and hearing about his wife and family and his racing Mini. His son had won a challenge race the day before in his Mini against a car owned by the publisher of MC2 Magazine. And at least I came away with one handknitted socknearly completed and won a Meguiar's car cleaning kit that CoopahS will appreciate.

We didn't go out to the track on Friday. Instead, we went off to meet up with one of my online pals from one of the Yahoo Art groups, abc_decos. The food is always good at the Cheesecake Factory and the company was lovely. We just couldn't stop yakking! And despite showing photos of our canine kids to each other, we neglected to take any photos! Silly us. We did go on the Valley of Fire run with the group and really enjoyed it. We wished we had done that run the previous year so we would have known to rent a big SUV and take my family out there at Christmastime. Somewhere around 200 MINIs on that run made it the biggest run we had ever been on aside from the Strip Jams.

We did manage to come home with more cash than we left with, so I guess we'll tell that much. We also came home with a really sweet stainless steel exhaust for our automotive kid, CoopahS. It has a nice burble and not too much WAH, which I would NOT like! I was threatening to come home with someone else if I didn't like the sound! We had a nice, quick drive back and had left in time to avoid big delays at Hoover Dam. It gets incredibly busy with tourists as you can imagine.

While it wasn't our best Vegas trip ever, if you can't have fun in Las Vegas, you're dead and someone forgot to bury you! If nothing else, that place offers some of the most amazing or spectacular sights, fabulous people watching, glamour, fashion, incredible shopping... there's really no end to what the Sin City has to offer! And on this particular weekend each year, it offers the chance to shop like mad for everything MINI Cooper. I got a zillion great ideas for my '07 BRG Mini Cooper S Cabrio Sidewalk edition when I get it. One of the most fun aspects was being able to see over 400 Mini Coopers of all flavors, each one of them unique in some way.

And that's the way we MINI owners like them!