date with donna

back here i was waffling on about all the art courses i was trying to get through, so i thought i'd report back on the donna downey course as that is the one i have managed to actually finished (nothing like having to physically turn up to something to get it completed).

if you have not yet encountered the lovely donna, she is this kooky (i love kooky) american mixed media artist.  she is totally mad for the colour teal - her own admission - and was wearing a teal cardie, her glasses were teal in the dame edna style (with diamantes of course) and the front of her hair was also that gorgeous teal colour (she said that she stands out dramatically in the vanilla town where she lives and receives both positive and negative comments about her hair).

the class was great, learnt lots about backgrounds, colours, techniques.  it was an art journalling class and we were all given these deee-vine hand made fabric covered journals to start work on.

my biggest stumbling block with starting an art journal has been messing up a perfectly good and usually beautiful journal with paint and glue and stuff that i may not really like when i'm finished.  so going to this class and having to immediately get stuck in and  into a apply paint to this totally glorious journal was very ... what's the word .... liberating!  i had no choice but to dive in and smear a heap of paint on a very white page in a beautiful journal.  i now realise that its ok to mess up something that is beautiful, well hopefully not messing up - more like enhance it's beauty.  yes, that is what i do isn't it? 

  you can find more info about donna here .

 so here are some photos of the day.

Donna in action

a couple of girls came over from NZ for the weekend course and one had this hilarious (and very NZ) apron which Donna found hugely amusing ... as we all did.

the kept us fortified with delicious food

my beautiful handmade journal

 

this is one of Donna's amazing art journals ....

.... and this is one of the pages from the journal.

bouncing off the walls with cupcakes

yesterday i minded my friend's two young daughters for a few hours.  so we made cupcakes and easter cards and generally had a heap of fun whilst making lots and lots of mess.  it was great.  along with the mess were three dogs (mine and her two), trying to get a part of the action. hilarious.

i think the girls ate more icing than went onto the cupcakes and i thought for sure that by the time their mum arrived home, they would certainly be bouncing off  the walls from the food colouring and far far far too much sugar.  but they managed to keep it together.  i did suggest to them that when their mum walks through the door that they should start bouncing off the walls for a laugh, but we forgot to do it.  drat.

below is the outcome of far too much food colouring, but lots of fun and sprinkles!

they certainly don't match up to the bliss that is contained within Couture Cupcake Creations, but they were dee-licious! you really should look at the lovely Laura's creations, they are too amazing for words ..... and she won an award at the Royal Easter Show.  big yay to Laura.