Wordless Wednesday - Moss, Magic, and Mist

Back from vacation!

Hubby and I spent a week in the great state of Washington. For me it was love at first sight! So green and lush, so much to do and see. Here are some of my favorite photos. The first picture is from a hike we took at Olympic National Park on our first day. It was so misty you could barely see the tops of the tall trees. It was magical, silent except for a creek and the birds.

We spent a day and night in Vancouver BC. Tim Hortons and all you can eat sushi, yay! This next photo is from the beautiful Stanly Park.


We went to the Vancouver aquarium and got to see Beluga Whales up close. There was even a baby! It was so cute to see it nursing from it's mama.

In front of the aquarium was this beautiful Orca sculpture.

View from the front. I loved the face carved into its forehead.

Here is the spectacular Snoqualmie Falls, just north of Seattle.

We hiked down to the bottom.

Driving through the countryside we found these skulls perched atop a fence outside of someones house. Kind of creepy, but way cool!



Spent a lot of time in the urban jungle of downtown Seattle, where we drank WAY too many mochas, enjoyed the best people watching EVER, and took in the art museum.

Seafood at the famous Pikes Place market:

Obligatory Space Needle shot. Is that blue sky??? YES! It was sunny a lot of the time we were there.


We went back to Olympic National Park for a day, this time driving down to the Southern area of the park. There were lots of waterfalls and the moss grew thick on the trees. It was very surreal.

If you can stand another waterfall picture. I know, they're pretty hard to take...

The awe-inspiring Kalaloch Cedar:

This tree is huge, the biggest girthed Red Cedar in the world. To give you an idea of its size, here I am standing in the "door."

Side view:

The beach was a stones throw away. It was COLD, and windy, and so beautiful!

Facing the wind and watching the sand snake towards me was incredible! If it wasn't so cold I could have stood there for hours...

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. There's a tendency (at least for me) when taking photos to become so wrapped up in the photography aspect that you miss out on what you're taking pictures of. I could feel myself going there sometimes, and had to bring myself back by just setting down the camera and taking it all in. So I actually didn't take as many photos as I normally do when traveling. (I think I have 4000 photos of Sedona, lol!)

I feel so inspired by the beauty and Native artwork of the Pacific Northwest. Time to get back to work!

Vacation mode...

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm on vacation this week, so there may not be much in the way of posts for a bit, lol. I'll catch up on posting, and everyones blogs next week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Wordless Wednesday - Gold rush!

What's in a name..???

Plenty, if you're the name of a boat with a redhead pinup girl painted on it. To me there was only one possible name for her...

Since she is a hot little firecracker, after all...

I had intended to just hand-letter the name in white, but then decided to paint a firecracker next to it on each side. Then I thought the letters would look better in flame colors, and then it needed pinstripes, then the pinstripes turned into lit fuses, heehee...




I must say I have SO much respect for people who hand-letter with paint! NOT my favorite thing to do, I'd much rather paint pictures, thank you very much. :-)


Now I turn the project over to hubby, for varnishing, motorizing, and 'remote controlling.'
If you missed the post about hubbys RC boat, and my step by step photos of the pinup painting, or you just want to see it again, you can find it here.

Wordless Wednesday - Black and White and Cloud all over

No drink is safe, busy squirrel, and new video

For almost 16 years Boomer has had a thing for my glass of water. Lets just say that I go through a lot of different glasses throughout the day. You can get away with this if you are the Queen of the Universe...

"Gaze at the splendor that is Boom, lowly humans..."

"I said GAZE! Boomer is displeased..."

In other news, a simple hand lettering of the boats name on each side has turned into adding pin-striping and a few more details, so it's taking longer than I thought. Not to mention spending lots of time doing yardwork during last weeks nice weather. Of course now we're being blasted by a sudden cold snap with wind gusts of 40 mph. Ah, Springtime in the Midwest! I hope my rosebushes that I uncovered will be all right. Today I watched this squirrel make several trips to carry some insulating leaves up to her nest. Isn't she cute?

I also made a new work in progress video today:

It's a pinup!

It really didn't take much to convince hubby that he should let me paint a pinup girl on the remote control boat he's building. In fact, the conversation went something like this:

Me: "You should totally let me paint a pinup on your boat."

Hubby: "Uh... SURE!"

Heehee! I wanted to paint my take on a Gil Elvgren, 50's style pinup. I'd never painted on wood before, or painted a pinup girl for that matter. I just jumped right in.... 

Remember the boat from Mondays post?

Since the boat is black, I drew with white pencil:

Then I realized that the colors would look muddy painted on top of the black, so I blocked it all in with gesso:

And sketched the details over that with pencil:

Next I started laying down the skin tones:

And gave her some hair - she kind of reminds me of Jessica Rabbit now:

Starting on the nightie:

And the finished painting :

And a shot of yours truly to give an idea of the boats size. I put the camera on a tripod on top of a desk to get this shot, lol.

I had so much fun painting this pinup. Painting skin is a lot easier than painting fur, maybe I should stop painting animals? Haha, just kidding - I could never stop doing that! 

Next step is to hand letter the boat's name on it's sides. You'll have to wait a little bit to find out the name, lol...