Double Lives

      "Of course, I live more than one life all the time anyway.  Don't we all, who read books?"
                                                                                                      -Mary Oliver

     Actually, I don't know who Mary Oliver might be, but she's right about living more than 1 life at a time if you are a reader.  Some people read 2 or 3 books at a time.  Do you think that gives them a "split personality?"  I often have two books going at the same time, but one must be fiction and the other nonfiction.   It's best if their topics aren't too similar either (like two books about women artists) or my brain will occasionally cross wire and I'm not sure which character - the real one or the make believe one - is doing what.

     Over the years I've tried to read some of the classics, and see a big difference between some of them and many of the books being written by contemporary authors.  One of my all-time favorite authors is Pearl Buck.  Her 70 or so books are set in China and are fascinating to me. John Steinbeck's East of Eden is another good book written with great style.  A few years ago, I reread The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I just can't see why this book is considered such a great one.  It wasn't by my standards.

     Once I bought a book of Fitzgerald's short stories because it had the most charming cover art.  My favorite story was called, "Bernice Bobbs Her Hair."  She bobbs her hair after being goaded into it by her cousin, Margorie.  Bernice regrets her hasty action and really wishes she hadn't let her nasty cousin push her so far.  How to get back at Margorie?  Bernice finds the perfect solution.

"Bernice Bobbs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Art Journal Page
Creative Idea #9

     This journal page started with a watercolor wash before some paperdolls with bobbed hair were added.  Its a simple page, but a good reminder of  Fitzgerald's clever story.

     Smarty and I'll be back soon.

                        Carol

Ice Cream . . . Colors

     Soft ice cream colors have always been my favorites.  Even when I'm trying to use the more intense colors, my art work often turns out in the mid-to-light range of colors.  A few years ago, I bought a book designed especially for quilters called Color and Cloth by Mary Coyne Penders.  The idea is that you use snippets of fabric from your fabric stash to make different quilt patterns according to Ms. Penders' instructions.  I was thinking that the color ideas would apply to all kinds of art - not just quilts - and they do in many respects.  For instance, the first lesson asks you to make a color wheel using small bits of plain colored cloth and then make one using printed cloth. 



Solid Fabric Color Wheel




     They're fun to make by drawing two circles, with one inside the other, on a piece of cardstock.  Divide the circle into a dozen equal parts.  On tracing paper, copy one of the small sections to use to make a pattern for your fabric pieces.  Cut the pieces of material and glue them onto the circle.

  

      Of course these don't really have anything to do with women...or do they.  We all wear clothes and furnish our houses in the colors we like the best.  You can buy a new car in the color of your choice - as long as it's white, gray, or whatever the color the car manufacturers have decided we want this year. 
 
     Once I decided to make my own color book.  It's turned out to be another of my "works in progress."  Earlier I had purchased a blank page album, so I decided it would work fine for "My Color Book".  As I worked, I discovered that it is much easier to make each collage page on a piece of cardstock and then attach it to the book page with double stick tape.  Each page of the book concentrates on one of the six main colors plus black or white.  When those are done, further pages will have two or three colors together.  Most of the finished pages aren't focused on women, but the new pages will be.



At the beginning.







RED - passionate, exciting, anger, love 
Creative Idea Number Six

PURPLE - Dignified, regal, power, spiritual
Creative Idea Number Seven

     The background for this collage was made by tearing tissue paper into pieces, coating a piece of cardstock with Mod Podge, sticking the tissue paper to it, and applying a final coat of Mod Podge.  While it dried, I found pictures and words for the collage.  After trimming them, I coated them with Mod Podge in the same way.  One mistake I made was to place a piece of wax paper over the whole thing and roll a brayer over the wax paper to flatten out the tissue.  Only, it wasn't quite all dry and the wax paper suck in a few places pulling the color off of the cutouts.   That just proves that even with the power color purple, mistakes happen.  
     Smarty and I'll be back soon.
                         Carol







Don't Wash, Dry Clean Your Hair

     Did you ever wonder how those gorgeous movie stars of the 1950s kept their hair so perfect? 

     Recently I read a 1957 book called Eleanore King's Guide to Glamor where Ms. King explained some of the mysteries used by them.  She, herself, went to a beauty operator to keep the gray out - not by dying her hair but by plucking it. She did this 1 1/2 hours weekly for 13 years.  If I'd done that, by the age of 35 I'd have been bald!

     Ms. King also mentioned that many dark-haired women of the time didn't wash their hair very often so that their natural hair color would remain.  She personally met many women in their 60s who had gorgeous hair which they dry cleaned most of the time with only semi-annual shampoos.



  Idea #5: art journal

     
     After step #1, you "scale" the head by parting the hair every quarter of an inch, and with a comb, loosen as much of the dead cuticle on the part as you are able to do. With vigorous shaking, the scale should fall out.  If a woman wanted to add her favorite perfume to the witch hazel (step #4), she could but she would take a chance of making streaks in her hair.

     So, I'm thinking that this whole process sounds like a bit too much work for me.  Some how I don't remember the shampoo of the 50s being so harsh on the hair that it damaged it, but I was just a child then so maybe it was that bad.  And, I can't really believe that not washing your hair will keep it the color you had at the age of twenty. 

     How often is often enough to wash hair?  Ms. King suggests that a middle of the road schedule might be to wash once a week and dry-clean the next week or wash one week and dry-clean the next 3 weeks.  Which ever you choose, good luck.

Smarty and I'll be back soon.
Carol 

 

Woman Arrested for Indecent Exposure

                                                    

Idea #1:  Cut paper collage card

      Try to imagine actually swimming in the outfit shown here.   Made of the favorite swimsuit fabric of the day - wool in nearly any color of your choice - you could order one from Sears or make it yourself.  Of course, most women at that time didn't really "swim"; they waded.  There was a real danger of  drowning

while trying to swim in such a heavy, wet costume.  It's been said

that some ladies even wore their corsets under their suits!

      In 1907 or 08 (books vary on the date) a pretty young lady by the name of Annette Kellerman was  arrested at

Boston's Revere Beach because she "showed too much leg." The charge of indecent exposure seems ridiculous to us, but she was hauled off to court.



   

 



Ideas #2:  Art journal page

     When asked by the judge why she was dressed in a man's style of swimsuit, Annette explained that she wanted to swim 3 miles out to a lighthouse and couldn't do it in the costume worn by women.  The judge must have agreed with her because he allowed her to wear the suit, BUT only if she covered herself up with a robe until she was in the water.

      

       Born in Australia, Annette learned to swim and ballet dance as a child to strengthen her legs weakened from a bout with polio or some other muscle disease. That wasn't the last people heard about her.   In America, in addition to working for swimsuit reform, Annette Kellerman  became a famous silent movie star.

        Esther Williams starred in the movie about her, and  The Original Million Dollar Mermaid by Emily Gibson tells Annette's  

 story.

 Smarty and I'll be back soon.

Why 1000 Creative Ideas and More?

Mrs. Delany was widowed at 68 and started her life's biggest accomplishment four years later.  Her goal was to create 1000 paper flower "mosaiks".  She didn't quite make it.  Her eyesight failed after 10 years, so she only finished 985 of her fabulous pictures.  Just as amazing as the number she made is the fact that Mrs. Delany was born in 1700 when supplies were quite hard to get.  Her flower pictures have been preserved for over 200 years and can still be seen in a museum in Britain.

Mrs. Delaney just proves that we're never too old to begin.  Although I wasn't quite as old as she was when her husband died, I too am a widow trying to find my own way.  My goal is to make 1000 creative pieces about women of the past, their lifestyles, their fashions, their stories and then  share them so you may be motivated to learn more about our remarkable sex.  After all, at least 50% of the world's population is female!

There is one special male in my life who wants to be part of this blog.  At nearly 3 years old, Smarty Phineous Welsh Corgi has become a good companion to me.  Not great, but improving.  At first, the division of power looked like this: Smarty 80% Me 20% I'm now thinking it's more like this: Smarty 60% Me 40% Of course, that might be optimistic of me. Smarty's pretty much his own "man."

Smarty & I will be back soon.