Collage Art

Recently I took an online  Collage class with the awesome talented, reknown Lynn Whipple. 

My focal point was Great Aunt Irma.  John's great auntie turned 106 on Sept 5th.  Up until May she was living alone in her own home.  Because of worsening vision, she now lives in a home

 I gathered papers and what nots to collage on to my canvas.

 Then Lynn had us paint over everything but the focal point and parts we wanted to incorporate.

With some added painting, lettering and dot to dots, plus some shading here and there resulted in the final product:

This final picture epitomizes Aunt Irma.  She is and has always been a lady; meticulously coiffed and dressed.
Five foot two, eyes of blue, she ALWAYS wears her high heel shoes.

  Irma grew up on a farm and then lived on a farm all her married life.  You would find her scurrying up a ladder, hoeing her vegetables, hanging out wash, painting the barn, doing her oil paintings wearing her low heeled pumps.  The first time I met her she was on the barn roof helping Uncle Harold repair a leak......in her heels.  I asked her if she shouldn't be wearing tennis shoes or something safer and she gave me a haughty look, pulled herself up tall and said.
"any darn fool can wear those new fangled shoes but it takes someone special to wear your own style."
I never doubted her again.  I know if she could see the finished product she would be tickled pink...her favorite color.

I Am Back!

I have been not been around for a while and  I have missed everyone.  We spent most of the summer
entertaining family, enjoying our new swimming pool and continued work on our yard.
We had 65 people show up for a family reunion and that was so nice to reconnect with relatives we haven't seen in years.  We will repeat it next year.

This is us and our family.  The only one missing is our son in law, Ryan, who was fishing in Alaska.
We have been able to spend a lot of time with family  all summer and fall. As Life goes there were some health scares and  joyous times as well.  We continue to be shown God's blessings in our lives every day.

Early this fall I dropped and fractured my laptop in many pieces....sighing.
I just got a new fancy laptop with windows 8.1, touch screen last week. (merry Christmas, happy birthday.)  I waited until I could afford a nice one.  I am finding it difficult to learn all the new technology and have been on the  phone with tech support more than a few times.......does this happen to anyone else?

Also, when  you buy a computer these days it no longer comes with Microsoft Word.  You have to buy it separately.  My photo program is no longer compatible and had to buy that as well.
Now my printer is not compatible with the photo program they recommended I buy. So  I have to call tech support once again.  They will know me by my first name before I get this all situated.

I had to have all of my photos and other data taken off the old hard drive and put on my new computer.  For some reason they uploaded my several thousand pictures mutlitple times.  When I got this computer back  it had almost 23,000 photos!!!!!   There were at least 8 copies of each picture!! I had to go through and delete each multiple by hand...one by one.

I am going to take the next few days catching up on all of my favorite blogs and reconnecting with each of you.
Hope you are having nice weather wherever you are.  It is looking like a green Christmas season so far.....temps in the 40's all week.

I can't believe Christmas and my 65th birthday are just a few short weeks away......wow.
Hope everyone is getting into the holiday festivities.  We are keeping very quiet here. John just had rotator cuff surgery repair this past week.  It is his right hand and he will be in a sling for at least six weeks.  His dr said he has to really baby it for the next 4 months due to the tendon damage. That will be very difficult for him.

I hope you are ahead of the Christmas rush.  I am making every gift we will give.  Since we won't be able to go visit all the kids and grands I have to mail all of them. I put myself on a time line and doing ok so far........