birthday card

Well......I didn't finish the wood burning today because I took a break a made a birthday card for my friend, Cindy. Her birthday was last month and I've had a gift for weeks but I realized yesterday that I didn't have a card. So.... today I made the five hour card. What a blast I had doing this. The card is a 9"x 12" piece of watercolor paper. I used collage in the background including Cindy's horoscope. I then painted the background and the girl finishing with pastels and colored pencils. Voila ...... a birthday card...... sort of!

fill your heart with art

-manon

sofie and sid

My Sunday is being spent starting the portrait of Sofie and Sid. These two are so adorable. Actually, I feel that way about all the dogs I do artwork for. I just finished the poem and I'm getting ready to start drawing the picture. If all goes well I can get going on the wood burning. This will take some time on this one because I have two dogs and it's a 24" x 24". I'm figuring between 3 -4 hours. Ugh! The burning is the most tedious part of the process. My back kills when it's done but the look is worth it. It's miserable outside so it's a perfect day for this.

fill your heart with art

-manon

The Paw Spa Closes

The Paw Spa is closing and I'm bummed. I take Otis there a couple times a week to play with his buddies. When he gets home he is exhausted because he's played hard for a few hours. The Spa is closing due to financial constraints. When it was miserable outside this winter they provided a place where Otie could go and have fun while I worked.
Thanks to everyone who worked there. Otis will miss you!

fill your heart with art

-manon

mixed-media collage

I finally finished the mixed-media piece of Domingo. I was being sidelined with other things not to mention a little vacation. I like doing these collages...... it gives me a change of pace. Variety is the spice of life....... right?
I'm like a zombie today. I went to see Bruce Springsteen last night with 12 friends. I finally got to sleep at 1:30...... I can't bounce back as easily. Anyway, The Boss was awesome. He can definitely still rock. Fun was had by all!!

fill your heart with art

-manon

yoga = journaling

Recently, I just started doing yoga again. I work out with weight six days a week but I seemed to have let yoga fall by the wayside.
I love yoga. The older I get the more I need to stretch. Yoga is a perfect stress releaser for me and I feel so relaxed when I'm done.
Like yoga, my journaling is also sporadic. I love to work in my journals but sometimes I go months without even opening a page, then I find myself working like a crazy woman in them. It's fun to go through some of the old ones and see where I was at the time. The page above was done in 2004......... evidently I was practicing yoga at that time. I guess I'm back into the journal/yoga flow for now. Yay!

fill your heart with art

-manon

Alex

Here's my daughter, Alex, with an Ohio State basketball player. His name is Kosta Koufos and he is the center for Ohio State. He is a 7ft freshman and she's 5'5". This pic really cracks me up. It's hard to believe that someone can be so tall.

Anyway, I'm picking up my lovely tomorrow from the airport. She has spent a week in Mexico building houses for the poor. She went with a group of 160 people and they were hoping to build between 9 and 12 houses. I am extremely proud of her. I can't wait to here about her experience. She has a great heart!

fill your heart with art and compassion

-manon

The Boulders

A few of us girls went to the Golden Door Spa at The Boulders hotel today for a spa treatment. I love this place and I always feel soooo good when I leave. I usually get a hot stone massage but today I had the chakra balancing. It's supposed to balance your energy fields with crystals and essences. I'm really into the positive energy thing so I pretty much liked this. It was a fun day!

fill your heart with art

-manon

hello from AZ

I'm in Arizona totally enjoying myself. I think I'll need a vacation from my vacation when I get home!! It was about 78 degrees today with not one cloud in the sky. Perfect. We had a great sunset last night and we're heading that way tonight. It beats those grey skies in Ohio.

fill your heart with art

-manon

good pics

What a difference a good photographer makes! These are the finished mosaic mirrors that I had my photographer take pics of for my website. I think they look pretty good. The black mirror with flowers is 36 inch in diameter. The red mirror is 26 inch diameter and the small one is 20".

I"m of to AZ tomorrow! I'll catch you when I'm out west!

fill your heart with art

-manon

domingo and friends

The portrait of Domingo is done but I thought I'd start a mixed media work of him. My client wanted to have the other pets included in the background but we decided because of the size constraints I would only do Domingo, ( the piece is 12" x 16"). So .......I'm taking all three of them and creating a small work to house in my studio. I"ll be starting three other dogs when I get back from AZ so I took today and played with this. Hopefully, I'll finish tomorrow.

Yes, yes, I'm leaving Saturday for Arizona for five days. For those who read my blog in November and December, you'll know that I'll try to blog when I can. So much inspiration in AZ I can't even stand it. I wish I had Jamie of Cowbelly to photograph Arizona for me! I'll try my best!

fill your heart with art

-manon

domingo

Domingo is almost done. I just have some finishing touches and the hardware to put on the back of the piece. I'm really happy with him. The photo really doesn't do him justice. I think I have too much light in my studio. Oh well....here's the poem I wrote.


In the light of the day or at night when it's dark
Our boy Domingo will always bark
Kitty is playful and a great cat
Domingo always knows exactly where he's at
Sadie is happy and always content
We would never think of charging her rent
All these three share our home
But Domingo is the king of the throne

fill your heart with art

-manon

snowed in

OMG! We got about 20 inches of snow in the Columbus area this weekend. I felt like I was living in Canada again. Everything was closed on Sat. and we were on a level three emergency. So........ I was able to get some work done. I worked in my journal a bit and I was able to get a running start on Domingo. You can probably see that I was able to burn the poem and the outline of the dog. I then started the underpainting and had to stop afterwards because all my paint is at my studio.

Not a bad weekend of work! Too bad there's over a foot of snow outside my door!

fill your heart with art

-manon

the dog pound gets a makeover

Today I worked on the "Dog Pound". I chuckle to myself every time I see these four. I painted the background in acrylics then repainted a couple of times when I was unhappy. After I fussed around with things I started adding decoupage elements and then painted again. I love the little tag I put on Mac, the mastiff, it reads....... bite me! Some of the sayings surrounding the pic are cute too. My favorite is .......... giving your dog a bone is so 80's. I think I'll coat it with beeswax when it's done. Just a word of advice to the owner, Emily........ don't lay the art on a chair, your dogs will eat it because it will smell like honey!

fill your heart with art

-manon

dog pound

A friend of mine, Emily, sent me a pic of two of her dogs with her brother's dogs. Emily has the two goldens with Henry on your left and Hunter on the right. The yorkie is Boss and the mastiff is Mac. I can't believe they got these four to sit still for anything let alone a photo shoot. I'm going to put together a mixed media painting for her. I initially wanted her dogs but I can't leave Mac and the Boss out, (they are way too cute).

fill your heart with art

-manon

a little mixed media collage

After getting three mosaics ready for the photographer today, I started a small mixed media collage. I have some more work left to do on it and then I'm going to finish it off with beeswax. I haven't used this technique yet so it should be interesting! So much fun to try something new.

Domingo will finally be started this weekend. I'll burn the drawing at my home studio. The other tenants in my building would have me kicked out if I did the wood burning there. I have a great ventilation system at home so it's the easiest place to get it done without anyone getting angry at me.

fill your heart with art

-manon